Famous for Something Else: Charlie Powell, the minor-leaguer with 83 NFL games and a fight against Ali

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Today’s “Famous for Something Else” is one who I honestly am surprised I hadn’t heard of until recently: Charlie Powell. After all, I doubt that there were any other former minor leaguers who had the honor of getting knocked out by Muhammad Ali. And even if there were (and if there were I will find out), I doubt any of them also played several seasons in the NFL.

Charlie (sometimes spelled Charley) Powell, however, did all of these things. Born in Dallas in 1932, he would grow up in San Diego. His was in an athletic family, and his brother Art would go on to be one of the lead receivers in the American Football League of the 1960s. According to the Los Angeles Times, Charlie’s time at San Diego High School was to that point perhaps the most decorated student-athlete career in the history of the city, as he lettered 12 times in four different sports (football, baseball, basketball, and track). The Harlem Globetrotters and major college football programs wanted to him to join up, but instead he decided to go into professional baseball.

It was a season that, as the Times obituary put it, left him “realizing his sporting riches would be elsewhere.” Looking at the admittedly bare-bones stats of that lone short season in Stockton that Baseball Reference has, it isn’t hard to see why:

Register Batting
Year Age AgeDif Tm Lg Lev Aff G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB
1952 20 -2.6 Stockton CALL C SLB 10   30   5 0 0 0           .167   .167   5          
All Levels (1 Season)       10 30 30   5 0 0 0           .167   .167   5          
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 6/24/2021.

And so, Powell instead went into football, joining the 49ers in time for the 1952 season at the age of 20, making him the youngest NFL player at that time. In 1953, he had his first boxing match, drawing with a fighter named Fred Taylor in Hollywood.

As evidenced by the fact he’s the subject of an installment of this series, it should be obvious he had far more luck on the gridiron and in the ring than he ever did on the diamond. Although his statistics from his time in the NFL are a bit hazy due to some less-than-stellar record-keeping during that era as well as the fact that some statistics (such as sacks) weren’t even officially recognized yet, anecdotally it is said that Powell once sacked Bobby Layne (himself someone you may see in a future installment of this series) ten times in one game. To put that into perspective, the most sacks in a single game from an era where NFL record-keeping existed well enough where we can be sure is seven.

Here are the NFL statistics for Powell that we do know:

Defense & Fumbles Table
          Game Game Def Def Def Def Fumb Fumb Fumb Fumb  
Year Age Tm Pos No. G GS Int Yds TD Lng Fmb FR Yds TD Sfty
1952 20 SFO RDE 87 7 7                 1
1953 21 SFO LDE 87 12 10         1 1 0 0  
1955 23 SFO RDE 87 12 7 0 7 0 7 0 1 0 0  
1956 24 SFO RDE 87 12 11                  
1957 25 SFO RLB 87 12 8         0 1 3 0  
1960 28 OAK RDE 87 14 14                  
1961 29 OAK RDE 87 14 14                  
Care Care       83 71 0 7 0 7 1 3 3 0 1
5 yr 5 yr SFO     55 43 0 7 0 7 1 3 3 0 1
2 yr 2 yr OAK     28 28                  
Provided by Pro-Football-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 6/24/2021.

Perhaps Charlie Powell’s most interesting athletic career, however, came in the ring. In 39 career bouts, Powell went 25-11-3, with 17 of his victories coming by knockout.

He was, according to my research, a legitimate heavyweight fighter, not some sideshow coasting on his achievement in football. According to his obituary, he once was rated the fourth-best in the world by The Ring magazine. His brother Art and a promoter named Don Chagrin both say that he could have been even more successful if he had had better management and had focused entirely on boxing. In fact, he himself admitted it later in life.

Still, he had some great success. In 1959, he defeated the Cuban Nino Valdes, who at the time looked like a possible challenger to then-champion Floyd Patterson. A few years later, he would step into the ring against a young hotshot with a big mouth but the talent to back it up, a man then called Cassius Clay but later known as Muhammad Ali.

