Harry Potter famously wore a cloak of invisibility; people in sports infamously wear a cloak of invincibility.
People who play sports or who are involved with sports (or even simply spectate sports) put on this cloak of invincibility and, suddenly, it keeps their beloved teams and players immune from the problems of the regular, real world. We're sports! We'll get through it! We're star athletes! We're important!
Even sports journalists got a little cocky, just assuming that Major League Baseball knew what it was doing. Sure, yeah, it was possible (if not likely) that some MLB players would test positive for COVID-19 during this imperfect setup of baseball teams traveling all around the dang country.
But we were reassured with optimism. Major League Baseball has a taxi squad for this very reason, to supplant the big club with reinforcements if a ballplayer goes down. We brushed everything off _ oh, it'll all take care of itself _ until ... 17 Miami Marlins players and employees tested positive. Then it's like _ um, this is the biggest story ever, how did we possibly get to this point?
Accountability is tough when you're wearing a cloak of invincibility. Just ask the Marlins players who voted via text to play on Sunday after teammates already tested positive. Or ask Derek Jeter or Don Mattingly, two former New York Yankee captains who didn't lead the Marlins with the same esteem this past weekend (though another team, Washington, showed some accountability by voting to not travel to Miami this weekend).
Suddenly, people in sports are looking down at these cloaks and are wondering just how effective they are. And questions start getting thrown around: Will baseball be stopped? Can the league just eliminate the Marlins and move on with the season? What would we be saying if this had happened to a more talented team in a stronger market: the Yankees, the Dodgers, even the Cardinals? What if the Marlins passed it on to a team that fits that bill? Oh, and what if a Marlin actually gets deathly sick from this?
Much of America is trying to play its fun games. Other people in the country are trying to just keep the country afloat during this crisis. And wait, what? We're going to try to play FOOTBALL in the fall? And not in a bubble? A baseball team spread the virus pretty quickly (frighteningly quickly). Imagine a football team that is constantly in contact.
"Anything that brings large groups of adults close together, without the ability to have everyone in masks, is likely to result in transmission of COVID-19," Dr. Hilary Babcock, an infectious disease specialist at BJC HealthCare and Washington University School of Medicine, said in an email. "This applies to football, basketball, hockey and more. Best bet for sports? Tennis."
And as we know, right now, today anyway, the National Basketball Association has a sturdy bubble. Same with the National Hockey League Let's do this hockey. We're all excited. But, as Dr. Jason Newland, Infectious Disease Specialist at St. Louis Children's Hospital, said in an email: "The bubbles being created are hoping to keep everyone healthy but if one infected person gets into the bubble you will likely see some spread and therefore the bubble burst."
