Baseball is back, with lots of special rules for the age of pandemic. A whole manual of them, in fact.

Alas, there’s no way it is going to work, if it even starts at all. Based on recent trends with the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in the Southern and Southwestern parts of the United States, it seems entirely likely that the already-delayed 2020 season will be delayed again or just outright cancelled.

Just look at the numbers and where things are headed. Trends in Houston are said to be pointing towards numbers that could be among the worst in the world. Twenty-six states, according to Johns Hopkins, have seen a rise in cases since last week, and 11 of those states have Major League Baseball teams. One open-source projection site that utilizes machine learning in making predictions estimates that by July 24 (which will be the opening day for most teams) over 1.9 million Americans could have active infections at that time. In places like Florida and Georgia, that site estimates that around 1% of the population could be actively infected by the coronavirus. While that doesn’t seem that big, keep in mind that even with the super stripped-down operations that MLB will have in place there will still presumably be more than 100 people in a ballpark at any given time, and so statistically with those rates of infection at least one of them could be expected to have the virus.

Oh, and it’s still not clear if the Blue Jays will even be allowed to play in Canada.

And, of course, even if they do play, it’s going to be, to put it mildly, a freak-show. There will be few if any fans. The (stupid) man-on-second-to-start-extras rule will be around. The NL will have a DH. Games will only be played in-division and in the cross-league equivalent. And, of course, there will be all the little things in place to keep human contact to a minimum, like not having players being allowed to bring other players their sunglasses or gloves at the end of an inning.

But, hey, it’ll be baseball. So if we do get it, enjoy it… because who the hell knows what’s going to happen once the CBA finishes up.