Finances will be shattered by sports suspensions. But it won't be the stars who suffer
13-Mar-2020 09:00:02 | The Guardian
Most of North America’s major leagues have shuttered during the Covid-19 outbreak. The effects will be particularly hard on stadium workers
On the surface, the Wednesday afternoon matinee between the Chicago White Sox and Baltimore Orioles back in April 2015 appears as nondescript as it gets. It was an early season contest between a pair of teams hurtling toward mediocrity. The Orioles won 8-2, powered by a six-run first inning – but that isn’t why we’re talking about it. Peel back the box score, and the otherwise forgettable game’s novelty comes into focus: it marked the first time in Major League Baseball’s long history that two teams squared off with no fans in attendance, an extraordinary measure taken in response to the unrest in Baltimore that followed the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who was killed in police custody weeks earlier.
Five years after that surreal afternoon in Baltimore, and amid a pandemic that has left people around the world unnerved and anxious, the crowdless game may represent the American sporting community’s only hope of salvaging its competitions – and revenues.
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