While there haven’t been as many sports postponements and cancellations over COVID-19 in 2021 as there were in 2020, there have still been a fair bit of events altered by the pandemic. The latest is Wednesday night’s Washington Nationals-Philadelphia Phillies game, which Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic and Jeff Passan of ESPN both reported has been postponed due to COVID-19 tests with Washington (including star shortstop Trea Turner, who was pulled mid-game from the teams’ game Tuesday after testing positive).
That all seems bad. Here’s the official news from the Phillies:
And here’s more on the numbers involved:
Davey Martinez says 12 positive tests in total, 4 of them players (including Trea Turner), plus "a bunch of staff members." A few have symptoms.
— Mark Zuckerman (@MarkZuckerman) July 28, 2021
While this was only a regionally-televised game (on MASN for the Nationals and NBC Sports Philadelphia for the Phillies) rather than a nationally-televised one, it’s still notable to see it go down. Interestingly enough, this was a MLB Network promotional night:
It’s also interesting that the current plan is to make this game up Thursday as part of a doubleheader. If that outbreak is as large as Passan is suggesting, that may involve a lot of call-ups for the Nationals.
[Ken Rosenthal on Twitter]