Adam Ottavino Becomes First Yankee to Endorse MLB's Plan to Restart Games in May

The baseball community has been itching to get back to playing America’s Pastime ever since the league opted to shut down Spring Training in early March due to COVID-19 fears. Today, reports surfaced that the MLB is considering a plan to start games back up in Arizona in an isolated setting. There would be no fans present, with seven-inning double-headers proposed as a way to salvage a 162-game season.

This roadmap isn't set in stone and surely needs some refining, but it does give fans and players alike a glimmer of hope about the season actually getting started before the dog days of summer. Adam Ottavino, relief pitcher for the Yankees, summed up his feelings directly: players will do anything to play. He is one of the first to endorse this proposed plan, and he won't be the last.

Even though baseball could never be the same without fans in the stands, having live, competitive baseball games to consume on television would provide a needed injection of excitement in these strange days.

There are still a number of logistical problems to sort out, of course, as the MLB has to figure out a system to test players for coronavirus continually, but this proposal is worth keeping an eye on as it evolves.

Baseball would definitely not be quite the same as we remember it games are shorter, umpires are forced to judge balls and strikes from a distance, and most mound visits are eliminated, but no solution during the course of this pandemic is going to be perfect. In the meantime, it's not hard to understand why Ottavino would be willing to make some concessions in orde to make sure that baseball can start happening again.