By Toby Srebnik for LVSportsBiz.com
Only one week ago, my son Bailey celebrated his 16th birthday. As part of his birthday celebration each year, we typically travel to two spring training baseball games in Florida and make a whole weekend of it. This year, not only did our plan take a detour at the last minute, my son now shares his birthday with a historic date no one ever wanted to see: The Day Sports Changed Forever.
For anyone following COVID-19 since 2020 began, it was covered in bits and pieces by media across the country. But because the spread was larger in other countries, it did not seem to become an everyday story until late-February.
In fact, when we prepared to see my beloved Tampa Bay Rays travel to West Palm Beach Feb. 28 to face the Washington Nationals, Major League Baseball started to give teams guidance on fan interaction.
But by the time March 4 rolled around when my son’s Baltimore Orioles faced the Miami Marlins in Jupiter, Florida, MLB was strongly advising players not to sign autographs. Fortunately, since my son typically asks for selfies only, we were able to get photos without an issue.
And on March 7, MLB placed a hard stop to pregame autographs and advised players to pre-sign baseballs. By now, it was apparent COVID-19 was beginning to trickle into the sports world in this country. Here’s a pic of myself and my son.
The next domino to fall was on March 10 when the Ivy League opted to cancel both their men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, which sent the regular season champions straight into the NCAA national hoops tournament. Even at this point, some thought this was an overreaction.
It was March 11 when the COVID-19 tide started turning in earnest with the Golden State Warriors announcing they would play a game at home March 13 against the Brooklyn Nets with no fans in attendance due to a city mandate preventing a large crowd from being together.
The Ohio Governor also mandated the First Four of the NCAA Tournament in Dayton would also be played without fans. Then the NCAA proceeded to announce the entire tournament would be played without fans. Halfway during the second day of the Atlantic Coast Conference men’s tournament, which had fans in attendance, the ACC decreed no fans would be allowed in attendance, which put Florida State, Virginia, Louisville, and Duke fans already in Greensboro, NC in a tough spot since their opening games were happening the next day. It felt like the ACC’s decision, at that moment, was something that could have been decided the day before when the tournament actually started.
With the Golden State decision made, most fans figured the National Basketball Association would be weighing in with a decision about fans at their games the rest of the season.
Instead, that evening’s Utah at Oklahoma City game was postponed. And about 45 minutes later, word leaked out that Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz had tested positive for COVID-19.
Within minutes, the NBA tweeted its season was suspended indefinitely once the games already in progress were completed. There is no doubt NBA Commissioner Adam Silver had a tough decision to make. But once one of his players tested positive, whatever decision he was going to make was superseded by his ultimate announcement.
What followed on March 12 validated Silver’s decision when other teams and leagues started postponing events left and right using social media as their initial tool.
ATP Tennis announced a six-week suspension. Major League Soccer suspended its season for 30 days. The National Hockey League suspended its season. The Big 10, Pac 10, SEC, and the Big 12 cancelled their postseason tournaments. The PGA cancelled all of its golf tournaments through April 5.
It was a whirlwind of activity, with each commissioner making the absolute right call at the time – with, in my opinion, three notable exceptions.
The Big East opted to play its March 12 early game between St. John’s and Creighton without fans in attendance after the Big 10 had already cancelled their conference tournament. While several other conference cancellations occurred during the first half of the Big East game, the Big East never stopped the first half. Finally, and belatedly, the game was stopped at halftime. Was it egregious? Probably not. But from an optics standpoint, it was not the Big East’s best day.
However, the ACC topped the Big East in terms of indecision. After already deciding the night before to go forward without fans, ACC Commissioner John Swofford held a press conference at about 10:30 a.m. defending his decision for Clemson and Florida State to play on despite the Gobert positive test news from the night before.
Finally, with the players on the court warming up for the 12:30 p.m. tipoff, Swofford reversed course and cancelled the tournament at 12:15 p.m. Once the Big Ten and SEC made their decisions, Swofford and the ACC came to their senses and realized how it would look if they went forward under those circumstances.
Finally, despite MLB being a little ahead of the curve with its initial autograph guidance to teams, its decision-making on March 12 left a lot to be desired.
For starters, MLB had multiple 1:05 p.m. Eastern start times in Florida, one Florida evening game, and multiple 4:05 p.m. Arizona time games. As the teams took to the field in the early games in Florida, MLB never made an announcement, which sent 10 major league teams (one of which had a split squad and played a non-major league team) in front of thousands of fans at ballparks in Port Charlotte, Jupiter, Lakeland, West Palm Beach, Bradenton, and Dunedin in Florida.
At about 3 p.m. a week ago, two hours after the games had begun, MLB finally announced that when those early 1 p.m. games ended, Spring Training would be suspended and the season would start at least two weeks late.
Even a week later as I write this, I am unsure why baseball didn’t opt to cancel all of the March 12 games, which included 8,043 fans for the Yankees-Nationals game in West Palm Beach, 6,137 fans for Braves-Tigers in Lakeland, and 6,118 for Marlins-Cardinals in Jupiter.
After adding attendance at those three games, more than 20,000 fans attended baseball games despite Gobert’s positive COVID-19 test less than 15 hours earlier. In a year where MLB was already under fire from fans for not taking stronger action against the Houston Astros in their cheating scandal, this decision did nothing to instill confidence that MLB had their paying customers’ interests and safety at heart the way other leagues clearly did.
In the end, baseball’s decision cancelled those two games my son and I were looking forward to attending — the March 14 Rays-Blue Jays game in Dunedin and the March 15 Braves-Twins game in Fort Myers. The major sports league and college basketball officials ultimately made the right decision, with the Big East, ACC, and MLB taking a little longer than they should have.
–COVID-19 cases in U.S. as of Thursday March 19: 11,532; Global cases: 191,127
Toby Srebnik is manager of public relations and communications for Truly Nolen Pest Control and has been with the company since 2015. He has spent 19 years in the Public Relations industry as well as 12 years in the Social Media industry and is the only person who is both a past president of the Public Relations Society of America’s Greater Fort Lauderdale and Greater Palm Beach Chapters. In 2019, Srebnik was honored with PRSA Greater Fort Lauderdale’s Wizard PR Award for Communicator of the Year. To contact Srebnik, you can find him on Twitter (@fsutoby) or email him at fsutoby@gmail.com. Srebnik can also be heard on the all-new Pitch to the Rhino Podcast with co-founders Jose Boza & Jarret Streiner: Episode 2 discussing “Where Sports and Social Media Collide” is now available on Apple