The Jan. 24, 1963 match-up in Pittsburgh was over quick. Clay declared before the fight that he’d beat Powell in three rounds, and, of course, he did just that, winning by KO. According to a newspaper account from the time, Clay declared himself the “greatest” and then went to badmouthing future opponents, including then-champion Sonny Liston, who he said he hoped to unseat by the next November and who he categorized as being neither as fast or as rough as Powell, who he complimented in his own Ali-like way:

“Powell was rough. They couldn’t call him a push-over. I was concentrating on three. The man was strong for two. He’s the roughest fighter I’ve met yet for three rounds.”

That wouldn’t be the end of Charlie Powell’s boxing career, however, as he would fight six more times after that, perhaps most notably a six-round loss against Floyd Patterson in 1964 at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in Puerto Rico. Hiram Bithorn, of course, is most notably used for the sport that Powell began his professional sports career in: baseball.

Powell died on Sept. 1, 2014 after a years-long battle with dementia. He was 82. Although his brother believed that his dementia was the result of his years on the gridiron and in the ring, he had never joined any of the major lawsuits against the NFL.

Blog Dealings: A preview of what’s to come

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Here’s a preview of what’s to come here at the Baseball Continuum:

  • By the end of this week (possibly as early as today), there will be a “Famous for Something Else” installment. This one-year minor league also played several years in the NFL, but perhaps his most notable sporting moment came in yet another sports. Keep an eye open to find out who I’m talking about.
  • This weekend, I expect to have another interesting link to share.
  • Next week, there will be a column and possibly some other things.
  • Also in the works: an Olympic baseball preview (will happen once rosters are revealed).
  • A Bizarre Baseball Culture piece and Breaking OOTP are also in development, but I’m not sure when they’ll be up.
  • Further down the line: “International Baseball Culture” and some musings on who will be on World Baseball Classic rosters whenever the next one comes around.

The rebirth of the Baseball Continuum

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Well, as you noticed, I’m back. Yes, the Baseball Continuum is back. I know that I’ve said that before, but this time it is for real. At least, to a certain degree of real.

So first I’ll be up front about it: I won’t be doing stuff every day. Maybe not even every week. But going forward, I want to have a steadier output of material. Sometimes it will be based on what’s going on in baseball, sometimes it’ll be about what I see online baseball-wise, sometimes it may have something to do with baseball history, and sometimes it might not be baseball-based at all.

And, of course, I’ll try to have some of my more “famous” (for lack of a better word) features like “Bizarre Baseball Culture” and “Breaking OOTP.” Only time will tell, however.

So, yes, the Baseball Continuum is back. So stick around.

Neat site to check out: “Threads of Our Game”

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Some of you may be familiar with the Dressed to the Nines uniform database run by the Hall of Fame. On it, you can look up what each team wore uniform-wise from 1900 to today.

But what if you wanted to know what teams looked like before 1900? Enter Threads of Our Game, a website run by SABR member Craig Brown that focuses on the first few decades of baseball. To make up for the fact that photography of those days was not as common and essentially never in color, the site uses research of newspaper accounts, contemporary drawings, and other sources to get an idea of what the uniforms of the era looked like.

What’s more, the site doesn’t just have the Major Leagues. In fact, it doesn’t just stop at professional teams in general. They also have semi-pro and amateur teams of the era. No team, seemingly, is too small for inclusion. Nor is no team too vile: among the teams with a uniform on digital display is that of the 1874 baseball team run by the Klu Klux Klan chapter of Oneida, N.Y. Somewhat surprisingly, the uniforms does not contain any white.

Among the interesting highlights of the page are polka-dotted ballcaps, the first ballcap with a graphic on it (an Oriole wing), the year that some teams had a different-colored uniform for each position on the field, and also some of examples of 19th-century teams from the proto-Negro Leagues.

Check it out.

With Negro Leagues now officially major, it’s time for Rochester to honor its major leaguers

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Late last year, Major League Baseball made it official: the Negro Leagues between 1920 and 1948 were and always have been major league level. Their exclusion from records before now had been the result of the very same racism that had forced their existence in the first place. The issue of incomplete statistics and other forms of record-keeping (for example, which games were official league games and which were one of the countless exhibitions that Negro League teams held) have been largely (although not completely) corrected through an extreme amount of research and fact-finding. MLB and most major baseball historians agree: there is no major reason to continue to exclude the Negro Leagues and the statistics of their players from the official history books of MLB.

