Goldeyes won’t play until July, if at all

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/04/2020 (2348 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The American Association of Independent Baseball announced Tuesday the league is aiming to start the season in early July. The original schedule had the Winnipeg Goldeyes and the rest of the league kicking off the season on May 19.

The league is hoping it can run an 80-game schedule that will extend to late September, according to a press release. Whether that would include a training camp remains to be seen.

“That’s still being discussed,” said Goldeyes general manager Andrew Collier. “The owners have weekly conference calls, sometimes more than once a week. The GMs have weekly conference calls and what kind of training camp we would have, what kind of roster size we would have, all those things are still being discussed by the owners and the league.”

Collier said the league circled April 17 as the day they had to make a decision on whether the season would go ahead as planned. They also have a later date set as a deadline to determine if the plug will be pulled entirely.

“The early July timeline, along with the length of the season, is subject to the ability to hold games in home markets while abiding by federal, state, provincial governments laws and municipal health orders and guidelines,” the release stated; however, it’s hard to imagine under any scenario where it would be acceptable to have players from around the world fly into Winnipeg, travel to the 11 other ballparks across the United States for games and play in front of crowds. Tuesday’s announcement seems to be delaying the inevitable.

“I think the hope is to play 80 games, but everything is changing and fluid at this point,” Collier said.

“I think the main goal of today’s release was just to formally announce we won’t be starting on May 19, the season is postponed and where we’re gonna go from here… The wellness and safety of our players, fans and staff is our utmost concern. We won’t do anything until we have government approval to do so.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31