Many Questions Remain About A Safe Opening Day

New York has allowed ballparks to operate at 20% as of Opening Day, so the Mets have released information towards filling that capacity. Of course, they’ve sold roughly 100% of Opening Day tickets already, so now they get to attempt to redistribute those tickets to other games of the next two seasons, and re-sell, probably to season ticket holders, Opening Day and other games through early May (for now). 

The protocol for attending are, not surprisingly, sparse. They’re selling ‘pods’ of tickets, and requiring a negative COVID test or vaccination. That’s a start, but I still have a lot of questions.

  1. The guidelines mention showing proof of a negative test. How recent? And what questions are being asked to gauge potential exposure between that negative test and the day of game?
  1. Will ALL bathrooms be open, to spread out the #1 place fans bunch up? 
  1. How far apart are these pods really? Shouting “Let’s Go Mets” expels particles much farther than six feet, especially because the ground is sloped down in the direction fans shout. If I let out a “yeah!” after a strikeout, in between bites, I could easily send droplets many many rows away. 
  1. Will there be guidelines and exit procedures that properly educate and space apart pods so they don’t all try to get out the same way? The same question going in. Will gate assignments be enforced to limit bottlenecks? Where is proof of vaccination or test happening? Are we bottling up entry with even more paperwork? 
  1. If I come down with symptoms the day AFTER the game, are their tracing protocols in place for me to report that? 
  1. Less important, but still valid, if I come down with symptoms the day before, are you going to give me a hard time about straight-refunding my money? 
  1. What percentage of Citi Field staff is vaccinated? Are you requiring or assisting these employees with getting vaccinated, particularly the ones that will be doing admission or handling food? 

It _should_ be possible to have 8000 or so fans in a wide open outdoor area, with good mask usage and hopefully a large percentage of vaccinated fans. Whether it will be or not remains to be seen, and cases in NY are still holding steady and not really decreasing much, only a few weeks before Opening Day. Hopefully they’ll be extra cautious, everyone will behave and get vaccinated, and we can all find ourselves happily at a baseball game this season. 

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