For many baseball fans in the internet age, though, it can be argued that nothing is official until Baseball Reference says it is. Although not the official decision-maker of what baseball statistics are and are not valid, it might as well be, so when the folks there announced that the Negro League statistics would be integrated (for lack of a better word) with the site’s pre-existing statistics, it was a big deal.

Which brings me to my hometown of Rochester, N.Y. A good place to grow up depending on where you live in the area. Doesn’t deserve the reputation it has. For the purposes of this blog, what’s important though is that Rochester has one of the longest and most successful baseball histories in the country, outstripping even many major league cities. However, due to size and the proximity to other large cities it hadn’t had a Major League Baseball team since 1890’s American Association Broncos. The city had gone the entire 20th century without a MLB team.

Until now. Because, you see, in the waning days of the Negro Leagues, a member of the Negro National League played in Rochester. The New York Black Yankees were, of course, originally based in the New York City area. Founded in the early 30s and joining the NNL in 1936, they played in Paterson, N.J. or on Randalls Island when they weren’t barnstorming or playing away games. By 1948, with integration underway and finances taking a downward turn for many Negro League teams (especially in the New York City area), the Black Yankees headed upstate to Rochester, where they played the last year of their existence in Red Wing Stadium.

With MLB’s recent recognition of the Negro Leagues as major leagues, those 1948 New York Black Yankees are Rochester’s most recent Major League Baseball team. And it is time that Rochester also recognize them as such.

They were, admittedly, not very successful on the field, finishing 9-35 and coming in dead last in that year’s Negro National League standings. However, they still had some players who were considered good enough to represent the east in the Negro Leagues’ famed East-West All-Star Game. As the best players of Rochester’s last major league team, they deserve spots of honor at Frontier Field, perhaps on its Wall of Fame.

Those players are:

  • George Crowe, who hit .345 and led the team in HR and RBI. After integration, he would go on to spend time with three different franchises, playing over 700 games before finishing as a career .270 hitter. He was named to the 1958 All-Star Game when he was with the Cincinnati Reds. For a time, he held the MLB record for career pinch-hit home runs.
  • Robert Griffith was a two-way player. In his younger days, he’d often found himself in the top 10 of the pitching leaderboard for the NNL, but by 1948. he was 35-years-old and his best days were behind him. He was still the Black Yankees’ best pitcher, though, finishing with a 3-1 record and 4.33 ERA while throwing the team’s only shutout on the year. At the plate, he was less successful, although he still had a HR in his limited action.
  • Finally, there was Marvin Barker, an infielder who was also the team’s manager who occasionally would also fill in on the pitcher’s mound. Like Griffith, Barker’s best days were behind him, although he still hit a respectable .293 (third-best on the team) and had an OPS of .734 (second only to Crowe).

This coming Saturday, the Red Wings will hold their annual Negro Leagues tribute. They will be wearing the uniforms of the Rochester American Giants, a team that played in the minor leagues of the Negro Leagues. Perhaps, though, they should be playing in the uniforms of the 1948 Black Yankees. And perhaps, in years ahead, the best players of Rochester’s last Major League Baseball team can have a place of honor somewhere in the stadium.

Welcome to MLB’s freak-show season! Now buckle up.

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Against all odds and perhaps much common sense, the Major League Baseball season starts tonight. There have been odd MLB seasons before, but this one will take the cake.

After all, while there have been times where it wasn’t clear in spring training where a team would be playing, never in modern times has a team been homeless on opening day, as the Toronto Blue Jays (the “RefuJays”) are now. Plans to play in Pittsburgh went bust. The next plan, in Baltimore, is still in flux and would have to pass inspection from local and state authorities.

If it doesn’t, it is likely that that the Blue Jays are playing in a AAA stadium Buffalo. Sahlen Field in Buffalo is likely the most MLB-ready minor league stadium, certainly on the East Coast. It was built as an effort to lure an expansion team in the late 80s and early 90s. However, that team never came, so the facilities have never been upgraded to modern MLB standards. Modifications would have to be made.

