We Could Live in This Pandemic Purgatory For a While

It’s still better, much better, than the alternative

On Tuesday night, I went to a baseball game. I am a professional sportswriter, so I’ve sat in the press box for a couple of games during the pandemic, but that’s no way to enjoy a baseball game, even one with no other fans allowed. No, Tuesday, I sat in the stands, in seats I had paid for, with my nine-year-old son, drinking a beer and watching my St. Louis Cardinals beat the Miami Marlins 4–2. It was a gorgeous night in south Florida, the retractable roof was open, we even almost got a foul ball. It was wonderful. It was almost like normal.

It wasn’t the Before Time normal. There was, as with every other stadium open for fans in Major League Baseball, reduced capacity — there were 4,952 fans in attendance, which, all told, isn’t that much more than the perpetually losing Marlins have when they’re at full capacity — and there were no occupied seats within 15 feet of my son and me. We all wore masks throughout, and loanDepot Park had ushers circulating, making sure we kept those masks on. There were no beer vendors, no common areas for commingling fans to gather, no players signing autographs pregame. Most of the concession areas were closed, leading to longer lines, and the bathrooms (the men’s, anyway) roped off two-thirds of their urinals to…