The MLB operations handbook for this 12 months is similar to the one from final 12 months—multiple hundred pages of logistical directions that may have been unthinkable not so way back however now merely signify the value of day by day life in a pandemic. There are a few variations, nevertheless, specified by the desk of contents. The 2021 model has two sections that the 2020 one didn’t: “COVID-19 Vaccinations” and “Psychological Well being Assets.”
In different phrases, an acknowledgment that there’s now an apparent gentle on the finish of this precarious tunnel, and an acknowledgement that folks might nonetheless very a lot use some further assist.
That is the dynamic that stands out as spring coaching video games start Sunday: Right here is essentially the most normal-looking baseball that followers have seen in a whereas, when you can ignore the truth that, actually, it’s nonetheless not too regular in any case. The sport is just not clearly fractured in the best way that it was final 12 months. (Or, at the least, it shouldn’t be, given all that we all know proper now.) However this spring nonetheless bears the scars of final season, and this summer season will, too.
It’s, on the one hand, a regular spring coaching with all of the common trappings—there have been headlines about how gamers are in the perfect form of their lives, poorly shot movies of guys taking batting observe and updates on new faces in new locations. Most of the gamers who opted out final 12 months are again. When video games start in a few days, followers shall be allowed in most stadiums, albeit below strict pointers and at solely restricted capability. It would all be regular—or, at the least, normalish. It ought to be baseball that may usually appear to be the baseball that you’re used to.
However some bumps are seen when you look a little nearer. There are questions on the way to consider gamers coming off poor seasons—was this a actual signal of hassle, a product of the odd 60-game schedule, the outcome of not having instruments like video or simply collateral harm from enjoying by way of a pandemic? There are younger pitchers whose workloads now require cautious juggling after the unorthodox final 12 months. There are minor leaguers in camp now who misplaced months of growth. And, of course, there are nonetheless a hundred pages of well being and security protocols that have to be adopted in the intervening time. All of these options will linger into the season. None of them ought to outline the 12 months in baseball just like the weirdness of pandemic-ball outlined 2020—however none of them might be completely ignored, both, and so they function a reminder of the truth that this 12 months is a essentially transitional one. There isn’t any speedy path for snapping again to regular.
The 2021 operations handbook doesn’t reference the concept of “regular.” However that’s the outcome of an edit from final season—along with the 2 new sections, a handful of smaller tweaks had been made to the doc, and one of these was the language within the introduction. The 2020 handbook ended its introductory part with a line that felt a little like a mission assertion: “We hope that resuming Baseball will, in its personal small method, return a sense of normalcy and support in restoration.” It instructed that baseball itself can be a signal of normalcy and that any baseball might be regular baseball—an admirable assertion, if one barely undermined by the truth that it was getting used to preface a book-length assortment of pointers that had been something however regular.
That line was eliminated for 2021—perhaps as a result of folks really feel nearer to the idea of regular now than they did eight months in the past, or as a result of there’s now a realization that not all baseball is regular baseball, or as a result of the league wished to make edits to save lots of on printing prices. The introduction now ends on a easy procedural be aware: “Further steering will doubtless be supplied all through the season.”
Which is maybe essentially the most becoming mission assertion of all for this season. There doesn’t have to be any promise of normalcy, as a result of baseball is each virtually again to regular and, on the identical time, not there in any respect. However there’s hope that issues will proceed to vary, and for that, further steering shall be supplied all through the season.