If that doesn’t work… who knows? Perhaps they’ll go to Dunedin in COVID-infested Florida. Or maybe, in an unthinkable situation, they’ll have to be a travel team, playing all games on the road. While there have been teams like the Road Warriors and Samurai Bears in independent leagues, there hasn’t been a true travel team in MLB since the 1899 Cleveland Spiders became a road team later in the season simply because they sucked so much and drew flies (which, of course, makes it hard for a spider to eat).

Even putting aside the Jays, though, this is still going to be a strange season. After all, it turns out that we still might see enlarged playoffs. Yes, we are just hours from starting and we don’t even know how the playoffs will work yet.

And then, well, there’s everything else.

So, in closing, the 2020 MLB season is about to finally beginning. It’s going to be freaky. Buckle up.

 

There’s no way this freak-show works, but might as well enjoy it

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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.

 

On this whole mess, and why it makes expansion inevitable

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It has not been a good year for Major League Baseball. To be fair, it has not been a good year for human civilization in general, but even before the coronavirus crisis and the fallout from the George Floyd incident, baseball was having a rough year. Now it seems trivial, but earlier this year the biggest issue facing baseball was arguably that they’d let a team that was running the biggest sign-stealing operation in decades off with a relative slap on the wrist.

Remember that? Those were, amazingly, now the good old days. Now? Well, because of the usual toxic mix that comes with billionaires and millionaires fighting over money, there’s a chance that no season will take place, or will be replaced by some sort of 48-game glorified miniseason.

(An aside: Why is it that inevitably the players get blamed? The owners have way more money and usually are far more ruthless and cruel in these negotiations than the players.)

While we cannot guess whether a 48-game season would be considered a “better than nothing” hunger-crop meal enough to satisfy the public, a full-on cancellation would be the biggest blow to baseball’s intangible stature since at least the 1994 strike and possibly even the 1919 Black Sox scandal. Given that baseball’s current intangible stature in much of the country outside of the die-hard fans can best be described as “Present-day episodes of The Simpsons where plenty of people still watch and even more are glad they are on but not as many people tune in unless if something big or unusual happens,” that would be… bad.

Oh, and unlike those previous apocalypses (apocalypsii?), there is no Babe Ruth, Cal Ripken or 1998 HR race walking through that door to save the day.

Now, there is an argument still to be made that it is not as bleak as it looks. As labor lawyer and Baseball Prospectus contributor Eugene Freedman notes on his Twitter feed, labor negotiations are an entirely different beast from the negotiations (player contracts, trades, etc.) that sportswriters have to usually cover, and so the framing often is prone to hyperbolic statements and leaked comments that make it seem far more hopeless than it actually is. There is some truth to this: I can vaguely remember 2002, where it looked like a work-stoppage was all-but-guaranteed. Similar to now, there were comments about how poorly baseball would look by stopping play in a national crisis (in that case the early years of the War on Terror), and yet it seemed both sides seemed headed towards a cliff.  Yet, at the last minute, a deal was struck, peace was ensured, and the games went on. It is entirely possible such an occurrence will repeat in 2020.

Except, of course, there is another lingering issue: the current collective bargaining agreement expires after 2021, so even if everything comes out of this current crisis hunky-dory, we get to do this all over again at the end of next season.

So, what does this all mean? It means, oddly enough, that we’re going to see more Major League Baseball, because it makes expansion inevitable. It may be in a previous MLB city like Montreal, or a new one like Portland or Charlotte. It could even be in a new country entirely like Monterrey, Mexico. Regardless of where the new teams go or what form the divisions move to as a result of it, though, it will happen. Here’s why:

