MLB Shutting Down Spring Training Sites For Deep Clean Over COVID Concerns
What started as one or two is now all. Major League Baseball is closing all of the spring training sites in Arizona and Florida for a deep cleaning and will not permit players or staff to return until they take and pass a COVID-19 test, USA Today is reporting.
Earlier on Friday, the Philadelphia Phillies and Toronto Blue Jays both shut down their facilities in Florida because of positive tests and players showing symptoms of coronavirus. On Thursday, the San Francisco Giants shut down their facilities in Arizona after a player and family member exhibited symptoms of the virus.
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The players' association was told by Major League Baseball that teams will not agree to more than 60 games in the pandemic-delayed season.
After Commissioner Rob Manfred said the sides had reached a framework for a 60-game regular season, union head Tony Clark refused to call it a framework and said his eight-player executive subcommittee rejected it.
The union countered with a 70-game schedule as part of a proposal that left the sides about $275 million apart. A meeting of the players' executive board is likely to take place Saturday.
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On the day the United States commemorated the liberation of slaves following the American civil war, the Twins removed a monument of Calvin Griffin from the grounds of their home stadium of Target Field as a response to insensitive remarks he made about African-Americans during a speech in 1978.
The statue's removal comes on the same day that officials with the NFL's Washington Redskins ordered the removal of a statue of George Preston Marshall that stood outside the their onetime home of RFK Stadium.
Marshall had a longstanding policy of refusing to sign black players for the majority of his ownership of the Redskins, which lasted from the franchise's inception in Boston in 1932 until his death in 1969.