Yeah, coronavirus is having quite the comeback, in the context of professional sports.
All in the same Friday ...
Major League Baseball headlines were finally stolen by a foe more formidable than a labor lawyer, with the Phillies' facility in Clearwater, Fla., seeing five players diagnosed, and the Blue Jays, right up the road in Dunedin, having one of their own. By day's end, serious talks were underway to close all spring complexes in both Florida and Arizona, two of the states being hit hardest.
The NHL saw its biggest name yet become public, with the Toronto Sun reporting that the Maple Leafs' Auston Matthews came down with a case while training in his native Arizona.
The Clemson University football team topped everyone with 23 players testing positive, or one more than what's officially required to lose a big home game to Pitt. That's in South Carolina, also being hit hard.
The NBA's building a single-city bubble in Orlando, the heart of Florida, which like Arizona had been seen as a potential haven for sports just a few weeks ago.
Even the NFL, which has pushed through like no other league, is starting to tiptoe. In the past week, the league and the players' union were put in the uncomfortable position of pushing back against Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's preeminent epidemiologist who'd suggested football would need its own bubble. And Cam Heyward, of all people, sent out his own waves by speculating that the Steelers and Cowboys would need to cancel their preseason Hall of Fame Game out of safety concerns.
“Having asthma and being a bigger guy, but I understand the risk, and I'm going to take all the precautions," Cam told us Thursday. “We’ll have to see in writing whether everybody else is taking the precautions, whether it be the staff or the bus drivers. It’s a lot of moving parts that have to go along with it. It can’t be something that’s rushed. I know the NFL and NFLPA have been working on this for a while. But there are so many things that have to be cleared before me and my family feel it’s acceptable for me to be playing.”
