Beat the drum and hold the phone — the sun came out today. Nearly three months after Opening Day was canceled amod the burgeoning coronavirus outbreak, Major League Baseball and its players union have agreed to play a truncated 60-game regular season starting in late July.
The sides finally sorted out their differences after the pandemic sidelined the season that was to begin in March and has kept America's pastime off the field since. Training camps are set to open by July 1 with real games beginning sometime around July 24.
The league has imposed a September 27 cutoff for the regular season in order to have a legitimate postseason, featuring the usual 10 teams. Few other details were announced today.
The long and often contentious negotiations between the league and the players union had hit some snags in recent weeks, but the final details were hammered out today.
"All remaining issues have been resolved and Players are reporting to training camps," the Major League Baseball Players Association tweeted this evening.
The deal comes the day after MLB owners voted to go ahead with a 60-game season to start in late July. They then asked the MLBPA whether players would agree to open camps by July 1 and agree to health and safety protocols that had helped keep the sides apart.
As most baseball fans know, the league and its powerful players union often have been at odds over money — see 1971, 1981, 1985 and the Lost Season of 1994, and this negotiation was no different. ESPN reports that players will receive the full prorated share of their salaries — about 37% of their full-season salaries and roughly $1.5 billion total.
But the agreement comes as coronavirus cases continue to increase in nearly of America's states including Arizona and Florida, where training camps traditionally are held. No details about the camps were released today.
Back in mid-April, as MLB was struggling to come up with a plan to save its 2020 season, the league agreed to take part in a massive study to test as many as 10,000 people for coronavirus antibodies. At the time, the owners were looking at the possibility of playing all of its games in Arizona without fans — but now that state is among the country's worst hotspots of COVID-19 infections.
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