Major League Baseball was the canary in the coal mine.
If something was capable of going sideways for a league operating without a bubble during the COVID-19 pandemic, baseball would send a warning to the NFL. Football executives didn’t expect it to come so soon in the season — after a single weekend baseball series — nor did they anticipate the warning to be a full-blown air raid siren. But here we are, with the Miami Marlins already teetering on the brink with 15 players and two coaches testing positive for COVID-19.