Baseball swings and misses in first week

The Miami Marlins won’t play again until at least Monday after as many as 17 employees, including 15 players, tested positive for COVID-19. The Philadelphia Phillies, whom Miami played over the weekend, are sidelined until at least Friday. Major League Baseball on Tuesday rescheduled upcoming games to work around the outbreak.

When will other sports start? The NBA is set to relaunch its 2020 season on Thursday from the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex near Orlando, Fla., where teams will play eight games each to determine playoff seeding. To make up for the absence of fans, the league plans to work with Microsoft to add virtual faces and sounds to TV broadcasts. Qualifiers for the NHL’s Stanley Cup playoffs start on Saturday: Toronto will host the Eastern Conference games while Edmonton will host the Western Conference contests.

Dig deeper: Read Marvin Olasky’s interview with the author of War Fever, a book that covers how baseball adapted during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918.