The eerie surreality of sports in the Covid-19 bubble

Many sports leagues have come back to TV in the past month. Only one has gotten it mostly right.

The game itself was largely unremarkable, until it wasn’t. The Yankees won 4-1, after the game was called in the sixth inning due to rain. But the way the game ended spoke, at least a little bit, to the sheer chaotic nature of sports in the age of Covid-19. The shortness of the 2020 baseball season — which will comprise just 60 games before the playoffs begin, compared to 162 in a regular season — means that there’s little room for rain delays to be made up later. Games that are halted in the sixth where one team has a lead will just become games won by that team, erasing one of the fundamental ideas of baseball: that any team can catch up, even in the bottom of the ninth, no matter how far behind they are and no matter how unlikely a comeback may be.