67 years announcing baseball, think about this for a moment. Talk about living the dream.
I remember a baseball TV announcer talking about taking vacation during the season. I thought “this job is a vacation” 
So, is this finally the way out of the excessive patriotism and soldier worship from post 9/11? Spend this abbreviated season if we have one or next season worshipping the doctors/nurses but that can be dropped a lot easier than the military.
Maybe a future without God Bless America?
Oh god - no, they’ll ramp up the jingoism. Instead of God Bless America only on Sundays, it’ll be back to every day.
Then they’ll make up all the lost revenue with me guzzling down those $10 beers to tolerate all that schmaltz.
And it would be stupid. COVID is a worldwide epidemic, not an attack on the USA like 9/11
Some very early and entirely unsubstantiated rumors now of home stadiums with empty seats, reshuffled three divisions of ten teams each based entirely on geography, no games outside of each division to reduce both travel and exposure, with the hope of a start before July.
I wouldn’t mind gettin me some baseball back, if this plan or something like it can go thru.
Apparently players are highly averse to a Phoenix league, don’t want to be apart from their families for that long. Completely understandable, that.
I’ve heard the 3 ten team divisions rumors as well. We’ve known for a while that this is the direction MLB wants to move towards, eliminating the AL and NL and making the DH universal. A short season would be a good time to experiment and make it easier to make a full time adjustment.
Baseball purists will scream and they’ll be loud. We’re still debating the DH and interleague play.
I’m in favor of the changes. I’m sure MLB wants to be more like the NHL and NBA and reduce the number of games played on the opposite coast. A ten PM west coast start or a 4 pm east coast start hurts ratings for the regional sports networks and their big $$$. But, as a fan, I’d also like it. It’ll also make make up games easier, we all know that days off are far and few between as the season goes on and making up a game rained out in April might mean the Angels have to fly to Boston in August to make up a game on a previously scheduled mutual off day.
This plan is wholly dependent on every jurisdiction allowing such things, of course.
I’m fine with whatever they do if it’s reasonably safe. I just want to watch some baseball.
Are/Were there any other major league sports anywhere that were divided like the old AL and NL where they only played in the WS and All Star games? Maybe some non US leagues did that. I’m sure the NL teams are happy to see the Yankees and Red Sox come to town. AL teams are happy to see Dodgers, Cubs and Cards. Name teams like those boost ticket sales. Not to mention Mets/Yanks, Giants/As , Cincy/Cleveland, etc.
On the plus side, no-fan games will make it a lot easier to tell if someone is taking video from the stands.
The NFL and AFL, briefly. They were like the old AL-NL for the first three years of Super Bowls.
First four years, actually. The agreement which led to the merger of the AFL into the NFL was reached in June, 1966, though it didn’t go into effect until the 1970 season. However, the agreement also featured a “World Championship Game” between the two leagues’ champions in each of the four seasons which would occur before the merger took effect; that game was eventually named the Super Bowl.
From 1942 to 1948 the Negro American League and Negro National League operated as separate leagues and met in a Negro World Series.
The two Japanese leagues operate separately – only one using the DH – and meet in a “World Series”. I don’t recall the name of the series.
It’s just the Japan Series.
Although they operate mostly separately they do have interleague play, so they no longer meet Bijou Drains’s condition of being the way the AL and NL used to be. They’ve had interleague play for ten years or so, I think.
Today I learned that Hall of Famer Andre Dawson is now a funeral director in Florida.
Here’s an interview with him on the CBC, about how he wound up running a funeral home, and about how they’re having to deal with COVID-19.
Owners gave OK to 82 game schedule starting early July with no fans. Playoffs go to 14 teams, 2 extra wildcard teams per league. Players have to agree with this idea.
Sources: Owners approve MLB season proposal, plan for July start as players' union preps to weigh in
My guess is the players won’t. MLB can’t do this at all unless the players play for a fraction of their usual money. Not 82/162, but half again of THAT. At most. MLB offered to share the revenues with players and they have already said, literally today, that they consider that a salary cap and so will not accept it.
Of course, as a Blue Jays fan, I worry they won’t be allowed to play at all. Ontario has already said “No sports or concerts in the foreseeable future.” They are hard core.
Illinois is the same way with the Chicago mayor and the Illinois Governor trying to outdo each other. I guess I’ll watch but having games in Indianapolis or Columbus isn’t the same.
I assume they’d use AAA parks. I don’t even know the dimensions of the South Bend Cubs stadium.
Yeah this looks like it might get ugly. I sympathize with the players here. They already agreed to a reduction. Owners are saying they did not foresee games without fans, despite the possibility being pretty obvious at the time. As long as owners aren’t sharing windfalls I don’t see why players should subsidize their losses.
On the other hand it is not a good look for very rich players and even richer owners arguing over money when 80k Americans are dead and the unemployment rate is 14% and rising.