Braves' Hamels would leave family to play baseball in 2020
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Atlanta Braves left-hander Cole Hamels would be open to isolating himself from his family if it meant playing baseball in 2020.
Major League Baseball is currently in a holding pattern due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. There are a variety of different proposals that have been floated to try and get the season in, and Hamels, who is about to enter his 15th major-league season, is ready to make the sacrifice.
"It is going to be the time where we have to kind of sacrifice and go and start either training or playing in some location where (family) might not be able to come and watch us," Hamels said during an interview with Jeff Francoeur of FOX Sports South earlier this week. "But if they're able to watch us on TV, I think that's where it's at."
Ideas to try and salvage the MLB season have ranged from isolating players in the Phoenix area to splitting the league into realigned divisions based on their spring training sites. In most of these scenarios, the playoffs could end up extending into the later months of the year.
When any of these ideas could be implemented remains to be seen given the fluidity of the pandemic. On Saturday, a source of Christian Red of NBC News characterized the proposals as being "in the pregame stretch."
Hamels also cited maintaining fan interest as a reason for wanting to get games in this year. It's likely once the season gets going that most games will be played in empty stadiums, but in the long run, the 36-year-old believes simply playing the games will help put people back in stadiums when they're allowed again.
"If we sacrifice a month here and there, that's 30 games, but if we can give the fans 140 more games that they have opportunities to come and maybe a postseason that's a little bit longer ... I think that would jump-start and get the fans a little bit more excited for baseball," the 36-year-old said.
"Because even though we are looking at this season as something that we're trying to salvage, we have to look for it into the future, into 2021, 2022, to keep fans interested, keep them wanting to root on. Because players are gonna have very small windows to be great, teams have small windows before things kind of change, and so you gotta take advantage of it while we can."