Hyde: If Marlins can’t make it through a weekend, can baseball (or football) last this season? | Commentary

Well, that didn’t take long, did it? Three games. One weekend. The sports equivalent of microwaving popcorn.

That’s how long it took for the coronavirus to knock out the Marlins Marlins, the pandemic to overwhelm baseball, the overarching problem of playing sports in unhealthy times to reality-slap America with a story everyone the games feared.

“Everything’s being discussed right now,‘’ a league source said Monday morning.

Philadelphia, the Marlins’weekend opponent, also reportedly might cancel its Monday game the New York Yankees. Precautionary or due to Phillies’ tests? Buckle up.

This is either a cautionary tale for all other sports to take heed or it’s the first in what will become a growing list of teams — and full leagues — overrun by the virus. It brings into question if sports can go on at all against the coronavirus. And how?

Even as the Marlins were stuck in Philadelphia on Monday morning, Miami Dolphins players started reporting to training camp with similar ideas of shared, if socially separated locker-room spaces, and hopes to carry on with a measure of normalness.

Can they? Will they? Were the Marlins the result of one or two players breaking safety protocol? Evidence that teams in a coronavirus-rich area like South Florida can’t stay healthy? The first in line of teams and sports leagues to be wrecked?

So many questions. And, as usual with this virus, not enough answers. Not yet. Pro basketball and pro hockey leagues have gone a different, safer and more costly route. They put teams in a central “bubble” from the larger community. All play will happen inside those bubbles. Players won’t be allowed to leave and have contact with the larger world.

Will it work? Stay tuned, as they start play this week. Major League Soccer also played in a bubble earlier this month in an Orlando tournament. It announced Monday that all 884 players tested negative for the virus.

Is it as simple as bubble or no bubble? Baseball didn’t want a bubble because it wanted local television money. Plain and simple. It rolled the dice of health for dollars and the early returns aren’t good.

Another question: Should sports leagues be consuming thousands of daily tests at a time the larger community must wait days for results? Should the testing system be strained for sports?

The Marlins mess started right from the start of this abbreviated season. Catcher Jorge Alfaro tested positive for COVID-19 before the first game on Friday. He actually was tested Thursday in Atlanta, where the Marlins played an exhibition, before flying with the team to Philadelphia.

From there, three more Marlins were knocked out of Sunday’s game in Philadelphia. The team canceled its flight home Sunday night while awaiting more test results. By Monday, that total multiplied to the 12 players, two coaches and the flight home again was canceled. As was Monday’s home opener.

By Monday morning, the question became whether the league can continue this season. It’s beyond just the safety issue. It becomes logistics, too. What would be the threshold to cancel a season? One team out? Two? Five?

It’s naive to think the Marlins’ problems won’t be another team’s problems. This always was the concern of sports in the time of the coronavirus. Everyone wants to play ball. But can it be done safely?

If the Marlins have this problem with 30 players, how can the NFL with 80 players or college football with upward of 100 ever be made safe to play?

Baseball took precautions: No fans, no on-site media, socially separated lockers, no loitering in locker rooms before or after games, umpires wearing a health mask under their normal mask, even pitchers not sharing the same rosin bag on the mound.

Still, baseball players were allowed to roam the larger world in a way basketball and hockey doesn’t allow. When Los Angeles Clippers guard Lou Williams visited an Orlando strip club, he was put under a 10-day quarantine, effectively costing him $150,000 in salary.

Does anyone think Williams was the lone NBA player to leave the bubble, though? Or the only one who was caught?

The only certainty is the Marlins are the central story in sports Monday for all the reasons they didn’t want. Their two wins in Philadelphia were irrelevant against their losses: 12 players and two coaches to the virus.

The home opener is gone. Maybe, before it’s all over, the full baseball season will be, too. If the Marlins can’t make it through one weekend safely, can any sports league make it through a full season?