Minnesota Baseball Association Wants Governor to Open Baseball

The Minnesota Baseball Association Board of Directors had a meeting today and updated their status as currently "closed".  The statement is below:

4/18/2020 MBA Board update regarding the 2020 season

"Currently, the state of amateur baseball is closed. There are no games to be played until further notice. We are not going to play any games until the governor opens up baseball.

Once the governor says go, our games can start the next day.

If there are special rules that we have to follow, we will get them to you before the season and posted on the website.

The board is optimistic that we will play baseball.

We will be sending a letter to the governor urging him to open up baseball."

The MBA had previously requested teams not schedule any games until May 1.  The Governor's current stay at home order goes through May 4.

Most regular season games do not draw massive crowds.  It all depends on what numbers of people the state will allow in one place.

My guess is we will not see any Amateur Baseball games until possibly Memorial Day weekend.  Possibly a limit will be made on crowd size too.  I hope I'm wrong.

The Minnesota Department of Health COVID-19 numbers have shown a higher percentage of positives among the most recent people tested for the virus.  Until that trend stops we probably shouldn't have crowds of people in the same area.

On another note work continues on improvements at Bell Field in Faribault in preparation for the State Amateur Baseball Tournament in 2022.

Last Saturday I stopped by the field to take some updated photos.  You can see the grass looked awesome.

I was asked recently asked by a Faribault Lakers fan if the team was planning on getting a new scoreboard for Bell Field before they host the State Tournament.

I see nothing wrong with the current scoreboard.  It's not fancy with a lot of bells and whistles but has all the essential information a fan needs to watch a game.

Even if there were not a pandemic Faribault High School teams were not going to be allowed to play on the field in April.  They had already planned to play their games at Babe Nordmeier Field in Morristown.