  1. Immediate money. Of course! History has shown in the past that one of the easiest ways for baseball owners to get some quick cash is to expand. It’s also one of the quickest way for the union to make money, as more teams means more roster spots and thus more union members. It’s not a new phenomena. The 1993 expansion that brought in the Marlins and Rockies was partly a way for the owners to raise money to pay collusion debt. Although the 1997 expansion wasn’t directly a result of trying to recoup money from the ’94 strike and the after-effects (the expansion committee had been formed before the ’94 season even began), it certainly didn’t hurt. Even most of the earlier expansions had roots that weren’t so much benevolence as business interest: the first expansions that brought in teams like the Angels, Senators (now Rangers), Mets and Colt .45s (now Astros) were done as a way to head-off threats to create a third major league.
  2. Minor Leagues. The other big pre-coronavirus crisis that baseball was facing was the plan to contract the minor leagues. The coronavirus essentially knocked out the political and financial leverage that MiLB had to effectively fight it, and it is now all-but-inevitable. Major League Baseball expansion, however, would also mean minor league expansion, which MLB could use as a public relations olive-branch to ensure that some of the places that lose their MiLB teams will only be without affiliated baseball for a few years.
  3. Increased attendance/revenue. More teams means more games which means more fans means more revenue. Duh. Given that MLB will definitely see a drop in attendance in the coming years both because of the uncertainty of when/if a coronavirus vaccine will be available as well as disgust from this whole mess, the increase that would come from expansion would be in the owners and players interest.
  4. Public relations in general. Oh, there was less baseball? Now there’s more baseball, and in more cities that MLB had previously.

Now, perhaps everything ends up alright. Even then, though, the fact is that MLB has lost a lot of revenue this year, and the owners will want to make it all up.

In other words: expansion is coming. Expect it.

 

 

Figuring out Arizona Major League Baseball (and how it is doomed)

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On Monday, it came out that Major League Baseball is considering a radical if not completely insane idea to make the 2020 season happen in this age of coronavirus: put everybody needed for the season in Phoenix, separated from as many non-baseball people as possible, and start the season there in empty stadiums normally reserved for the Diamondbacks, spring training, and perhaps other teams (presumably referring to Arizona State University and Grand Canyon University, the two Division I schools in Phoenix). Players, coaches, training staff, other personnel, and perhaps even families would be lodged in spring training facilities or bought-out hotels. Games would be played in the available stadiums, perhaps as many as three a day depending on scheduling.

It is, of course, a completely insane idea. Craig Calcaterra of HardballTalk is right in calling it pure madness. There are so many things that could go horribly wrong with it. Perhaps not surprisingly, MLB is already stressing that it is only being considered and is in no way decided upon.

But, what the hell, let’s say that it actually does happen despite everything. How are they going to lay down the league?

It stands to reason that the usual Cactus League teams would keep their usual spring training facilities as their home bases, save for the Diamondbacks themselves, who would use Chase Field. It would also stand to reason that to make the “tripleheader of games” idea possible, they’d want to spread out the time zones of the “home” teams so that a East Coast team could still have most of their home games at a reasonable hour back in the home cities.

So, going through the available stadiums in Phoenix, I’ve assigned hypothetical places for teams. I used a rule of thumb as assuming that each site (with the exception of Chase Field) could ‘handle’ the number of MLB teams it usually does plus one. Teams in bold are the ordinary residents of those places during the spring.

Chase Field (3): Arizona Diamondbacks (are usually at Salt River during spring), St. Louis Cardinals, New York Yankees

Salt River Fields at Talking Stick (3): Colorado Rockies, Minnesota Twins, Atlanta Braves

Sloan Park (2): Chicago Cubs, Boston Red Sox

Camelback Ranch (3): Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago White Sox, New York Mets

Goodyear Ballpark (3): Cleveland Indians, Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates

Surprise Stadium (3): Texas Rangers, Kansas City Royals, Toronto Blue Jays

Tempe Diablo Stadium (2): Los Angeles Angels, Tampa Bay Rays

American Family Fields of Phoenix (2): Milwaukee Brewers, Miami Marlins

Peoria Sports Complex (3): San Diego Padres, Seattle Mariners, Baltimore Orioles

Hohokam Stadium (2): Oakland Athletics, Philadelphia Phillies

Scottsdale Stadium (2): San Francisco Giants, Washington Nationals

Phoenix Municipal Stadium (Arizona State): Houston Astros/Overflow

Brazell Field at GCU Ballpark (Grand Canyon University): Detroit Tigers/Overflow

 

You’ll notice that I have the two Division I college stadiums set as “overflow”. That would mean that they’d also serve as back-up locations in case a stadium is too overbooked for a day. Other stadiums would also act as overflows as necessary, but since the college stadiums would only have one assigned team they’d be the first ones used.

