NEW YORK (AP) — Baltimore slugger Chris Davis was driving down Florida’s west coast on Interstate 75 from Sarasota to Fort Myers for an exhibition game against the Minnesota Twins when he got the call.
No game tonight. No games for a while.
“Pretty shocked,” Davis said, “just how quickly things have escalated.”
Major League Baseball delayed the start of its season by at least two weeks because of the coronavirus outbreak and suspended the rest of its spring training schedule.
Opening day had been scheduled for March 26.
The announcement came while some spring training games in Florida were still in progress.
MLB followed the NBA, NHL, MLS and college basketball tournaments in altering schedules because of the pandemic.
MLB had not had a mass postponement of openers since 1995.