Baseball in Uncertain Times

Two weeks ago, the NBA announced they effectively had a clean bubble. All the players and important team personnel tested negative, they had done it. Of course, Lou Williams desire to see some bangers at Magic City may jeopoardize that, but for the most part the NBA did what it could to create an environment to let this work.

Today, the NHL announced that they too have gotten to the point of eliminating the virus from their two bubbles in Edmonton and Toronto. Granted both are in a far better position than baseball, but it is striking that two days before the NBA tips off again, and the same day the NHL announces their great results, MLB is in crisis when 8 Marlins tested positive.

First, we should say the fact 8 Marlins tested positive is not an indication that the MLB failed or never should have tried to get a season out. As the testing from NBA and NHL a few weeks back showed, their players were getting COVID in their normal day-to-day lives. Yes, having them in close contact with each other playing sports is not good, but doing so in a controlled environment is potentially safer then them not playing sports but living among normal civilization.

Baseball is different. It was not going to go into a bubble for four months. It had a whole season to play. The NFL is in a similar position. Many industries have had to shift and adapt, and this is an industry adapting. It isn't perfect, but it is worth trying. What makes it seem not worth trying, though, is the MLB's utter lack of a plan when an outbreak broke out.

Granted, the NBA and NHL hasn't offered any plan either. There are protocols in place if a player test positive, but no announced plan if a significant number of players did. I imagine the immediate reaction will be the same - postpone/cancel the upcoming game(s), and maybe do so for the team that the outbreak team recently played. But right now, step #2 is a complete unknown.

The strict angle is the Marlins as an organization have to self-isolate from anywhere from 5-14 days - the whole team. We ahve to wait to ensure we isolate those who have it vs. those who don't. In that time period, I guess you could postpone some games, but at some point we have to just outright cancel them. If it comes to that, is it a cancellation, or do the Marlins (or Team X) have to forfeit?

Nothing is normal. That's obvious. Nothing will be normal for a long time given how badly the USA has handled the coronavirus response - a response that doesn't seem to have any chance of self-correcting until maybe Jan 21, 2021.

The NBA and NHL may well face the MLB's plight in December when they try to start-up for their 2020-2021 seasons under some guise of normalcy (teams playing in their traditional home markets). The MLB did not manage this well, but they also had the unlucky draw of the first league to face this type of outbreak.

I'm so interested to see how MLB reacts to the Marlins situation. I know in my heart the answer is not going to be to force the Marlins as an org to take two weeks off, but I do hope that is at least discussed and then walk down from there to something more reasoable for all. We are entering a brave new world in baseball, in all sports. The games themselves are working, the atmosphere isn't as bad as I thought, teams are having fun with it in how they dress up their stadiums. We just have to hope the elephant in the room doesn't ram its way in way too much.

Zidane's Latest Triumph

There's so many absurd stats that are floating around Zinedine Zidane's ridiculous run as a manager of Real Madrid. The most eye-popping might be that once every 19 games, he wins a trophy. My favorite is that he's won 11 of 18 competitions or trophies he's competed for - and that counts two 'losses' in La Liga when he took over mid-year - the first of which they came within a hair of catching and passing Barcelona.

It is not outrageous at this point to wonder where Zidane's place is as a manager, and wonder thirty years from now, if he's seen as a greater manager or player. Sounds absurd - he's a pantheon level player who accomplished everything in his career with a magician-like quality that is nearly impossible to describe. He's scored in World Cup Finals, Champions League Finals, and has a highlight reel on Youtube that compares with anyone, especially if you account for grace, passing, and sheer lunacy. And yet... he might be a better nager.

There was long questions in his first (wildly successful) reign about how much credit Zidane should actually get. He wasn't a noted tactical genius - especially since he didn't claim to be as other noted tactical geniuses often do (Pep, Mourinho, Wenger, etc.). His Real Madrid teams were already strong with stars, inheriting a group that had made the Champions League Semifinals five straight years (winning in 2014). He largely got plaudits as a man manager, able to navigate the egos in the locker-room, and more importantly the egos in the board-room with aplomb. 

Zidane had great teams, and great results, but also had Ronaldo scoring 40-50 goals a year, including a ridiculous run to close out the 2016-17 season - especially in their Champions League win. That year was the pinnacle the first time in over fifty years Madrid won the league and Champions League in the same season. They did so with a stupid deep team, routinely playing nearly full 'B' sides in the second half of the year in La Liga. The 'B' side featured Nacho, Pepe, Kovacic, Bale, James, Vazquez, Asensio, Morata. It was absurd. 

