Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: ‘America Needs Baseball’

In a Thursday interview, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he told Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred that, “America Needs Baseball.”

Speaking to a local Louisville, Kentucky, radio station, McConnell noted that he recently spoke to Manfred.

“I called the commissioner of baseball a couple weeks ago and said, ‘America needs baseball. It’s a sign of getting back to normal. Any chance?'” McConnell told the hosts on 93.9 FM sports radio. “As you may have heard, there is discussion about having an abbreviated season beginning around the Fourth of July where teams would either play in their spring training sites in Arizona or Florida or play at home to largely empty stadiums. There’s an active discussion underway to salvage part of baseball season.”

McConnell is far from the only member of the establishment in D.C. to urge baseball’s return.

On Wednesday, the president spoke up for baseball, as well. “I’d like to see the Yankees play at Yankee Stadium,” Trump said at the White House while discussing the process to reopen America.

There has been a raft of reports from insiders offering a growing list of ideas on how to play a 2020 season. Some include having the season played only in warm climate states such as Arizona, Texas, and Florida.

Trump, though, was not fond of the idea.

“I see they have some ideas for baseball that are very different,” he said. “I guess I’m a traditionalist, but I think they’d be able to play at Yankee stadium with obviously smaller crowds and crowds would start to build as things get to be a little bit better.”

The president also said that he feels a stadium practicing social distancing would be odd. “When I look at a baseball game, I want to see people right next to each other; I don’t want to see four seats in between every person,” he said.

Trump also hoped for baseball’s return in comments on April 14 when he said, “We have to get our sports back. I’m tired of watching baseball games that are 14 years old.”

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