MLB's New Rules for Coronavirus

or facing each other when eating or drinking together. Bob Nightingale, MLB columnist at USA Today Sports, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Bob, I wanted to check back in on the baseball season so far. They're doing a shortened sixty game season and it started off very rough. First off that Miami Marlins had an outbreak of COVID nineteen. Then it was a St. Louis Cardinals that also had an outbreak. I think it was thirty three members total

between both teams that had gotten it. And what happened after that, there was games that were postponed, and really the whole season because it happened in the beginning, was called into question. MLB has now put out a memo with some new protocols in place, and they seem pretty strict, and they're saying that if people are not in compliance, they could get suspended for the rest of the season. There's a lot of stuff going on, so Bob help us walk through it. Yeah, very strict protocols. I mean

some guys are joking like that. I feel like I'm in prison or Russia or something. But yeah, you have to wear a face mask at all times except for when you're in your own hotel room. In on the field, umpires are wearing it. But even in the clubhouse dug out, you're wearing it. They don't want you to dug out if you're not playing again. The stands if you want to have a bite to eat, eating stands if you can, if not. If you eat, don't talk at the same time.

And when you're in the hotel and you're going stretch your room, no stopping off of the hotel bar, no restaurant, nothing like that. There's many guys watching you. There's gonna be a guy uh in each clubhouse, and two guys at the team hotel are kind of seeing the lobby there for sixteen hours a day. It almost kind of

this modified NBA bubble if you will where there. Instead of actually going and sequestering in a place throughout the season, they're actually just gonna be watching you like hawks part of it. You know, you mentioned the eating. If they're eating in the clubhouse or wherever they're at, they say, don't talk while you're eating and don't even face each other. And for these guys that are teammates, they've been together

for a long time. That's part of the camaraderie. And you know, you're like trying to isolate them as much as possible. That's gonna be a tough one. I think that's why they have the monitors there. Two security agents at the hotel and one monitor in the in each clubhouse. So yeah, again used to for sure, but I think baseball says, hey, if you guys want to get to this season, this is the only way to do it.

If you don't follow this, it's not gonna work. Like you said, we already saw the Marlins and the Cardinals where that was almost a case where you know, season was almost shut down just because of what happened there. The MLB did send out a memo about all of these new protocols, and they did address what happened to the Marlin and the Cardinals and why they postponed the games and kind of what would happen in the future

if there was other outbreaks. What did they say about that, Yeah, just they thought they were you know, in hindsight, they should not have let the Marlins play that game against the Phillies. They learned that Hey, even though you're in the same field, one staff member got sick and nobody else did, so maybe they should have allowed them to play. But yeah, just being very very cautious with those teams. And there's another outbreak like that, it's gonna shut down,

ah that team for another week again. But yeah, better be safe than sorry sort of thing. But they probably shouldn't let the Phillies play in hindsight as well. For them, I think, you know, it was all part of the contact tracing. They mentioned that they needed to make sure that that process was complete, and I guess it was happening a little too fast for them where they had to pump the brakes just because they hadn't maybe finished

all the investigation there. What do we know so far about how members of the Marlins team possibly got it or even the Cardinals. I heard rumors that some of the Cardinals went to U a casino and maybe where they got it. What do we know about that? Well, I think in the Marlins case, it was just simply violating protocol being careless, as Derek Jeter said, where a few guys went out at least two players and not

three players went out. One guy is when the Atlanta Braves guy's house, a former teammate, someone went up for coffee and clothes shopping that sort of thing, which you can't do. In the Cardinals case, we still don't know. It looks like it happened in St. Louis at corn of the Cardinals. They be able to deny anything to do with the casino, So it was just from an outside person and it was a family member. Who knows. But that's how that's spread. But both those things spread wildly.

Just on the team plane, Like if you haven't infected guy in the plane, everybody's bringing that same air. So that's where I can get dangerous. What are they gonna do as far as monitoring the teams when they're not at the clubhouse, you know, when they're at home, things like that, because those are part of the new protocols too. You can't go to any bars, lounges, malls, places where

there's large groups. I'm sure they're not gonna have monitors following them out side of the clubhouse and things like that in hotels, but it's just gonna be personal responsibility at that point, it seems absolutely. I mean, you're kind of at the mercy of the weakest link there. If one guy goes out, it can work for anybody. So no, you're actually right. Yeah, you can't follow a guy home and no one's hit me sitting outside of guy's house

monitoring it. But they will monitor very closely when those teams are on the road. With such a short season, this has been my biggest curiosity. How does the scheduling work when they have to reschedule these games and postpone things and they got to try to catch up later. How does it happened at least with these first few games they got postponed. Well, they're some going to try to get most of them in. I think they'll let them get at least fifty five in. That's a minimum,

I think. But like the St. Louis Cardinals they missed a hig games. There's already a ten of schedule to make them all up the same. Maybe true at the Marlins, but you know, worst comes to worse. You know, you play fifty five games and not sixty, and then you go by winning percentage, you know, sort of thing like maybe you won't have the same type of criteria as always, but go by winning percent and if the schedules are uneven,

just like it happened nine anywhile with the players strike. Well, I mean it's interesting now that MLB has these new protocols and threatening to suspend players and staff if they're in violation. I mean, I hope they can get it together and there's no more feature infections because people want to have this escape the sports, you know, watching and things that they love when uh, you know, things are

so tough all around. So hopefully they get it in order and nothing else get happens as far as the baseball season goes that way. Bob Nightingale, MLB columnists at USA Today Sports, thank you very much for joining us. Sure my buzzer, thank you. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget the effort. Today's big news stories. You can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, so follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast