As we reach this time of this particular year, more than a few holiday greetings have been punctuated by a hearty “…and good riddance to 2020!”
Many of us will be happy to be done with the year 2020, but as much as we may wish to put it behind us, most of us won’t be able to forget it. This past year has been profoundly transformative to all aspects of society, and the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic have ranged from the trivial to fatal.
All of us were touched in some way, and if we were lucky, it was mostly a dashing of expectations, a delay of gratification and a challenge to our resilience. If we’re about to spend a few paragraphs pondering how all of this affected baseball, it should go without saying that such a discussion is not undertaken in complete obliviousness to the pain and sorrow that has occurred all around us and across the globe.
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For many of us – likely you if you’re reading about baseball while visions of sugarplums dance in your heads – baseball is a part of your routine. It represents consistency and normalcy. Through the season, the game is reliably there almost every night. And the off-season usually has its own rhythm so that every few weeks, we’re met with another milepost along the way to the return of pitchers and catchers.
This year was obviously different. So very different.
In the midst of everything else that was unfolding and the way so many aspects of our lives were put on hold, baseball seemed secondary, and the prolonged delay in its return was an accepted part of a bigger moment in our history. By the time it began to return – and not without some disconcerting brinksmanship on the part of the owners and players – baseball was a welcome bit of solace to a year that could use it.
Perhaps that’s why fans were mostly willing to accept the litany of compromises to the return of the game this year. For a sport and a fanbase that can be hidebound to tradition, a wholesale list of changes to rosters and gameplay were seen as necessary to help facilitate the game coming back safely and staying on the field for as long as possible.
Some might bristle at the notion that we need to embrace the positives that came out of this tragic year, but if there was a learning moment for baseball, it was that change can be good, and tradition needn’t be sacrosanct.
In the broader context, having a designated hitter in the National League was at worst a concession, but more likely an acceptance of an eventual fate. More notable was the way that previously unthinkable changes like expanded playoffs, seven-inning games or the runner-on-second extra innings rule could be tolerated, if not accepted. In the abstract, both would have been distasteful, but in practice they were the sort of wrinkle that simply added a bit of colour to a strange season.
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The Toronto Blue Jays had an abundance of change to manage last season, and whatever expectations there may have been over last year’s holiday season were nothing close to what eventually played out. You could have gotten good money against the possibility of Alejandro Kirk getting a post-season hit back then.
It was a season that could certainly have been excused for being less successful. The Blue Jays started with a prolonged road trip, eventually making a home out of Buffalo, after being told by several jurisdictions that they weren’t welcome. The Jays slipped into an expanded playoff bracket thanks to several teams that were fundamentally uncompetitive, but also played well throughout a tough schedule over the last month of the season to make their post-season berth worthy of celebrating.
And if you would have told us that we would get a little misty at the memories of seeing tape measure bombs being hit towards a highway on-ramp sign, I’m sure it would have been confusing. But there are some fond memories of mighty blasts from Teoscar Hernandez, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Danny Jansen that were sent in the general direction of the Peace Bridge and Niagara Falls, via the 190 North.
We’ve spent much of the past twenty years of baseball fandom becoming more attuned to the probabilistic analysis, focusing on what outcomes are most likely. As we close this year, and look warily ahead to the next, it seems like folly to attempt to make any predictions on what next season will look like. From the questions of how many games the Blue Jays may play, to when they may start, where they’ll actually play them or who might be on their roster, everything feels uncertain.
Certainly, flipping the page on the calendar won’t put many of these issues in the past. As a society, we’ll continue to grapple with how to adjust to life in this new context. COVID-19 has not gone away, and many have likely grown too accustomed to it as infection numbers continue to spike far beyond the levels that effectively shut down society in the spring. As a fan, you have little choice but to embrace the unknowable year to come.
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