The Good Press — Issue #15: Safe or Out
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Safe or Out
There are few things as American as baseball games.
Baseball often makes me nostalgic about my childhood, and I’ve learned so many life lessons through the prism of baseball, as I’ve written about before.
Last Thursday, Major League Baseball returned to play in the United States.
Within 72 hours, the season was in jeopardy, after an (inevitable) outbreak.
Unfortunately, not even America’s pastime is immune from America’s botched pandemic response, as Yahoo’s Hannah Keyser warned weeks ago.
I wasn’t confident that baseball and other sports would be able to safely return to play as intended. We often love it when sports and entertainment are much-needed distractions from harsh realities of the world. But there’s no ignoring COVID-19. MLB has tried dressing things up to distract from the unusual circumstances, such as crowd noise being played off soundboards, and announcers and official scorers working remotely rather than on-site.
But unlike the basketball and soccer leagues, Major League Baseball is trying to play their pandemic-affected season with regular travel; each team playing in their respective home market, rather than in a single-city “bubble” format.
Before the season even started, the Toronto Blue Jays were denied permission by the Canadian federal government to host games in Toronto.
Considering the first outbreak to sweep through the sport happened within three days of the season beginning, it looks like Canada made a wise move.
With their home stadium unavailable, the Blue Jays tried to reach a deal to host games in Pittsburgh, at the home stadium of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Health Department of Pennsylvania said no and sent those plans overboard.
In a third and last-ditch attempt to secure a major league-caliber ballpark, this time in Baltimore, the Blue Jays officially struck out in that endeavor. Instead, the now-nomadic Blue Jays will have to play home games in Buffalo, at a minor league stadium that requires weeks of preparations to be viable.
The Jays’ first “home” game is scheduled for tonight, July 29. Because of the logistical difficulties of scrambling to find a temporary home, the team will be forced to play in Washington tonight, in the home stadium of their opponent. Buffalo should be ready in mid-August, but it may end up being a moot point.
In baseball, you’re either safe or you’re out.
You can never be both at once. There is no Schrödinger’s baserunner.
Reaching first base safely, and subsequently reaching second base, third base, then home, is the name of the game, quite literally. You have to be safe the entire way or you’re out, and it’s more difficult to be safe than to be out.
A baserunner can try to reach the next base safely, make it to the base safely, then lose his or her balance, slip off the base for just a moment, and be tagged out. It can happen in an instant: you’re safe… and then suddenly you’re out.
Safe or out. Canada preferred to err towards safe, so the Blue Jays are out.
As the pandemic has taught us many times in so many ways this year, you can’t take “safe” for granted. Safety, security, and health are things that are worth stopping to appreciate more, especially in these interesting times.
Within the first 72 hours of playing ball, several Miami Marlins players tested positive. Each day, as more testing results come in, more and more positives.
Already, the outbreak within the Marlins organization has affected their own games, and those of the Philadelphia Phillies, the Baltimore Orioles, and the New York Yankees. By the time this issue is hitting your inbox, those four teams have had multiple games postponed or canceled out of precaution.
Ask yourself this. If the highly-motivated baseball league executives and others associated with the sport’s economic muscle can’t guarantee reasonable safety assurances, how will underfunded school districts fare?
The bottom line is that, no matter how stir-crazy we get here in the United States, no matter how much we want to return to normalcy, open schools, go back to our favorite restaurants and bars, have all those group gatherings we’ve missed this spring and summer, the pandemic’s effects are worse now than it was back at the onset. That is a fact and an inexcusable one at that.
Unfortunately, America is a lot closer to necessitating more lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders in many parts of the country than we are to returning to our pre-pandemic way of life. The virus is a lot more patient than we are.
That is the grim reality of a nation that has bungled its pandemic response about as poorly as any nation on Earth. As the very thoughtful Washington Nationals relief pitcher Sean Doolittle remarked astutely several weeks ago, “sports are like the reward of a functioning society,” and that remains true.
We all want to be out there living our lives free again. Yet in many of the cities that are hosting baseball games, the virus is raging like never before.
