Strike two

摘要

THE CRACK of the bat made an abnormal baseball season feel fleetingly familiar. On August 2nd Aaron Judge, the Yankee right-fielder, hit his second home-run of the game, his sixth in five straight games. The eight-inning moon shot broke a 7-7 tie against the Boston Red Sox, the Yankees' bitter rival. As the ball soared 468 feet into the stand, the commentators went wild. Your correspondent leapt from her sofa. It was exciting, but weird. No scrum of fans chased the ball in the bleachers, which were devoid of Bleacher Creatures. There were no fans. The crowd cheering was a recording. Baseball's season began on July 23rd, four months late because of the pandemic. After just three games, the Miami Marlins' games were temporarily suspended after 18 players-more than half the roster-and some backroom staff tested positive for covid-19. Five games into its season the St Louis Cardinals were hit by an unrelated outbreak. Seven players and six team staffers tested positive. Rob Manfred, Major League Baseball's (MLB) commissioner, threatened to shut down the season unless the sport improved its handling of the virus, but he later backtracked. It is hard to imagine the season continuing if a third team has an outbreak. "It's a little bit of three strikes and you're out," says Zachary Binney, an epidemiologist who focuses on sports at Oxford College at Emory University in Atlanta.