Remember This?

Well, actually, you don't, because this is the new Oracle Park. If you look carefully toward center field and right, you will see the slightly-moved-in fences behind which sit the relocated bullpens.  According to the Giants website, Brandon Belt took BP yesterday and didn't notice, though he thought it was cool when someone pointed it out to him. So, all you offseason worrywarts can find something else to stress about. It's 2020, remember, so that shouldn't be too difficult.

The strangest season in Major League history is sixteen days away. The Giants will open at Dodger Stadium on Thursday evening the 23rd, kicking off a four-game long-weekend series before opening at home against San Diego.  Despite the 60-man roster, the traveling taxi squad, the regionally-limited schedule, and all that, no extra doubleheaders have been scheduled to get a few more games in.  We don't see why the schedule couldn't have been expanded to 72 or 80 games in the same time period, but it wasn't.

"Strange" means cardboard cutouts in the seats. (What happens to them when it rains?) "Strange" means the seating areas around the dugouts being used to enforce six-foot distancing for  players and coaches not in the lineup. "Strange" means the minor-league rule about a designated runner on second when a game goes into extra innings. (Well, it beats a home-run derby or some such to settle games.)  "Strange," or "ominous" if you prefer, means the  DH rule in the National League. (Sorry about that, Bum.) "Strange" means a real likelihood of a .400 hitter this year, and a few undefeated or winless pitchers. "Strange" means some pitcher leading the league with six wins, and a slugger leading the league with 19 homers.  There might be a .750 team. There might be a .250 team or two. No, not the Giants. For some reason we think they'll do all right; not .500, perhaps, but not bad. More on that later.

"Strangest" of all will be the eerie silence pervading the empty ballparks, except the usual BP-style shouts of "encouragement" from the bench. With artificial fans in the seats, will the teams, or the TV and radio networks, feel compelled to provide artificial sound too? (God forbid!) Or will we actually get to hear the players on the field?  (How many of you have actually heard the players on the field? Hide the kids!) If eerie silence is the rule, will the announcers feel compelled to stage-whisper, like they do at the US Open or the Masters? "Posey... approaches the plate... batting five hundred... over his last ten games... stands in... here's the pitch." 

The devout hope among everyone in MLB is that all the "strangeness" will have subsided come playoff time, and will be buried in the dark waters of forgetfulness. Normal extra-inning rules, normal rosters, normal number of qualifying teams, normal structure as before. And let's have some excitement, f'rgawdsake.  That means butts in the seats. Will they be there? No one knows.

Eventually the experts will be obliged to admit that about 95% of the population is already infected, that 90% of us are also asymptomatic, and that natural herd immunity is inevitable, despite all the efforts to prevent it.  We're not saying that allowing fans back into the ballparks come October would be a return to common sense, but it would help.

That's for another day on another site. Meanwhile, Johnny Cueto is lookin' mighty sharp. And, as the song says, you know that can't be bad.