Major League Baseball has been here before, caught between a deadly pandemic and the sport’s cherished role as our national pastime.
Harsh lessons were learned more than 100 years ago, although few paid heed at the time.
The year was 1918 and World War I was in its final, grizzly year. In March, the first cases of what became known as the Spanish Flu appeared in the United States. The virus, however, might have actually begun in Kansas. More than 100 soldiers at Camp Funston in Fort Riley become ill with the flu. Within a week the number of flu cases quintupled.