Then it went awry in his final season - a season which of course the team won a third straight Champions League crowd. They were nowhere in the league however, finishing a distant third (though their underlying numbers more or less as good as winner Barcelona), and for some weird reason Zidane's era Madrid and Zidane himself, was branded as something as a disappointment in league play. It never really made sense. Zidane's Madrid won the league once, and came a point away from winning it in his first year - despite being 8 points back when Zidane took over in January. They had one bad season and somehow were brandished some Champions League-only specialists.

That's why Zidane's biggest goal which he openly stated, for this year was to win back the league. And they did. And they did by overcoming some serious odds. There was no Ronaldo to score loads of goals. There were injuries abound, be it to their big-name signing (Eden Hazard), or young up-and-comers (Marco Asensio) or everyone in between. It was comical how many injuries they dealt with early on, but Zidane kept them focused. And then after the break, focus turned into a steely, calm, dominance.

Ten straight wins to win the league. Not only did they win the games they never trailed. Zidane so often in his first run talked about struggling - not in terms of results, but in terms of the joy that comes from the agony of playing through tough moments. Mental strength, togetherness, commitment. All these adjectives perfectly described Zidane's first run in Madrid in particular to their Champions League runs. This time, it applied to this run. It applied to this team.

You can't really knock this team for relying too much on stars, or luck. They quickly turned into an amazing defensive team, conceding just 25 goals. They got goals from 21 different players, a La Liga record. There were weeks where the goals came from fullbacks, players like Casemiro, and others. Benzema led them with 21 goals. The next highest was Sergio Ramos with 11. 

People will always claim Zidane is no tactical genius, if not some calling him a tactical novice. In truth, his tactical flexibility is his real brilliance. He didn't shove a team into a system. He adjusted systems depending on game, opponent. He made Real Madrid comfortable playing with the ball, playing on the counter. This year they switched formations constantly, going 4-3-3, 4-4-2, 4-5-1 with consitent mix. Flexibility allowed his team to deal with injuries, with drops in play. It allowed his team to line up with a purpose in each game.

Zidane's skills as a manager are harder to suss out, particularly because he doesn't want to do it. Despite his loud brilliance as a player, and his noted hot temper on the pitch, Zidane is either shy or just uninterested in brashness. He's a genius of course, but has not asked for a second of credit. He has the great gift of not having to fight for a name as a manager - a peace of mind that allowed him to walk away after three Champions League wins, and then come back out of his own choice. He's now golden.

It is hard to truly understand how absurd it is that Zidane has accomplished this much in effectively four seasons (three full ones + two half-seasons) as manager. It is hard enough to understand this even when you don't consider this is one of teh titans of the sport doing it. I still think each half detracts from the other in cementing his legacy. On the one hand, it is hard to put into words that he might be the best manager active in the world with the legacy of his playing career overshadowing it. It just seems weird to comapre him to Jurgen Klopp without acknowledging Zidane's career as a player.

His only comps at this point are Johan Cruyff, who probably was a slightly lesser player, but still has a greater legacy as a coach (that said, Zidane's resume might be stronger, but the Cruyff legacy adds up), or Franz Beckenbauer. That's damn good company. As we see more and more clubs turn to old legends to manage (Lampard at Chelsea, Arteta at Arsenal and maybe, just maybe, Xavi at Barcelona at some point) we have to realize that Zidane is an exception, as a coach an exception as a manager and an exception as an all-time soccer legend no matter what. 

Musings on the Returns

Teams are joining the bubbles, in Orlando (NBA) and Toronto & Edmonton (NHL). That's not to say things are going well - players are testing positive, there are meme-worthy insults to the luxuries not afforded to players in these bubbles. There's so much risk inherent in what these leagues are trying to do. I applaud them for trying, and think its silly to say 'they shouldn't come back' full stop, but still there is a lot of unease.

For a bit then, it is fun to put the unease aside, and think about what this might end up being. I took some time to think about the upside of this situation. Before we dive in, I want to say this whole piece assumes there isn't huge outbreaks, especially anything bad enough to kick out a team or end the whole experiment. Here are my musings of what the next three months (NBA & NHL) may look like.

= I'm interested to see how each league tries to add crowd noise or atmosphere to their games. Soccer has done a decent job with fake crowd noise, even rising and lowering at the right times. While it was nice to wonder for a day what it would be like to hear each basketball shoe squeak, or each tap of a stick on the ice, but also then we would hear all the cuss words you need in a lifetime - and there was no way the leagues would allow/want that. I'll credit the NHL here for taking an interesting approach and have teams organize team-specific chants/cheers recordings to use during games. It will be interesting, for sure to see if that is at all effective

= Obviously we all hope this pandemic is a once-in-a-lifetime issue, and even if it takes until the 2021-22 seasons to get back to something that shows normal, I doubt we are hurdling towards a full bubble season for 2020-21. If that is the case, we are living a once-in-a-lifetime scenario, of sports being played in bubbles, with no fans, with teams staying in the same quarters, almost like a mix of incredible sports feats with Real World. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to do something weird.

