May 2, 2020 5 min read

Gov. Tom Wolf’s decision to move the goal posts on the area – which met his previously stated criteria for beginning to reopen – is going to have long-lasting effects on our economy, our lives and the lives of our children.

Previously, Wolf stated a county would be under consideration to reopen if they had fewer than 50 new cases per 100,000 people over the last two weeks. He dangled the carrot of reopening out there.

Friday, he took it away. No, he yanked it right out from under our noses.

Not coincidentally, the Pony League World Series became the latest cancellation, as the plug was pulled on the 2020 tournament along with all of PONY’s postseason tournaments across the country.

That, however, was not a surprise. Little League Baseball canceled its world series earlier in the week. It was only a matter of time before PONY did the same. After all, with many local businesses struggling to keep their doors open – or because of Wolf’s closures, to stay in business – where was the funding going to come from to put on the tournament?

Beyond that, local baseball leagues, which should be in full swing right now, have been forced to sit on their hands waiting for the stay-at-home order to be lifted.

Meanwhile, Washington County has had 115 total cases of COVID-19, with just 42 of those coming in the past two weeks. Greene County has had 26, with only two coming in the past two weeks.

That should have qualified both counties for reopening. In fact, every county in Southwestern Pennsylvania met Wolf’s criteria with the exception of Beaver County.

And now Wolf is talking about population density. Way to keep moving the goal posts.

Golf courses across the state were finally opened on Friday. They should never have been closed in the first place.

Anyone who doesn’t think there is social distancing in golf has never golfed with me. Unless you can catch COVID-19 down in the woods or over in the high grass, I think I’m safe.

There’s also little reason to keep kids from playing and practicing baseball or taking part in any other noncontact sport.

Eleven or 12 kids on a baseball field are spread out far more than many of the golfers I saw on the course Friday. They’re easily far more distanced than people are in any store in the area.

The NCAA is offering student-athletes who had their senior seasons canceled because of this viral outbreak an additional season of eligibility. But that won’t work at the high school level. And it certainly won’t work for youth sports.

You are, after all, only a kid for so long, as we all know too well.

According to a report in

• USA Today, Major League Baseball is now considering holding its second spring training workouts in the home stadiums of each franchise.

That makes the most sense of anything the league has talked about.

After all, the stadiums are sitting empty right now. And players, who have, at this point, purchased homes or rented places in their city, wouldn’t need to be housed in hotels as they would if the league went ahead with a proposal to take everyone back to Florida and Arizona.

Major League Baseball is still shooting for an opening in early July. We’ll see.

• The Baseball Hall of Fame canceled its induction ceremony scheduled for July 25. The Pro Football Hall of Fame is still in a holding pattern, with its induction weekend still slated to be held Aug. 6-9.

The Steelers, of course, are supposed to be a big part of that. They’re scheduled to play the Dallas Cowboys in the Hall of Fame Game to kick off the preseason in Canton, Ohio, Aug. 6. And then Troy Polamalu and Bill Cowher are scheduled to be inducted two days later.

The Baseball Hall of Fame will induct its 2020 class in 2021. But it can do that much more easily than the Pro Football Hall of Fame can because the baseball class is only four people.

This year’s Pro Football Hall of Fame class has 20 members as part of the NFL’s Centennial Celebration. The Hall is already scheduled to induct its 2020 class in two 10-person groups, one in August, the other in September.

Pushing that 20-member induction ceremony into 2021 would mean there would be 25 or more players going into the Hall of Fame. That’s just too unwieldly to think about.

• NASCAR isn’t just bringing its season back May 17 at Darlington Raceway, it will hold seven races in 11 days there and in Charlotte over an 11-day period.

Talk about jumping in with both feet.

The races will take place without fans in the stands, of course. So, they’ll look something like cruising on I-79 around rush hour. With sponsors.