Dodgers Reopening Stadium and Spring Training Facilities Means Real Baseball Just Got Closer

There's still a ways to go in reconciling the position of MLB players and the demands of the owners when it comes to sussing out finances for the 2020 season, but we just witnessed a solid step forward in the march to real, live baseball that should not go unnoticed.

The Los Angeles Dodgers have officially reopened both Dodger Stadium and Camelback Ranch, their Spring Training facility in Arizona, to players and medical personnel on a limited basis.

It's a modest development on its face, but given the essentially unconditional COVID-19 shutdowns in our major cities that barred anything of the sort from taking place for about two months straight, baseball fans ought to applaud this progress out west.

Additionally, local authorities will use Dodger Stadium as a go-to site for frequent coronavirus testing, another necessary step in ensuring that any attempted returns to normalcy won't quickly blow up in all our faces.

If the Dodgers can pull this off at Chavez Ravine and in Glendale and ensure health and safety day by day, their move will serve as a helpful template for similar reopenings around the MLB. We've been itching for baseball ever since watching Spring Training get halted indefinitely, and with that in mind, we should embrace modest but meaningful developments like this one.