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“And I had a moment where, selfishly, I was pretty sad. I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me, like there are great things happening, I want to continue to watch these guys play and I love baseball.’ That’s why I’m doing this. I love the game of baseball and I don’t want to stop watching the game. Caught myself about 30 seconds into that, thinking about the broader challenges that we’re facing as a society and the demands that leadership have, and our role in that, as an industry, as a team, and as individuals and immediately shifted back to what we need to do,” Shapiro said.

And that led into the meeting with the players and coaches where management did its best to be supportive, communicative “and to help them understand the gravity of what we’re facing. And the importance of our roles as leaders and ensuring we do the best we can to help and not hurt the dilemma that we’re facing as a society and as a community. And most importantly, that obviously is not fostering crowds, not fostering mass gatherings,” he said.

“So the easiest thing we can do is understand and support that we’re not playing baseball in front of our fans.

“The concerns that we have are far greater than the Blue Jays, they’re more focussed on our community and broader mankind, as we’re all kind of dealing with the uncertainty that lies ahead and doing the best we can to navigate through this challenge.”

AROUND THE BASES

Shapiro says Blue Jays staff — in Toronto, in Florida or scouting around the world — are being pushed to work from home and not in large areas … While some athletes (like the NBA’s Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kevin Love) and owners (Ilitch Holding in Detroit and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment in Toronto) have said they will be putting up $100,000-$1 million to help cover the wages of part-time event staffers impacted by the postponements, Shapiro said nothing has been firmed up yet on that front by the Blue Jays. Dunedin will be significantly impacted financially by losing over a week of spring training revenues. “As we start to get to the things that come after Monday, and secondary and tertiary issues, their welfare is certainly one of the things that we’re dealing with but as of right now we’re dealing with the immediacy of how do we manage through the next 72 hours,” Shapiro said … The team was also not presently concerned with any potential border issues looming (such as closures). “I think we’re very aware that we’re a Canadian club and beyond the pride of that we haven’t felt that that’s an issue we need to deal with right now,” he said.