Playing baseball games doesn’t just affect the players risking their safety to be out there, but also the communities hosting those games. The visiting teams who travel to each city are staying in hotels that are open to the public. 17 members of the Miami Marlins tested positive as of Tuesday afternoon, and the team was in Philadelphia, in a hotel full of everyday Philadelphians.
Even with all of the resources of Major League Baseball and their incredible incentives to do everything possible to keep the virus from affecting the safety of their players and the integrity of the sport, the virus is still winning.
I don’t and can’t feel confident about the safety of hundreds of people traveling by plane a couple of times a week to go play baseball games. Age and physical fitness don’t matter. One player, 27-year-old Eduardo Rodriguez of the Boston Red Sox, has been unable to return to the field after recovering from COVID-19 because he has post-COVID complications with his heart.
At this point, in baseball and life, it seems that the best place to be is safe at home. If you can’t reasonably expect to be safe, why let yourself be at risk of being out? I just hope that baseball doesn’t learn a tragic lesson the hard way.
We’ll see what happens in the coming days and weeks. I was skeptical about the bubble format sports too, and so far, they seem to be going off without major issues. Hopefully, that remains the case, with the NBA about to tip-off tomorrow, in one of the grandest social experiments I can ever remember.
Recommendations
I promised I’d publish another recipe in this section soon, and I want to make good on that this week. Previous recipes can be found in Issue #9 (Romanian salată de vinete), Issue #8 (banana bread), and Issue #5 (chocolate soda cake).
Today I want to share a hearty, vegan-friendly dinner recipe: chana masala.
Originating from India, chana masala is a chickpea-based dish that can be made spicy or not-so-spicy, depending on your preferences. The original recipe I found online can be found here, but this is my often-modified version that I slow cook in my Crock-Pot. It’s become one of my go-to staples.
Here’s my not-spicy slow cooker chana masala recipe that I hope you’ll enjoy:
Jon’s Slow Cooker One-Pot Vegan Chana Masala
Ingredients:
- 2 to 3 cans of chickpeas (15 oz cans, drained)
- 1 to 2 cups of vegetable broth (enough to cover the chickpeas, roughly)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 large onion, finely chopped
- 4 cloves worth of minced garlic
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1 tablespoon of Golden Milk, a turmeric-based spice blend (alternatively, 1 tablespoon of garam masala seasoning, or simply 1 teaspoon of turmeric if you don’t have golden milk or garam masala)
- 1 or 2 bay leaves
- 1 can of tomato sauce of choice (25 oz or so)
- 3/4 lb of farro (my grain of choice, excellent for absorbing excess broth)
Instructions:
- Put all ingredients except for farro and tomato sauce in the Crock-Pot
- Set Crock-Pot to Slow Cook mode on low temperature for 6 hours
- Let it sit and stir every now and then to ensure smooth, even cook
- When the timer gets to about 60 to 75 minutes remaining, add all of the farro to the pot, which should absorb much of the remaining broth
- When the broth is fully absorbed, add tomato sauce to the Crock-Pot
- Extra tomato sauce or a small amount of tomato paste can be added to thicken the sauce if preferred, even after the cook is complete
- Serve and enjoy!
Parting Thoughts
Dave Grohl, best known as a musician (Nirvana, Foo Fighters) has also been moonlighting as a contributing author to The Atlantic. Recently, the fellow son of a public school teacher wrote about why our teachers deserve better.
One of the interesting side effects of the pandemic is that it has brought to light a lot of societal issues that have otherwise been often left in the dark. Teachers do not get the respect they deserve for the duties required of them. It’s why I wrote recently about how irresponsible it is to expect many schools around the country to open up this fall without the virus being under control.
It’s hard to see it from where we stand now, but eventually, however long from now, the pandemic will be a thing of the past. When that happens, I hope people remember and appreciate the selfless, hard work that our teachers have done during the pandemic, and have been doing all along.
Hopefully, The Good Press can outlast the coronavirus. We’re 15 issues in, and I’m having so much fun jotting down my thoughts each week, and I’ll always be grateful that I have regular readers and subscribers. Back in the beginning, I hoped that The Good Press could grow into its own community. I think that it has, and it’s because all of you continue to read each week.
So here’s to the first 15 issues, and here’s to many more issues to come.
Keep your head up, be mindful, stay safe out there, and keep pressing on.
-Jon