Also, it should be noted that I’d imagine that Chase Field would end up being a venue for all the teams (for reasons I’ll get to later), but for the sake of this article I’m going with the three teams I have assigned.

So, let’s just say that somehow this DOES happen. What would a hypothetical “opening day” look like? Just for fun, I’ve randomly picked out June 6th, a Saturday, and assumed that MLB just picks up the schedule where it was and figures out the rest later on.

The schedule for that day (Eastern Time/Mountain Time) could look something like this:

2 p.m. (11 a.m.) Cardinals at Pirates at (overflow) Chase Field

5 p.m. (2 p.m.) Tigers at White Sox at Camelback Ranch

Approx. 7 p.m. (4 p.m.) Rays at Yankees at Chase Field

7 p.m. (4 p.m.). Brewers at Red Sox at Sloan Park

7 p.m. (4 p.m.) Mariners at Marlins at American Family Fields of Phoenix

7 p.m. (4 p.m.) Phillies at Braves at Talking Stick

7 p.m. (4 p.m.) Rangers at Blue Jays at (overflow) Brazell Field at GCU Ballpark

7 p.m. (4 p.m.) Astros at Orioles at Peoria Sports Complex

7 p.m. (4 p.m.) Mets at Nationals at Scottsdale Stadium

8 p.m. (5 p.m.) Angels at Twins at (overflow) Phoenix Municipal Stadium

8 p.m. (5 p.m.) Indians at Royals at Surprise Stadium

8 p.m. (5 p.m.) Cubs at Reds at Goodyear Ballpark

Approx. 10 p.m. (7 p.m.) Rockies at Dodgers at Camelback Ranch

10 p.m. (7 p.m.) Giants at Athletics at Hohokam Stadium

Approx. 11:30 p.m. (8:30 p.m.) Padres at Diamondbacks at Chase Field

…

So, looking at this schedule, you are probably going like: “Okay, this will be awkward, but it’s do-able!”

Well, yes, in theory. Except if it were to happen, it wouldn’t be theoretical any more. It’d be real, and that means a few VERY big issues.

Sure, there are the obvious ones that deal with logistical and moral dilemma: whether players would be willing to leave their families, what would happen if somebody tested positive for COVID-19, who and how everyone would be isolated, how teams would handle filling roster spots after injuries (presumably some type of slimmed down AAA team acting as a taxi squad), whether it is morally right to be doing this at all given that people are dying out there, the list goes on. Even if we were to magically wave a wand and make all those other issues disappear, there is one issue that makes the plan unworkable.

What I’m talking about here is a more physical one. As Elliot Gould’s character of Reuben says in Ocean’s Eleven, even if you get past all of the casino’s security, rob it, and get out of the front door… you’re still in the middle of the desert!

And, make no mistake, Phoenix is a goddamn desert. Take this opening day that theoretically is June 6. On June 6, 2019, the high temperature in Phoenix was 103 degrees. The low was 77 degrees. If you were to bring this to 2020, it would mean every game save for the Chase Field games, the two outdoor 10 P.M. games “hosted” by West Coast teams, and possibly the 8 p.m. local games would be taking place at least partly in heat that could be charitably described as “the devil’s jock-strap.” Never mind the coronavirus, players would be in danger of dying from heatstroke!

(This, by the way, is why I imagine that Chase Field would end up being a rotating venue without a “home” team, as rotating it would allow every team at least the occasional chance of air-conditioned relief.)

The obvious way, of course, to get around this is to play only night games aside from  some games in Chase Field. However, that means games starting late on the East Coast, which wouldn’t do well with TV, which without fans is basically the only way the owners are supposed to make money and pay salaries. In other words: that ain’t happening.

Now, there could be a way around this, but it’d require them to take the MLB quarantine bubble to somewhere else.

Greater Los Angeles, for example, is the site of two MLB stadiums (three if you want to go full freaky and frankenstein the LA Coliseum again), 10 Division I baseball programs, the MLB Urban Youth Academy, and a few other high-quality amateur or semi-pro fields. What’s more, the weather in LA is usually in the 70s during that time!

