Reese Kaplan -- A Dumb Idea to Bring Back Baseball

Every now and then when you kick around blue-sky, silly sounding ideas, one kind of clicks enough that you say to yourself, “Hey, that might just work!”  I was having those moments recently when pondering how to return baseball to the big league stadiums without running the risk of damaging the major league roster or infecting fans and personnel who might be in attendance to see the games.  It was such a stupid idea that I figured it could be worth exploring.

With the contraction of the minor league franchises it’s going to be tougher and tougher for folks to see some of the up and coming prospective players.  In addition, there are other leagues like the independent leagues and the post-college summer leagues that offer up competitive games for folks to see.  They don’t have the benefit of major broadcast contracts and often are located quite a distance from the major league cities.

So how about inviting minor league players, independent and college leagues to use the major league stadiums for their games?  Yes, a great many of the same issues still exist. How do you keep the players and personnel safe?  What happens when someone gets infected?  What type of league competition could you set up to simulate a regular baseball environment?

All of these questions would need to be addressed, in addition to whether or not to allow fans to enter the stadium.  However, the ballparks become for-rent sites like using a convention center for some type of organized activity.  The players are not the team owners’ responsibilities, nor are the personnel associated with the game.  If someone unfortunately becomes infected, then the team can ban the club from the stadium.  This type of approach takes a lot of the heavy lifting off the team owners.  

Now the next question is whether or not such amateurish baseball games would generate enough interest among the fans to make the whole endeavor worthwhile.  After all, fans are accustomed to rooting for the Mets, Yankees or whomever is their team of preference.  Would they show any interest in a bunch of unknowns and second rate players who are not affiliated with the major leagues?

Well, if you read the many stories about the broadcast of Korean baseball games, it would seem that the public is totally starved for any kind of baseball fulfillment.  Even the tapes of the 1969 World Series on SNY drew huge audiences.  Baseball represents normalcy and any connection to that is high on most folks’ level of priorities for feeling some kind of control during this most difficult period.  

For the players, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get the kind of publicity they rarely get when off the radar in some small minor-league or college league venue.  It is almost an audition for the upcoming floater squads that will have to exist with a smaller minor league infrastructure.  It gives players who did quite well in their respective leagues a huge opportunity to showcase their abilities in front of not just the fans but the team owners who might need to look to new avenues to find players to fill their rosters.  

Obviously no one wants anyone to become inflicted with this virus, but bringing back baseball of any kind might be a way to tide the fans over during this lost 2020 season.