Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports
If baseball is indeed played this season, it will undoubtedly look much different from the game you’ve grown accustomed to.
The frequency, with weekly doubleheaders on the table. The locales. Even the rivalries.
That’s right: It’s possible the Giants and Dodgers will no longer share a division.
In the coronavirus era, when MLB is coming up with every possible avenue toward holding a semblance of a season, the unheard of is now heard of. The latest radical suggestion, as reported by USA Today on Friday, replaces the National and American Leagues with the Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues.
We’ve heard the Arizona plan, in sequestering the 30 teams around the Phoenix area. This version divides teams by spring locales, so half would be in Florida, the other half in Arizona, and groups divisions by spring stadiums.
Thus, the San Francisco Giants would be more precisely called the Scottsdale Giants and they would play in a division that contains the Cubs, Diamondbacks, Rockies and A’s.
This plan would not be quite as harried as the other, shelving the idea of triple-headers at Arizona parks to squeeze every game in. The Dodgers would be battling the White Sox, Reds, Indians and Angels in the “West,” and the Cactus League and Grapefruit League winners could play each other for the World Series.
It sounds slightly more feasible than the all-Arizona route, but testing for the coronavirus would be vital and expensive, and playing all games in sun-heavy Florida and Arizona would be taxing on players’ bodies. But baseball seems determined to find a way.