A week ago, the United States 2020 Major League Baseball season got under way. It had been shortened by the COVID-19 pandemic. A Summer training camp began on July 1. Each team will play 60 regular season games, which began on July 23 with the defending Champions, the Washington Nationals facing the New York Yankees, and regular season is scheduled to end on September 27. An expanded 16-team postseason tournament is then scheduled to begin on September 29. The World Series is set to begin on October 23, and a potential Game 7 would be played on Halloween. The full 162-game regular season was originally scheduled to begin on March 26. Spring Training and then the season was postponed, for the first time since the 2001 season, when the season was paused for over a week after the September 11 attacks. On July 18, the Canadian federal government denied the Toronto Blue Jays permission to play their home games at their home stadium, so the Blue Jays will play in Buffalo, New York. It has been a good return to baseball, but this week saw the Florida Marlins' season suspended because many of their players and staff came down with the Coronavirus. This is perhaps not surprising, since the team, sheltering together, was also eating all their meals together, taking the team bus together, sharing the locker room, in short, not practicing social distancing at all. Baseball is, though, the socially distant game par excellence. So, if the problem is handled off the field, play should pose no problem among the teams. The schedule greatly differs from the normal 160+ game schedule. In an effort to reduce travel, each team will play only nine opponents during the regular season instead of the usual 18+. Teams are scheduled to play 10 games against each of their four division opponents. The remaining 20 games of the 60-game schedule are inter-league contests. These inter-league games will be centralized among the East, Central, and West divisions. At 60 games, this will be the shortest regular season since 1878. The Field of Dreams game will be played in Dyersville, Iowa, as scheduled, on August 13. Because of travel restrictions, the Yankees will not come, but instead the Chicago White Sox will play the St. Louis Cardinals. The temptation is great, but it is still premature, after just three or four games per team, to comment on standings... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "omnisport" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/omnisport/738398969.6086385.1595985368511%40mail.yahoo.com.
