Summer in the city suddenly sounds a lot more appealing.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday that the state would support professional teams’ efforts to reopen their facilities and hold games without fans for now — an especially good sign for the Yankees and Mets, who aspire to start their 2020 regular seasons at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field in July.
“I … have been encouraging major sports teams to plan reopenings without fans. But the games could be televised,” Cuomo announced at his daily news conference. “New York State will help those major sports franchises to do just that. Hockey, basketball, baseball, football, whoever can reopen. We’re a ready, willing and able partner.”
Cuomo’s reopening committee, introduced in late April, includes a healthy sports representation, with Madison Square Garden CEO James Dolan (who owns the Knicks and Rangers) joining Yankees president Randy Levine and Mets COO Jeff Wilpon as well as Kim Pegula, the co-owner of Buffalo’s Bills and Sabres. Hence the governor and his office have been in regular contact with myriad powerful figures from the New York professional sports world.
While the NBA and NHL haven’t decided on firm plans to restart their seasons, which were postponed in March — and the NFL isn’t scheduled to start until September — Major League Baseball and the Players Association recently opened negotiations in the hopes of convening for spring training next month and then playing a schedule about half of the standard length, ideally at the 30 teams’ home ballparks. MLB initiated those talks by focusing on safety and health issues, a nod to the concerns of public health officials as well as of the players themselves.
The players and owners must collectively sign off on both safety/health and financial terms, the latter of which figures to produce a particularly tense debate, before anyone takes the field.
Those fields, however, now seem more likely to welcome the New York clubs with open arms. On Saturday, Cuomo announced that horse racing tracks and the car racing at Watkins Glen upstate can open without fans on June 1. Monday’s announcement marked a logical progression from that.
New York City, which houses the Yankees in The Bronx and the Mets in Queens, has not yet reached all seven of Cuomo’s thresholds to reopen the area to nonessential businesses as well as more extensive activities; as of Monday, the city stood at three down, four to go, the areas of need covering hospitalizations, total beds and intensive care unit beds available and the number of contact tracers in the region. Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday in a news briefing that he aimed to hit all seven by the first half of June, which would afford the Yankees and Mets sufficient time to bring baseball back to the Big Apple.
The governors of Texas and California announced on Monday that pro sports could resume without fans on May 31 and June 1, respectively, making it all in all a very encouraging day for sports fans.