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MLB’s inherent steadfastness blinding the sport to COVID’s cold realities – Sportsnet.ca

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TORONTO – There is an unbreakable steadfastness and tunnel-visioned determination needed to survive the tortuous grind of an 162-game season, and both are shining through in Major League Baseball’s response to this week’s COVID-19 outbreaks.

Under normal circumstances, those are qualities to be admired and respected. Resilience in the face of adversity, be it injuries or struggle, is often the difference between success and failure. Sometimes, you just have to power through problems, or to “sack up,” as Tanner Roark put it this week, when talking about his Toronto Blue Jays having to call Buffalo’s Sahlen Field home.

Here’s general manager Ross Atkins with a bit more of a polished take.

“I wish you guys could see the amount of isolation we’re in, how we’re going about our daily lives,” the Blue Jays general manager said Friday during a Zoom call with reporters. “The only times that our players are really ever together are when we’re in a bus, on a plane or at the field. And then we go back to our hotel rooms and we’re all in isolation. I think that the industry has a great deal of respect for this virus and the fact that it has no boundaries. I can’t say that it could be proven that it went from one team to another. I don’t think anyone knows that. But I do know that everyone is very respectful of how serious this virus is, and we can’t control what that means for other teams in other environments.

“What we can do is to the best of our ability stay safe and keep communities safe, not just our baseball team, but the communities in and around us. We are in a pandemic. We did not expect this to be smooth and without hiccups, without bumps. We all expected that there would probably be challenges, some anticipated and some not anticipated. And I can’t say enough about our staff and players and how respectful they’ve been, how thoughtful they’ve been, how disciplined they’ve been, the amount of sacrifice that they’ve made for the love of the game and for one another. It has been inspiring.”

All of that is true, yet the coronavirus doesn’t care.

A fundamental issue facing a sport conditioned to fight through any and all obstacles, that the bus doesn’t stop moving for anyone, is that it’s totally the wrong mentally to have amidst a pandemic.

Consider that last Sunday, when the Miami Marlins should really have been self-isolating in their hotel rooms, they decided to persist through a handful of infections and take the field against the Philadelphia Phillies. So very baseball.

The consequences of that call is that they’re up to 18 positives among their players, or 60 per cent of their 30-man roster. The Phillies on Thursday reported two positive cases and while it’s unclear if they’re related to the Marlins exposure, their weekend series with the Blue Jays was postponed as a result.

Then, Friday morning, a pair of positive tests among the St. Louis Cardinals led to the postponement of their series opener Friday at the Milwaukee Brewers to Sunday, when the teams will play a double-header. They’ll still play as scheduled Saturday, with the delay Friday “consistent with protocols to allow enough time for additional testing and contact tracing to be conducted,” MLB said in a release.

This, however, is where things get sticky, and the sport’s blind determination becomes really reckless in the face of the widely accepted science on COVID-19.

The onset of symptoms can take up to five days and a patient can be infectious for up to nine days afterwards for a total of 14 days, which is why quarantines are set at 14 days. In theory, an untested person could be spreading virus without knowing for up to two weeks, but baseball has mitigated that with every other day testing.

Those results provide bookends for a player’s exposure period, which is very helpful in contact-tracing – i.e., Player X was negative Tuesday but positive Thursday so his infection likely occurred Wednesday. At that point, work can begin on identifying whether transmission occurred on the field, in the clubhouse, socially, at home or in the community.

Still, within the gap from negative to positive, there are countless contact points with teammates, even with the current protocols in place, and the virus’s incubation period can last up to 14 days. So a player who tests negative one day could still become positive a few days later, and in the meantime, he’s spread the virus to several others.

All that is why 14-day quarantines are the gold standard for breaking transmission chains and avoiding silent spread. But two-week breaks don’t really line up with a 60-game season played across 9½ weeks, so you end up with a situation like the Marlins, and allowing the Cardinals to play as soon as Saturday is a recipe for replicating that outbreak.

Richard Deitsch and Donnovan Bennett host a podcast about how COVID-19 is impacting sports around the world. They talk to experts, athletes and personalities, offering a window into the lives of people we normally root for in entirely different ways.

Major League Baseball has thrown around the phrase “abundance of caution” quite a bit lately, but a real abundance of caution is in stopping people who have been exposed to the virus from being exposed to other people.

In the Cardinals’ case, that would mean keeping them away from the Brewers all weekend, and contact-tracing them up to five days backwards, which takes them through series versus the Pittsburgh Pirates and Minnesota Twins, who on Thursday played Cleveland.

All of them are, to some degree, at risk right now, and then there’s the risk of them vectoring disease into the wider community, too.

This isn’t fear-mongering or nay-saying – it’s math and probabilities, which has been the problem with MLB’s return-to-play plan from the outset. The United States reopened too quickly, never quelled COVID-19’s first wave and, unable to logistically bubble up the way the NHL and NBA have, MLB decided to go ahead with a season cut off but not totally isolated from a general population spreading the virus at alarming levels.

Whenever that hard truth is raised, baseball people fall back on the usual mantras used to survive the 162-game grind, about focusing on themselves, controlling the controllables, not worrying about matters outside their purview, blah, blah, blah.

Even with stricter protocols coming – “we’ve already instituted them in how we’re interacting with families, how we’re interacting with people away from the field,” Atkins said of the Blue Jays – it’s wishful thinking to insist that the MLB season can get to the finish line without some real bubbling from the wider community.

