The long road to the start of the regular season begins this week with training camps opening on time in Florida and Arizona, albeit with many of the same COVID-19 protocols in place as during the 2020 season.
For now, Opening Day is scheduled for April 1: Defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers kicks off in the Colorado Rockies, and the 108-page operations manual for 2021 includes shorter spring training games, mandatory use of tracking devices. contact fines for not wearing the masks correctly and bans on eating indoors and going to the movies.
Fans will be allowed to attend spring training games in limited numbers; Florida teams will limit interstate travel for games; and players will face a five-day quarantine when they first report to camp. Otherwise, all systems are normal, as normal as they can be, anyway.
As the players head to Spring Training, let’s take a tour of the majors to see the biggest story from Spring Training for each team and some key players to watch out for.