We're still waiting on some particulars to be ironed out between the MLB owners and the MLB Players Association, but we should have an agreement any day now. What we know is that the season will be between 60 and 70 games and there will be an expanded playoffs with 16 qualifying teams.
Baseball purists are already rushing to their keyboards, if not their typewriters, to question the validity and legitimacy of baseball's eventual champion.
Since when is anything in baseball "legitimate?"
The end of the 1919 season was mired in the "Black Sox" scandal. Eight White Sox players conspired to throw the World Series.
Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth's home run record in 1961, but that came with an asterisk because he hit his 61 homers in a 162 game season and not a 154 game campaign.
Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds each surpassed Maris' record, but none of those players have been enshrined in Cooperstown because of their link to steroids.
Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron's all-time home run record, but many consider that feat to be illegitimate because of the BALCO scandal.
In 2017, the Houston Astros were crowned World Series champs only for it to be revealed that they were stealing signs and banging on trash cans!
Hell, last year there were loud accusations that the baseballs that were produced for MLB game use were juiced. 56(!!) players hit 30 or more home runs in 2019. This after just 25 did it in 2018.
I ask again: Since when is anything in baseball "legitimate?"
It's true, the 2020 baseball season is going to be something of a crap shoot. In fact, the Pirates will actually have a chance to make the playoffs! Does that make the eventual World Series champion anything less than the World Series champion? I don't think so.
Baseball has a long history of "illegitimacy!" Why should I care that this season is going to be whacky? Would this years champ being any less deserving than the 2017 Astros? Hell no.
Over the last three months, we've seen ZERO team sports in the United States. The country was gripped by someone called the "Tiger King." It' weird out there, folks. 2020 is on drugs. Maybe on hydroxychloroquine?
The 2020 baseball season is going to be no different. Does that make it "illegitimate?" No more so than anything else in baseball's checkered past.