WASHINGTON — There was no Major League Baseball on the Fourth of July, and that was OK.
For the better part of a month, there has been plenty of hand-wringing over baseball ‘‘blowing’’ its chance for a powerful and symbolic return to action by dickering over money as the country loses ground in its fight against the coronavirus and grapples with an overdue awakening on systemic racism.
Hey, if you want to rail against MLB’s labor-relations department or the MLB Players Association, fine. Their very public brawl was unbecoming and largely unnecessary.
Yet we had a baseball-less Fourth for the first time since the 1981 labor dispute, and it feels like the last thing we should be doing is nudging players onto a field for our viewing pleasure. As the coronavirus ravages the country, resulting in record-setting case counts and overflowing intensive-care units, MLB only now is putting on the training wheels and testing the logistics of staging a season amid a pandemic.
On Friday and Saturday, the greatest ballplayers in the world headed for their ballparks to don masks and shorts and continue the process of learning to play baseball with at least part of their brains consumed by That Other Thing.
Imagine returning to a redesigned workplace, booted out of your usual quarters and dressing in an improvised locker room or repurposed luxury suite, thinking as much about hand sanitizer as swing mechanics, then trying to hit a 95 mph fastball.
We all should have access to such carefully repurposed working quarters, made safe but not totally invulnerable by the copious health-and-safety document MLB and the union signed off on. That doesn’t make it any less of a mind game for even the most well-compensated among us.
‘‘I had to stop myself from spitting in my mask,’’ Nationals manager Dave Martinez said.
‘‘This is definitely the oddest, weirdest thing I’ve ever encountered on a baseball field,’’ Orioles first baseman Chris Davis said. ‘‘It’ll start to feel more normal. But as far as the setup, it’s so much different than I’d imagined it.’’
The return of baseball this weekend is almost silent. The stadiums are empty, save for players and staff rotating through to maximize distancing, and no more than three dozen media members are allowed in for a brief peek during one of the training shifts.
It is quiet enough to hear the shutters of a camera or the punch line of a joke shared in the outfield. And to heighten the senses surrounding the simplest pleasures.
‘‘Getting out there and hearing a ball off the bat, it was like music to your ears,’’ manager Mike Matheny said after the Royals’ first workout. ‘‘Until it’s been taken away, sometimes you don’t realize just how much you need it, how much you live it, how much you miss it.’’
Millions more surely share his sentiment. Yet that which ails us is still far from healed. And the concept that baseball can take us away from that is a false narrative at best and crass opportunism at worst.
Several dozen players and staffers tested positive for the coronavirus upon their return to their teams’ cities, and many more tests are pending. In a strange way, the bickering between owners and players might have prevented a higher infection rate.
Three weeks ago, around the time players would have been criss-crossing the country aiming to get to camp, this was lying in wait. On June 10, Miami opened the sands of South Beach and three casinos reopened in South Florida. Florida reported only 1,371 new cases, an uptick that still could be explained away by ‘‘increased testing.’’ And facial coverings still were viewed as unnecessary or even oppressive by government leaders in hard-hit states and at the federal level.
But here’s guessing a mid-June push to open camps would have stopped this baseball season well before it reached the envisioned utopia of a July 4 opener.
Instead, there were no games.
With any luck, the games will come back. Someday fans will be back in the stands, though any turnstile-clicking before 2021 seems highly irresponsible.
A little ball would have been nice Saturday, but a little quiet isn’t bad, either, especially when we have a lot more work to do.
