The Korean Baseball Organization has outlined a plan to get its season underway amid the coronavirus pandemic, with one notable rule prohibiting spitting. But at least one major leaguer has reservations about policing such a habit and wonders if MLB players are capable of abstaining from it.
"People spit at home plate when I'm squatting and it blows in my face; that stuff happens all the time, it's nuts," veteran catcher Kurt Suzuki told Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle. "Guys lick their fingers all the time; I don't know how you'd even take precautions to stop that.
"If you're thinking about not licking your fingers or not spitting, you're not focused on the task at hand."
Suzuki, 36, won a World Series with the Washington Nationals last year and has also played for the Minnesota Twins, Oakland Athletics, and Atlanta Braves.
For his part, the one-time All-Star thinks other potential hygienic measures - such as disallowing players from touching their own faces - will be impossible to enforce, particularly if the MLB season begins at spring sites in Arizona as the league has reportedly proposed.
"You're telling me, in Arizona I'm sweating my butt off and I can't touch my face?" Suzuki asked. "There's no way."
Other players expressed concern for pitchers who regularly lick their fingers and handle a baseball that frequently changes hands.
"If I was a pitcher, right now I wouldn't be going to my mouth. I could see that being a rule," Oakland outfielder Mark Canha told Slusser before offering a few ideas of his own.
"What if you put hand sanitizer on the mound?" he mused. "That would be a good idea. Maybe they could come up with a sanitizer that also provides a grip for pitchers, that would be awesome. Maybe they could put sinks in the dugout, hand-washing stations.
"I think we're all going to come out of it being a little more health-conscious. It's completely changing life as we know it."
Whatever happens next, Athletics manager Bob Melvin - a self-professed germophobe who keeps a large container of hand sanitizer in the dugout at all times - believes the coronavirus pandemic will leave baseball more hygienic than ever before.
"I think this ordeal will definitely make players think twice," Melvin told Slusser. "Create a whole different perspective on that."
