Nevius: Why baseball should be 1st sport to return

It pretty much has to be baseball, doesn’t it?

If we are going to bring back sports ... and do so in extraordinary, weird and scary times ... baseball is the best choice.

For starters, the other contenders to come back from the viral pandemic haven’t exactly stepped up.

The NBA has been vague and non-committal. Steve Kerr said in an interview that he felt like the Warriors’ season was over - setting up wise guys to joke he gave that interview in November.

But so far no solid NBA plan, even for a round-robin playoff. So we wait.

Of course, you can bet the NFL is going to have a season or Jerry Jones will know the reason why. The idea that the owners would forfeit a season’s worth of revenue because of concerns over the health of the players is amusing at best.

The owners are so concerned about the well-being of their players that they want to add another game to the regular season, increasing opportunities to get hurt in the most injury-prone professional sport.

But football won’t happen until the fall, maybe October. At that point we will know a lot more about the coronavirus.

So that leaves baseball. Which is as it should be.

This is the time for an easygoing sport where players wear sunglasses and spit sunflower seeds. A time for a game with lots of room between participants and familiar and repeatable moments. Wouldn’t you like to see a nice ground ball to short about now?

And here’s the good news. Baseball agrees with you. They are going to move heaven, earth and Madison Bumgarner to stage a season.

While other leagues are weighing their options, baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said flatly in a letter, “... I fully anticipate that baseball will resume this season.”

Great. Pass the Cracker Jack.

But if you were expecting an upcoming “not so fast” disclaimer in this rosy scenario, congratulations. Baseball may open, but it isn’t going to be easy.

What seemed like the biggest hurdle - where to play - actually seems pretty easily solved. You’ve heard the proposals. Create a baseball “biosphere” in a place like Arizona, where players, staff and media could stage games in one of several major and minor league ballparks.

When they aren’t playing, they will live in a controlled, virus-free hotel for as many months as it takes to play something like an 80-game season.

Arizona was the original call, but there have also been suggestions of a Florida “hub” for East Coast teams, and there was even a late entry by the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

(All potential locations have domed stadiums to make it possible to play doubleheaders, even with oppressive summer heat.)

The point is, there are an abundance of options if you are willing to go all in on quarantine baseball.

Baseball insiders think the players would go for it. There was some early pushback from stars like Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw. But most think the players will want to play. They didn’t train their entire lives to reach this elite level, only to have a full season taken away.

Also, they want to get paid.

And now we’ve got problems. And maybe not the ones you think.

As you’ve heard, any scenario for restarting professional sports has one feature in common - no fans.

It is only sensible. If we are banning gatherings of more than 10 people, putting 40,000 of them in a confined space is lunacy.

And once we got used to the idea, and saw the good sense in it, it didn’t seem so weird. We could watch the games on TV. That works.

But that was when ownership began doodling on the back of an envelope and came up with a problem. Stadium income, it seems, accounts for half of their revenue. No fans, no income.

Teams are saying that radio and TV broadcasting rights will not cover their operating costs. Some have floated the idea that they might actually lose more money by playing than by not playing.

And so, they went to the players and asked if - in the spirit of the game - they would be willing to take a cut in pay.

To which the players replied, “Take a hike, Meat.” They already agreed to prorate their contracts to only get paid for the games played, rather than the entire season. Other than that, the players say, they have a contract and expect it to be honored.

It’s a bit of a pickle. ?While you’d expect ownership to bend over backwards to get a season underway, some of them are not having doubts. And players, who you’d think would be eager to maximise their prime window of opportunity, are standing firm on getting paid in full.

Will they work it out?

They have to. For the game. And for the country.

The symbolism of bringing back America’s pastime is too rich to ignore. And just to ladle on the schmaltz, let’s say the first games are on the Fourth of July.

Teams jog out of the dugout against a backdrop of red, white and blue. There will be a national anthem. There’s a first pitch, and hits, runs, errors and dingers. Afterward: fireworks.

Watching that, you might feel like we’re headed out of this thing. That although a lot will change in the future, some things will remain - steady, consistent and familiar.

America needs baseball.

Don’t screw this up.

Contact C.W. Nevius at cw.nevius@pressdemocrat.com. Twitter: @cwnevius