Speaker 1: It's Friday, August seven. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: Major League Baseball is getting serious with new protocols to
Speaker 1: prevent COVID nineteen outbreaks among players and staff. Anyone found
Speaker 1: in violation of these new rules could be suspended for
Speaker 1: the remainder of the season. Base Coverings are required at
Speaker 1: all times, and players are even discouraged from talking to
Speaker 1: or facing each other when eating or drinking together. Bob Nightingale,
Speaker 1: MLB columnist at USA Today Sports, joins us for more.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Bob, I wanted to check back
Speaker 1: in on the baseball season so far. They're doing a
Speaker 1: shortened sixty game season and it started off very rough.
Speaker 1: First off that Miami Marlins had an outbreak of COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: Then it was a St. Louis Cardinals that also had
Speaker 1: an outbreak. I think it was thirty three members total
Speaker 1: between both teams that had gotten it. And what happened
Speaker 1: after that, there was games that were postponed, and really
Speaker 1: the whole season because it happened in the beginning, was
Speaker 1: called into question. MLB has now put out a memo
Speaker 1: with some new protocols in place, and they seem pretty strict,
Speaker 1: and they're saying that if people are not in compliance,
Speaker 1: they could get suspended for the rest of the season.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff going on, so Bob help
Speaker 1: us walk through it. Yeah, very strict protocols. I mean
Speaker 1: some guys are joking like that. I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: in prison or Russia or something. But yeah, you have
Speaker 1: to wear a face mask at all times except for
Speaker 1: when you're in your own hotel room. In on the field,
Speaker 1: umpires are wearing it. But even in the clubhouse dug out,
Speaker 1: you're wearing it. They don't want you to dug out
Speaker 1: if you're not playing again. The stands if you want
Speaker 1: to have a bite to eat, eating stands if you can,
Speaker 1: if not. If you eat, don't talk at the same time.
Speaker 1: And when you're in the hotel and you're going stretch
Speaker 1: your room, no stopping off of the hotel bar, no restaurant,
Speaker 1: nothing like that. There's many guys watching you. There's gonna
Speaker 1: be a guy uh in each clubhouse, and two guys
Speaker 1: at the team hotel are kind of seeing the lobby
Speaker 1: there for sixteen hours a day. It almost kind of
Speaker 1: this modified NBA bubble if you will where there. Instead
Speaker 1: of actually going and sequestering in a place throughout the season,
Speaker 1: they're actually just gonna be watching you like hawks part
Speaker 1: of it. You know, you mentioned the eating. If they're
Speaker 1: eating in the clubhouse or wherever they're at, they say,
Speaker 1: don't talk while you're eating and don't even face each other.
Speaker 1: And for these guys that are teammates, they've been together
Speaker 1: for a long time. That's part of the camaraderie. And
Speaker 1: you know, you're like trying to isolate them as much
Speaker 1: as possible. That's gonna be a tough one. I think
Speaker 1: that's why they have the monitors there. Two security agents
Speaker 1: at the hotel and one monitor in the in each clubhouse.
Speaker 1: So yeah, again used to for sure, but I think
Speaker 1: baseball says, hey, if you guys want to get to
Speaker 1: this season, this is the only way to do it.
Speaker 1: If you don't follow this, it's not gonna work. Like
Speaker 1: you said, we already saw the Marlins and the Cardinals
Speaker 1: where that was almost a case where you know, season
Speaker 1: was almost shut down just because of what happened there.
Speaker 1: The MLB did send out a memo about all of
Speaker 1: these new protocols, and they did address what happened to
Speaker 1: the Marlin and the Cardinals and why they postponed the
Speaker 1: games and kind of what would happen in the future
Speaker 1: if there was other outbreaks. What did they say about that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just they thought they were you know, in hindsight, they
Speaker 1: should not have let the Marlins play that game against
Speaker 1: the Phillies. They learned that Hey, even though you're in
Speaker 1: the same field, one staff member got sick and nobody
Speaker 1: else did, so maybe they should have allowed them to play.
Speaker 1: But yeah, just being very very cautious with those teams.
