Time To Smile: Baseball Is Officially Back

The 2020 Major League Baseball season is officially underway, and it has already been called odd, weird, bizarro, uncertain, and plenty of other things, all of which are true.

To have an Opening Day that begins just a few shakes short of August is naturally unlike what we are accustomed to, but, as balls, strikes, dingers and everything else that makes up the fabric of a national pastime return, the most important thing isn’t the changes, but the obvious.

Baseball is back.

“They played baseball here Thursday,” ESPN’s Jeff Passan wrote. “The Washington Nationals hosted the New York Yankees. The attendance was 0. They threw pitches. Hitters swung at them. The game itself, the perfect summertime activity, Americana in the nation’s capital, felt the same, even if nothing really is anymore.”
 One of the greatest pieces of sports filmmaking that there has ever been is Ken Burns’ Baseball, an ode that makes no secret of the iconic documentarian’s adoration of the sport. The theme and tone of that timeless piece is like a typical regular season – permanent, enduring, ticking to its own, reassuring pace.

This time it is a sprint. Welcome to the season, and in the blink of an eye, it will be welcome to the playoffs. FOX begins its broadcast schedule with a quadruple header on Saturday, featuring the Milwaukee Brewers at the Chicago Cubs, the San Francisco Giants at the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Yankees at the Nationals and the Arizona Diamondbacks at the San Diego Padres.

Just 64 days later, the postseason will be upon us. In a sense, it already is.

“I think you’re going to see more of a playoff-attitude managing, where it’s a little bit more assertive,” Los Angeles Angels manager Joe Maddon told the New York Times. “Probably the best way to describe it is more aggressive decision-making early in the game as opposed to what you would do in the first couple of months of the regular season.”
The season will be short, but boy, won’t it be sweet? Baseball’s return is so special because its absence stung so sorely. It is the sport that is always there, every day, all summer long, until this time, for the first time, it wasn’t.

You’ll probably hear more grumbles about the way baseball has changed because it is a sport that doesn’t merely embrace its nostalgia as much as clings it to the chest, refusing to let go.

And why not? If you have more than a hundred years of goodness in your locker, it makes sense to use it. Baseball doesn’t just last, it glides through time. It has survived scandals and controversies, but something about it will always be soothing. We could all use some of that right now.

It is by necessity that things must look and feel different now, and it is in some ways the greatest compliment that you can pay the sport, that after all this time, it is still adaptable.

“It’s going to be remembered as the COVID season, one that we’ll have a better understanding of when we look back in 15 or 20 years,” former MVP Christian Yelich of the Brewers told USA TODAY Sports. “The unpredictable is going to happen. Crazy things are going to happen. But you’ve got to embrace the unconventional.’’
 
Inevitably, some teams, managers and players will do a better job of coping with the differences than others. FOX Bet has the Yankees and Dodgers listed as co-favorites for World Series glory, but good luck predicting this one. One school of thought suggests big name quality will shine through. Another is that the shortened sample size means that anything could happen. 

Everyone must contend with the altered rules and try to find ways to turn them to their advantage. In the National League, the designated hitter is coming. In the postseason, there will be a whopping 16 teams. For extra inning games, each team will start with a runner on second base.

The schedule has been manufactured with current realities in mind, with 40 games against division rivals and another 20 against geographically-near interleague opponents.

At FOX, we can’t teleport fans into the seats, but there has been a concerted effort to enhance the viewing experience with digital crowds used to create a more natural feel for those at home. This time, home is the only place to watch. 
 
Baseball can’t do anything about the realities of 2020 and everything the coronavirus has brought. For those of us that cherish the feel, smell and energy of a ballpark, that is our loss, albeit a necessary one. But at the elite level of the sport, the key components that provide compelling entertainment are still in place.

It will be a scramble to the finish line and a tussle between big spending powers and plucky, creative teams that see this as a golden chance to shake things up.

It is a World Series at stake, and don’t even get me started on asterisks. A title is a title. 

And it is sports, for goodness sake, and it is back. It is summer and the soundtrack of the season is playing once more.

(Speaking of sports being back, FOX Sports launched the reimagined new FOX Sports App and Website. You can download it here.)
 
Here’s what others have said …

Jeff Passan, ESPN: “For the past four months, as baseball shut down and the coronavirus overwhelmed all aspects of daily life, baseball has framed an eventual return similarly: as a panacea, a diversion, something that’s not the pandemic. Thursday laid bare the folly of that idea, that piped-in crowd noise and broadcasters calling the game from home and copious mask usage and empty concourses don’t explicitly illustrate there is absolutely nothing normal about this.”

Bryce Harper, Philadelphia Phillies: “It’s going to be a challenge for everyone. But you have to remember, you’re playing for your teammates. You’re playing for the fans who are watching at home. They’re probably as excited as all to get to watch you play. I’m going to play my same game, still going to pump my fist, still going to play as hard as I can. (The fans) are going to be watching us at home, so they deserve my best. And my teammates do, too.”

Aaron Judge, New York Yankees: “It’s been a long road, a long journey, to get here to Opening Day. It’s been a crazy year that has affected a lot of people, a lot of families. But I’m just excited to get back on the field and start playing the game that I love, and hopefully bring some positivity in this world with all the negativity going on.”