“When someone leaves the ballpark and we obviously consult with Major League Baseball and talk to them about extenuating circumstances, like myself of driving to Buffalo to see the facility, I would by no means have jumped on a commercial flight and come back to this team,” Atkins said in describing the extra cautions he and the Blue Jays are taking. “The amount of testing and intake process for myself as I come back to join the team, the same for our players with Ken Giles as he left the team (to see a specialist about an injury) and came back to join us. We’re going to isolate him from the team before he rejoins the group. Our interactions with families, how we’re testing families. Major League Baseball is very supportive, but I think everyone’s having to do their part to deal with circumstances that are changing every day.”

Diligence is great but adherence to MLB’s current plan, under current circumstances, isn’t enough to avoid the coronavirus. Persistence and resolve may be commendable hallmarks of the sport, but what a shame it will be if they leave the game’s decision-makers too blind to grasp the realities in front of them.

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David Lipsky shoots 65 to take 1st-round lead at Silverado in FedEx Cup Fall opener

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NAPA, Calif. (AP) — David Lipsky shot a 7-under 65 on Thursday at Silverado Country Club to take a one-stroke lead after the first round of the Procore Championship.

Winless in 104 events since joining the PGA Tour in 2022, Lipsky went out with the early groups and had eight birdies with one bogey to kick off the FedEx Cup Fall series at the picturesque course in the heart of Napa Valley wine country.

After missing the cut in his three previous tournaments, Lipsky flew from Las Vegas to Arizona to reunite with his college coach at Northwestern to get his focus back. He also spent time playing with some of the Northwestern players, which helped him relax.

“Just being around those guys and seeing how carefree they are, not knowing what’s coming for them yet, it’s sort of nice to see that,” Lipsky said. “I was almost energized by their youthfulness.”

Patton Kizzire and Mark Hubbard were a stroke back. Kizzire started on the back nine and made a late run with three consecutive birdies to move into a tie for first. A bogey on No. 8 dropped him back.

“There was a lot of good stuff out there today,” Kizzire said. “I stayed patient and just went through my routines and played well, one shot at a time. I’ve really bee working hard on my mental game and I think that allowed me to rinse and repeat and reset and keep playing.”

Mark Hubbard was at 67. He had nine birdies but fell off the pace with a bogey and triple bogey on back-to-back holes.

Kevin Dougherty also was in the group at 67. He had two eagles and ended his afternoon by holing out from 41 yards on the 383-yard, par-4 18th.

Defending champion Sahith Theegala had to scramble for much of his round of 69.

Wyndham Clark, who won the U.S. Open in 2023 and the AT&T at Pebble Beach in February, had a 70.

Max Homa shot 71. The two-time tournament champion and a captain’s pick for the President’s Cup in two weeks had two birdies and overcame a bogey on the par-4 first.

Stewart Cink, the 2020 winner, also opened with a 71. He won The Ally Challenge last month for his first PGA Tour Champions title.

Three players from the Presidents Cup International team had mix results. Min Woo Lee shot 68, Mackenzie Hughes of Dundas, Ont., 69 and Corey Conners of Listowel, Ont., 73. International team captain Mike Weir of Brights Grove, Ont., also had a 69.

Ben Silverman of Thornhill, Ont., had a 68, Nick Taylor of Abbotsford, B.C., and Roger Sloan of Merritt, B.C., shot 70 and Adam Svensson of Surrey, B.C., had a 71.

Lipsky was a little shaky off the tee for much of the afternoon but made up for it with steady iron play that left him in great shape on the greens. He had one-putts on 11 holes and was in position for a bigger day but left five putts short.

Lipsky’s only real problem came on the par-4 ninth when his approach sailed into a bunker just shy of the green. He bounced back nicely with five birdies on his back nine. After missing a 19-foot putt for birdie on No. 17, Lipsky ended his day with a 12-foot par putt.

That was a big change from last year when Lipsky tied for 30th at Silverado when he drove the ball well but had uneven success on the greens.

“Sometimes you have to realize golf can be fun, and I think I sort of forgot that along the way as I’m grinding it out,” Lipsky said. “You’ve got to put things in perspective, take a step back. Sort of did that and it seems like it’s working out.”

Laird stayed close after beginning his day with a bogey on the par-4 10th. The Scot got out of the sand nicely but pushed his par putt past the hole.

Homa continued to have issues off the tee and missed birdie putts on his final four holes.

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AP golf:

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Canada’s Marina Stakusic advances to quarterfinals at Guadalajara Open

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GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Canada’s Marina Stakusic is moving on to the quarterfinals of the Guadalajara Open.

The Mississauga, Ont., native defeated the tournament top seed, Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia, 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (0) in the round of 16 on Thursday.

Stakusic faced a 0-4 deficit in the third and final set before marching back into the match.

The 19-year-old won five of the next six games to even it up before exchanging games to force a tiebreaker, where Stakusic took complete control to win the match.

Stakusic had five aces with 17 double faults in the three-hour, four-minute match.

However, she converted eight of her 18 break-point opportunities.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.

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France investigating disappearances of 2 Congolese Paralympic athletes

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PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.

Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.

Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.

The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.

The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.

Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.

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AP Paralympics:

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