A bubble never would have worked for baseball. Each team has 30 players plus a large traveling party. No way could they have housed so many folks in one spot. Also the plan was Phoenix, where there’s 1 indoor field and it’s usually about 108 degrees.
I posted this because people have been bashing MLB for not having a bubble, and I just have no idea how it would have worked. You would have had to have
- players who agreed to isolate from their families for many months (whereas most NBA/NHL players will only be in the bubble for a few weeks)
- you need to have a location with at least a dozen fields, all up to MLB standard with regards to lighting/broadcast options. Even if you broke into three hubs, each hub would at least need 5 fields, all close together, all outfitted with MLB standard lighting/broadcasting/clubhouses.
- teams are bigger than NHL/NBA, meaning more people to monitor
- games are played every day, requiring the necessitation of many fields. And these fields would have to be somewhere where they couldn’t be rained out, so either in a dome (not enough of these exist) or in SoCal/Arizona (which are Covid hotspots).
I keep thinking of Sean Doolittle’s comment about how sports are a reward for a functioning society. If you’re upset that baseball, and likely football, aren’t able to return, I think the brunt of the blame rests on the failure of the state/federal governments to handle this pandemic
