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The Baseball Lifer

Baseball has come a long way
since the pandemic shut it down

CHARLIE VASCELLARO

Major League Baseball sure has come a long way.

Consider where we were this time last year, at what would usually constitute Major League Baseball’s “Mid-Summer Classic” All-Star Game break, the abbreviated 2020 season had yet to begin.

Delayed for three-and-half months by the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 season did not begin until July 23, cancelling the All-Star Game for the first time since 1945, when the game was called on account of wartime travel restrictions.

A shadowy 60-game season was played without fans in attendance, replaced by cardboard cutout photographs and piped in crowd noise reminiscent of a television sitcom laugh track.

Except it wasn’t funny and it wasn’t much fun.

But the game plodded on all the way through the post season. The Los Angeles Dodgers finally won the World Series after capturing eight straight National League West division titles.

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