The Cubs finally played their first actual game of the summer, against an actual opposing team, on July 19. And that game didn’t even count. They have to wait until Friday for that.
But Kyle Hendricks tuned up on the White Sox for Friday’s opener, including use of his new and improved curveball. Northbrook newcomer Jason Kipnis hit a home run for the Cubs. It was competitive. It was baseball on an 82-degree night in July in Chicago.
It also was as strange and at times as eerie as many might expect in an otherwise empty stadium, with foul balls caroming off empty seats against a backdrop of piped-in crowd noise that didn’t quite sync with the action.
But whether you buy into the upbeat chatter that the mere return of baseball — broadcast Sunday on ESPN no less — represents a return to some semblance of normalcy for a country desperate for normal, or whether you question why in God’s name this should even be attempted during a pandemic, this much is certain:
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If MLB pulls off this three-month long shot, it will produce one of the most well earned championships in baseball history.
“The question I always ask people is what was the last team in a shortened NBA season to win a championship,” Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo said. “The answer is LeBron James — his first championship was with the Heat in a short season [2011-12], and no one knows that.
MLB
“I’m sure this is a little bit different. That was a lockout; this is a pandemic. I’m sure everyone will remember this year. But at the end of the day, you still win a championship, and this year is going to be more unique than ever.
“To be able to be the last team standing here is going to be something special.”
That doesn’t begin to describe what a championship this year might mean — or at least what it will entail. From the entire league.
The NBA missed only 16 game dates in 2011-12. MLB will lose 102 in a best-case scenario.
Consider that the coronavirus risk in this country is so great right now compared to the rest of the world that an entire country, Canada, just refused to allow teams from the U.S. to travel to Toronto to play its one MLB team, forcing the Blue Jays to look for home accommodations south of its border.
If you were Canada, would you allow two teams from Florida and another from Georgia to fly planeloads of personnel into your country for baseball games?
That’s just one illustration of the steep task baseball faces when travel begins in earnest later in the week and the 60-game season starts.
Florida is on a streak of five consecutive days exceeding 10,000 new COVID-19 cases heading into Monday. Wearing a mask in some parts of the country has become so politicized that the governor of Georgia is suing the mayor of Atlanta — home to the defending National League East champs — over the city’s mandatory mask policy.
Coronavirus cases in Georgia requiring hospitalization reached a new high Sunday, according to reports, surpassing 3,000.
Meanwhile, in an area that has done a better job of curbing the spread of the virus, the Cubs nonetheless canceled January’s Cubs Convention a few days ago because there’s no way to know whether it’ll be safe even six months from now to hold a large event like that in a downtown hotel.
“I can’t sit here and lie and say I thought we were going to play this season,” Rizzo said. “Even when we reported to camp [July 3], there was still a lot of uncertainty. And there still is.”
And there will be every day they’re still playing, every day they get on a plane for Cincinnati or Pittsburgh and certainly every other day when they’re scheduled for another round of coronavirus tests.
It’s why Rizzo is right when he says how special a championship will be for whoever wins it this year. How great an accomplishment it will be for the entire league that anyone wins it.
It’s also why Rizzo says “it’s exciting” to see the White Sox show up on a Sunday afternoon to play an actual — albeit, exhibition — major-league game.
Rizzo, who expects to be ready for the opener after battling a back issue for the past week, used the word “amazing” before catching himself and downgrading to “great” to describe the job MLB and the players have down to keep the rate of positive COVID-19 tests down.
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The Cubs have not had a player test positive.
“We haven’t seen the nightmare scenario of a whole team getting crushed by this virus,” said Rizzo, who lives in Florida. “So I think there’s a lot of excited optimism.”
Manager David Ross and left fielder Kyle Schwarber expressed the same thought Sunday and said they’re hearing the same thing from fans as they walk in the neighborhood.
“I think it’s going to mean a lot [for] this city and obviously just in the country overall, that it’s going to be a good, positive thing that’s going on,” Schwarber said, “to sit down and watch a baseball game for three or four hours and be able to cheer your team.”
It doesn’t make the echoes of foul balls or unsynchronized phony fan noise sound any less strange. Or make the players’ masks, the batboy’s latex gloves and the temporary dugout extensions look any more normal.
But they’re at least starting this unprecedented, impossible baseball season of 2020.
“To bring back America’s pastime to America is going to be great,” Schwarber said.