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With Major League Baseball searching for solutions during the ongoing coronavirus crisis, ESPN’s Jeff Passan has reported the league is looking into hosting all 30 teams in the Phoenix area and begin the season playing in empty ballparks.
While it’s uncertain how players would react to the idea, Chris Sale shared his opinion on the development. And it certainly doesn’t sound like the Boston Red Sox ace would be thrilled with the idea if he were playing in 2020.
“I don’t know if I could look at my kids just through a screen for four or five months. Same thing goes with my wife,” Sale said Tuesday, per the Associated Press. “That’s a long time. But people have done it in harsh scenarios, I guess. I think there’s a lot of figuring out to do.”
Other players could feel similarly to Sale for the same reason — separation from family. After all, the league holding an All-Arizona start would be a unique solution during unprecedented times.
On the other hand, while playing in empty stadiums would certainly be different, it has been done.
And strangely enough, Sale was there as his 2015 Chicago White Sox played the Baltimore Orioles at an empty Camden Yards. (The stadium was empty due to civil protest in Baltimore over the death Freddie Gray.)
“It was a weird feeling having nobody in the stands,” Sale said of the game in April 2015. “But sometimes you got to adapt. Sometimes you got to do some things for the greater good of what’s going on around you.”
Sale, however, will not have to worry about either of those situations as he rehabs from his recent Tommy John surgery.
