Back to the Top News Newsfeed

MLB stares into the abyss: Challenges of playing through pandemic may become insurmountable

The baseball season is not newly on a ledge, suddenly teetering toward surrender to the life and health crises that exist in the neighborhoods outside its ballparks. The season was there from the get-go. It chose this ledge and hoped against firm gusts.

Eight days in, baseball is an outbreak away from capitulation.

In the wake of yet more bad news — two St. Louis Cardinals tested positive for the coronavirus at the end of a week in which 18 Miami Marlins were found to be infected — players traded gloomy text messages about a Friday phone call between baseball commissioner Rob Manfred and union chief Tony Clark.