= In a related point, I hope both the NBA and NHL are taking this opportunity to film a lot of the life in the bubble - which I realize some players are already doing themselves. To me, get some video folks to agree to live in teh bubble (to avoid any covid risk) and film away. We will always remember the 2020 NBA & NHL Playoffs that were played in bubbles

= Speaking of which, we're either going to get amazing displays of closeness and positive tomfoolery in these bubbles, or rapturous infighting and drama. I can't wait for either. It's going to be amazing, the nightly night-caps at the bar, the golf, the swimming, all of it. You are putting giant egos (for a good reason) in a confined area. This is going to be three weeks of fireworks.

= On to the play, I get the fact it will initially be sloppy, but we also have a chance to see playoffs where teams are healthier than ever. There are a few cases of players playing that likely wuldn't have played at all had the seasons just continued as per normal. There's cases of guys getting a chance to fully heal and rest. Take Giannis for example, who got injured right before the pause, and now comes back fully locked and loaded and ready to go. On the hockey side, by the end it truly is bascially which team is healthier wins, but now every team is more or less as healthy. For so often we see bad hockey or basketball at times out of sheer exhaustion - for once we should see far, far less of that.

= I'm interested to see how teams that have serious home/road splits react to this situation. Are we seeing it almost like every game is a road game - so teams that hve done bad at home should do worse, or is everything basically 50/50 now. For a team like the 76ers, not getting a home game when they were like 30-2 at home this year is bad, but not having to go on the road where they were laughable at times might make up for it.

= Related to that point, a weird bit of math here. A lot of people are mentioning how home court advantage is irrelevant. That part is true. What often gets left out is home court advantage is lost for both teams. There is no real reason why we should see significantly more upsets. Yes, if you are a lower-seeded team, you don't have to play four road games where you have a lesser chance to lose. You also don't have three home games that you have a heightened chance to win. Especially for some of the underdogs that have particularly strong home court crowds/results (e.g. Utah), losing three home games is a big loss.

The Return(?!) of Sports

Sports have been back for a while in parts of the world that took the coronavirus more seriously, professionally and logically than the US did. European soccer has been back, albeit without fans, for over a month now, with no major issues despite teams traveling (admittedly, distances are a lot closer in these European leagues than a US-wide league).

But that's not the same as sports returning in this country, a country that has utterly failed and flopped its response to this virus - where even the good stories are small or like New York where the curve was flattened only after such endless agony. The US is not ready for sports to be back, but the people losing money were more than ready, and ergo: sports are coming back.

They're coming back either in a bubble, ironically picked in a place that was doing OK when it was picked but is now a disaster of New York levels, but with leadership that still turns a blind eye, or with two bubbles like the NHL, which wisely picked to move its game to Canada, or with whatever the hell the MLB is doing. These aren't perfect scenarios. These bubbles will pop, whether its NBA players not able to go three months without groupies (their concerns, not mine), or NHL players needing to play golf. The sport going without a bubble is already failing to test people in time to progress towards their start. It's a mess, but 2020 was always going to be a mess. For us sports fans, we just have to figure out if it is a mess worth investing your time in.

So much can go wrong with these plans. With more and more players testing positive before they head into the bubbles (not a surprise), the date of the first start (MLB on July 24th) seems still so far away. There are still mountains to climb, and then we get tothe fact it seems eminent that after the restart the leagues will have to shutdown at some point. Maybe not the NHL because they were able to shift to Canada, which helps matters, but for the NBA it almost seems a matter of time.

What I do want to say is if (or as some pessimists feel, when) the leagues have to shut down, let's not go too hard on them for attempting this. They tried something people didn't think feasible (play in a bubble) and maybe it doesn't work, but I'll give them credit for trying. I also don't want to hear the idea they shouldn't have tried - yes the attempt was to recoup money, but that puts them in teh same position as any business globally at the moment. The sports leagues shouldn't have not tried this because it is too hard. They've come up with plans that epidimeologists have said was a good attempt, all things considered. That's enough for me.

When MLB does have its opening day, when the NBA does have its first tip-off, and the NHL has its first face-off, it will be so different. I still remember being in Toronto watching the NBA world come to a halt, and within 24 hours so too the NHL, March Madness and basically every other league. It was surreal. It is hopefully something we don;t have to live with again. 

Seeing it come backj, it is hard to imagine weather it will feel real. It definitely won't feel right, with no fans in teh stands, with either creaky silence or fake pumped in crowd noise. It will be different, but we'll get over it to get sports back. Life hasn't been complete these last 4 months, and surely not only because sports hasn't been played. The world will never be the same (and it is too soon to talk about this in past tense, so shame on me), but having one part of it returning to semi-normal is a welcome event.

My Top 50 QBs: #4 - Johnny Unitas