Speaker 1: And there's another outbreak like that, it's gonna shut down,
Speaker 1: ah that team for another week again. But yeah, better
Speaker 1: be safe than sorry sort of thing. But they probably
Speaker 1: shouldn't let the Phillies play in hindsight as well. For them,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, it was all part of the
Speaker 1: contact tracing. They mentioned that they needed to make sure
Speaker 1: that that process was complete, and I guess it was
Speaker 1: happening a little too fast for them where they had
Speaker 1: to pump the brakes just because they hadn't maybe finished
Speaker 1: all the investigation there. What do we know so far
Speaker 1: about how members of the Marlins team possibly got it
Speaker 1: or even the Cardinals. I heard rumors that some of
Speaker 1: the Cardinals went to U a casino and maybe where
Speaker 1: they got it. What do we know about that? Well,
Speaker 1: I think in the Marlins case, it was just simply
Speaker 1: violating protocol being careless, as Derek Jeter said, where a
Speaker 1: few guys went out at least two players and not
Speaker 1: three players went out. One guy is when the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Braves guy's house, a former teammate, someone went up for
Speaker 1: coffee and clothes shopping that sort of thing, which you
Speaker 1: can't do. In the Cardinals case, we still don't know.
Speaker 1: It looks like it happened in St. Louis at corn
Speaker 1: of the Cardinals. They be able to deny anything to
Speaker 1: do with the casino, So it was just from an
Speaker 1: outside person and it was a family member. Who knows.
Speaker 1: But that's how that's spread. But both those things spread wildly.
Speaker 1: Just on the team plane, Like if you haven't infected
Speaker 1: guy in the plane, everybody's bringing that same air. So
Speaker 1: that's where I can get dangerous. What are they gonna
Speaker 1: do as far as monitoring the teams when they're not
Speaker 1: at the clubhouse, you know, when they're at home, things
Speaker 1: like that, because those are part of the new protocols too.
Speaker 1: You can't go to any bars, lounges, malls, places where
Speaker 1: there's large groups. I'm sure they're not gonna have monitors
Speaker 1: following them out side of the clubhouse and things like
Speaker 1: that in hotels, but it's just gonna be personal responsibility
Speaker 1: at that point, it seems absolutely. I mean, you're kind
Speaker 1: of at the mercy of the weakest link there. If
Speaker 1: one guy goes out, it can work for anybody. So no,
Speaker 1: you're actually right. Yeah, you can't follow a guy home
Speaker 1: and no one's hit me sitting outside of guy's house
Speaker 1: monitoring it. But they will monitor very closely when those
Speaker 1: teams are on the road. With such a short season,
Speaker 1: this has been my biggest curiosity. How does the scheduling
Speaker 1: work when they have to reschedule these games and postpone
Speaker 1: things and they got to try to catch up later.
Speaker 1: How does it happened at least with these first few
Speaker 1: games they got postponed. Well, they're some going to try
Speaker 1: to get most of them in. I think they'll let
Speaker 1: them get at least fifty five in. That's a minimum,
Speaker 1: I think. But like the St. Louis Cardinals they missed
Speaker 1: a hig games. There's already a ten of schedule to
Speaker 1: make them all up the same. Maybe true at the Marlins,
Speaker 1: but you know, worst comes to worse. You know, you
Speaker 1: play fifty five games and not sixty, and then you
Speaker 1: go by winning percentage, you know, sort of thing like
Speaker 1: maybe you won't have the same type of criteria as always,
Speaker 1: but go by winning percent and if the schedules are uneven,
Speaker 1: just like it happened nine anywhile with the players strike. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's interesting now that MLB has these new
Speaker 1: protocols and threatening to suspend players and staff if they're
Speaker 1: in violation. I mean, I hope they can get it
Speaker 1: together and there's no more feature infections because people want
Speaker 1: to have this escape the sports, you know, watching and
Speaker 1: things that they love when uh, you know, things are
Speaker 1: so tough all around. So hopefully they get it in
Speaker 1: order and nothing else get happens as far as the
Speaker 1: baseball season goes that way. Bob Nightingale, MLB columnists at
Speaker 1: USA Today Sports, thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Sure my buzzer, thank you. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this
Speaker 1: has been reopening America. Don't forget the effort. Today's big
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