Of course, the thing is that Greater Los Angeles is a lot bigger than Phoenix,  has (so far) been hit harder by COVID-19 than Phoenix, has worse traffic, doesn’t have the spring training facilities that can used for conditioning, housing, etc.

Okay, then how about the Gulf Coast of Florida? After all, that is also spring training territory. While using the entire Grapefruit League wouldn’t make sense given that the coasts of Florida are three hours away from each other, putting it just on the western side would put 10 spring facilities as well as Tropicana Field all within at most two hours from each other. Throw in Al Lang Stadium (a former spring training facility now partly converted for use by Tampa’s soccer team but which still seems to have enough of a diamond shape to be used for baseball with some work), Jack Russell Stadium (the former Phillies spring home that is still well-maintained and even was used by the Dunedin Blue Jays in 2019 due to renovations in Dunedin), Henley Field (a classic old ballpark now used for D2 baseball which was once used by the Tigers and which has occasionally been taken over by them again during renovations at their usual spring place), Chain of Lakes Park in Winter Haven (former Indians training site), and the D1 ballfields at USF and FGCU and you have 17 possible places for games- even more than Arizona!

Even if you were to cut it down to just the Tampa Bay area itself, you’d get Tropicana Field plus five-to-seven spring training facilities (depending on whether you’d count Bradenton and Sarasota as the Tampa Bay area). Add in USF and the former spring facilities and you’d have 11-to-13 possible places, or roughly around the number that Phoenix has.

So what’s the issue with Tampa? For one thing, some of those old ballparks I included in the count aren’t used for spring games anymore for a reason. Having everyone on eastern time would mean that west coast  “home” games would have to start around 10 p.m. local, which may not work depending on certain ordinances in Florida.

Another reason? Rain. That’s probably the biggest issue with Tampa (besides all the other issues about holding this enterprise in the first place). Every year during spring training, there’s a day or two (or three) where seemingly every Grapefruit League game gets rained out. Well, guess what, it rains more in the summer in the Tampa area than it does in the spring.

So… what does all this mean?

It means, basically, that baseball is stuck with lots of bad choices. Even if they somehow miraculously get everything else in order (and I doubt they will) and if it is deemed appropriate to move forward (which is highly up in the air), the fact is that holding essentially an entire season in one city is tough to do while still making it feasible financially and physically to do so. So ultimately, the question is… how far are Major League Baseball and its players willing to go to have a 2020 season of any sort of meaningful length?

I suspect that, as the crisis continues, we’ll sooner or later get the answer.

Cancel (almost) Everything

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On Tuesday, I said that Opening Day will not take place. At the time, it was mostly figurative, at least in America, and it seemed that while the big importance of Opening Day (capitalized) wouldn’t take place it seemed likely that the season would still start on time, albeit in a more depressing manner than usual thanks to the coronavirus.

Now, though, I think that we won’t even be seeing an opening day (not capitalized) as scheduled, much less an Opening Day. In fact, I think it would be malpractice to have it.

This realization came last night. I’m not sure when, but it was probably when a NBA game inexplicably postponed at the last second, a player tested positive for COVID19, and the entire season was suspended all in the space of what felt like a half-hour. Oh, and Tom Hanks announced he tested positive as well.

The average NBA arena holds between 15 and 20 thousand fans. Even the smallest MLB stadiums (Tropicana Field with tarps up, for example) holds thousands more people. Public Health experts in cities seem to differ on what level of crowd is too big, but even the largest estimates are around 1,000 people, or WAY WAY less than any major league stadium. Even a fan-less game may break the level of a safe gathering, given the amount of support staff, journalists, and security.

Yes, it is true that most COVID19 cases are minor, and even those in dangerous categories are more likely to live than not. But think of it this way: you are also more likely to get Christian Yelich out more often than not, but nobody would want to give him the opportunity to bat in the ninth against them.

So what I’m saying is: shut it down. Shut it all down. Unless it is either something  something essential or something that can be done entirely over television or the internet without any large amount of human interaction, it can wait.

It is said that baseball is life. That is true, but you also need life to have baseball, so there is no sense in putting anyone’s life at risk.

So shut it down. Cancel everything, and perhaps we can try again in a month or two.