As far as Dr. Anthony S. Fauci can remember, last season was the first time that his life was almost completely devoid of watching baseball. “To my great pain,” he said in an interview with The New York Times on Friday night. He added later, “It was really terrible.”
Before the coronavirus pandemic turned the world upside down and consumed his life, Fauci, the U.S. government’s leading infectious disease specialist and adviser to seven presidents, loved a suspension of the work that came from visiting Nationals Park, opening up a beer, eating a dog and watching your beloved national championships. Growing up, he played in Brooklyn sandlots, loved the Yankees and memorized player statistics.
“My year was a year completely lost,” said Fauci, 80. “I hope that next year will be a little different, but that will depend on the dynamics of the outbreak.”
With spring training starting next week in Arizona and Florida – both the most frequent virus spots – and the Major League Baseball season set to begin on April 1, Fauci discussed the public health challenges ahead, his optimism that a normal 162-game season can be played, his belief that fans can safely return to the open air, and what he said to baseball officials.
Although you didn’t watch a lot of baseball last season, do you at least know what the national championship was like? (After winning the World Series title in 2019, they reached 26-34 in 2020 – tied last in the National East League.)
Yes, a little disappointing. But we will be back.
From the point of view of health, you followed and saw how MLB and the players controlled the 2020 season without a bubble – from the first outbreaks in the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals that damaged the season to the tightening of bubble-like protocols and conditions during the postseason?
Unfortunately, I can’t really comment on it intelligently because I was completely out of it. I feel bad because I’m a baseball fanatic, but I was completely out of it. I was only working 18, 19 hours a day, seven days a week. I did not have time.
Federal officials spoke separately with the MLB and the players’ union last week. Did you recommend that the season be postponed or continued as planned?
I was not recommending one path over the other because it was very clear that there was tension between the Major League Baseball leadership and the Players Association – that the players wanted to keep the season on schedule and there was some concern about whether they or it should not delay it, which would have wage and other implications. I couldn’t get involved in this.
I just said that, from the point of view of public health, it seems that the cases – if you look at the plot of the cases – have peaked, are changing and are starting to decrease. And, probably, the more time passes, the less and less cases we will see. Unless – less – and this is a possibility, we have an unexpected increase related to some of the variants. So I think it would be a really tough decision and I didn’t want to get into the dispute about delaying or not delaying.
I would just say that whatever you do, you have to do the best you can to protect the players and the people associated with the game, because you don’t want them to end up being infected. Over time, more and more vaccines will be available. And I imagine that within a reasonable period of time the players and everyone else will be able to be vaccinated. I don’t think that will happen before the start of the season, but I think it would be something that is on the horizon.
Anyway, I didn’t want to take sides in any dispute because I think it’s an empirical decision. It is really a trial.
Do other professional sports leagues also ask for advice?
They all have. And that’s why I’m a little shy about it, because it was taken out of context. They ask me questions that are scientific public health issues, and I give them answers based on solid scientific data. The decision they make is up to them.
Although cases are trending down, they are still higher than when the 2020 season started on July 23. Are you more or less optimistic that a longer season of 162 games can be completed?
What makes me optimistic – but I must emphasize that it is cautious optimism – is that, although the cases are high in relation to this time of last year, they are in decline. And with each passing day, it seems that it gets less and less. If you look back a month or more, we had 300,000 to 400,000 cases a day. Now, in the last consecutive days, we have had less than 100,000 cases, which has decreased considerably.
So, as the slopes continue to decline, we are going in the right direction. Overlay this with the fact that we now have highly effective vaccines being launched. We are vaccinating more and more people every day. And we will have more and more vaccines available over the weeks and months. So it looks like we’re going in the right direction. Whether or not to stay in that direction will depend on a lot of things: will people continue to be careful and implement public health measures? What will happen to the variants? Are they going to make things more difficult by having an additional increase in infections? I do not know.
The big wildcard in this is the variants. As the variant that is in the UK is likely to become more dominant in the United States, the models tell us that this is likely to happen in late March. If we don’t adhere to public health measures the way we should, this could take off for us. That is why I say that I am cautiously optimistic, because we could turn around and go in the opposite direction very quickly.
Regulations may vary in different communities, but what do you think of the likelihood of fans in the stands during spring workout and the regular season?
The positive aspect of baseball is that most of it takes place outdoors. And if you space people out well, you make people wear masks, you have situations where people don’t flock to concessions close to each other to get food and things like that, you can do it in a very safe way, I believe .
New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that as of February 23, with testing requirements, distance and facial coverage, arenas and stadiums with 10,000 or more seats can host 10 percent of the venue’s capacity. Is that advisable?
If you are going to do this indoors, you need to have significantly less capacity than if you do it outdoors. Outdoor is a great escape valve for the transmission of respiratory diseases. The outside is always better than the inside.
As a big Nationals fan, would you go back to Nationals Park to watch a game this season?
It would depend entirely on the level of the virus in the community. If every time you look at the graphs in the newspaper about infections, it keeps falling, falling and falling, then when I’m getting ready to go to a game – where, for me, it’s hot enough to go to a game – I can do a lot well decide that I want to go to the stands. But again, it’s hard to make a decision in the middle of the cold month of February about something you can do in March or April, because you don’t know what the level of infection will be.
On a final note, you want to throw another first ceremonial pitch after last year wandering pitch at Nationals Park on opening day?
I would like a chance to redeem myself. (Laughing.)
Did you have that opportunity?
No, they haven’t mentioned anything about it yet.
Are you at least practicing in the meantime?
I do not have. That was the problem of why I played so badly: I practiced so much that I hurt my arm.