Blue Jays will hold camp in Toronto
Major League Baseball has yet to officially start the 2020 season after the COVID-19 pandemic hit in mid-March. The regular season was originally scheduled to start at the end of March, but spring training was suspended with players and executives left scrambling to figure out the next steps. After a bitter and lengthy negotiation between the league and the Major League Baseball Players’ Association, an agreement was reached to play a 60-game regular season with playoffs following.
However, for the league’s only team that does not play their games in the United States the issue is an even more complicated one. The Toronto Blue Jays have been trying to work around federal guidelines in two countries as they look to figure out where they will be able to call home in 2020. There has yet to be an official decision on whether the team will be able to play their home games at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, or whether they will have to relocate to the United States somewhere for the season.
On Thursday, the team did receive some good news from the Canadian government though. After health officials at multiple levels approved and signed off on many of the team’s and league’s return to play plans, the federal government granted an exemption that will allow them to modify the mandatory 14-day quarantine period for travellers entering Canada. This means the Blue Jays can hold their summer camp in Canada while they prepare for the upcoming season.
“It basically involved adapting a strategy and plan that satisfies their public health concerns,” Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro said on a conference call Thursday evening via TSN. “Things like additional testing above and beyond MLB testing, satisfying their concerns on travel, ensuring that, basically, what we were doing is creating a modified quarantine or a bubble environment that protected the public.”
Unlike most stadiums, the Rogers’ Centre has a hotel – the Marriott City Centre Hotel = attached to it where some rooms have a view of the stadium where fans can watch the games from. The plan is for the players, coaches and executives to stay in the 348-room hotel and essentially create a “bubble” where they would not go anywhere else. This would ensure they do not create a public health risk for the rest of the city and country.
The team still has plenty of work to do though to convince the municipal, provincial and federal governments though that they could safely play all 30 of their scheduled home games this season at the Rogers Centre. Given the recent spike in cases across the United States, the Canadian government is understandably doing everything possible to ensure that the same thing does not happen north of the border.
We will look to end up with a similar result where we protect the public in every way possible, but we have to deal not just with our team coming in and out of the country but the visiting team as well,” Shapiro said.
“There are a host of travel-related and logistical issues that create complexities that we still need to work through to satisfy, particularly with Public Health (Agency of) Canada. We’ll look to do that in the next week. I think it’s probably pretty important that we get some clarity on where we’re going to be playing our games in the next 7-10 days now that we’ve cleared the hurdle for training.”
The 2020 season is slated to start on July 23rd with the New York Yankees taking on the Washington Nationals being the biggest game of the day.
