Column: First summer camp, then a season like no other

The big sports news from Los Angeles this week — other than the sensational outfield play of clubhouse attendant Francisco “Chico” Herrera — was that the Dodgers will join some other teams and sell fan cutouts to fill seats at Dodger Stadium.

Which, of course, immediately brought up the question: Will they be like real Dodger fans and leave after the seventh inning?

Not that it really matters. Like Chico, the cardboard cutouts are just one more reminder that everything is not as you think you see it in Major League Baseball.

Still, as we edge toward the first midsummer opening day in baseball history, we’ve seen enough in what MLB euphemistically calls summer camp to come to this conclusion:

A season like no other is really no season at all.

Cardboard cutouts in the stands. Players you struggle to name shuffling on and off the field. Rules that appear to have been made up in some fantasy geek convention.

And, worst of all, 60 measly games to decide things — assuming a miracle happens and the season actually goes to plan.

The future of baseball — at least in the near term — is coming into focus. Unfortunately, it seems about as real as the cardboard cutouts that will occupy the Dodger Stadium seats behind home plate normally populated by Hollywood elite.

Actually, Commissioner Rob Manfred and company should have turned to Hollywood for this abbreviated version of a baseball season. The masters of the silver screen might have had enough tricks to roll out to be able to fool fans to make them believe the whole thing is worthwhile.

It’s not, as the intrasquad games that will prepare most teams for the weeks ahead have shown. They’ve been drab affairs that only highlight the absurdity of trying to play a compressed season in the midst of a raging...

source https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Column-First-summer-camp-then-a-season-like-no-15410904.php