The last baseball postseason began with a stirring comeback and a sudsy celebration. Down to their last few outs in the National League wild-card game, the Washington Nationals rallied to stun the Milwaukee Brewers on their way to a championship. The party was on in the bleachers.

“The amount of beer that was thrown in the air in left field was unbelievable,” Dave Martinez, the Nationals’ manager, recalled a few days ago. “That will always stick in my mind. It was crazy. The players just fed off it, they loved it. Not having fans in the stands, it’s going to be difficult.”

Indeed, when the pandemic postseason starts on Tuesday — with four American League teams hosting openers of a new best-of-three series in the first round — the only spectators will be cardboard cutouts. The division series, league championship series and World Series will be held at neutral sites in California and Texas, so even if Major League Baseball gets approval to sell tickets, no teams will play at their home ballparks in the weightiest rounds.

This is a first for M.L.B., which is finishing its shortest schedule since 1878 this weekend. With no in-stadium revenue for the regular season, the league staged a 60-game sprint to the lucrative playoffs, agreeing with the players’ union on opening night to expand the field to 16 teams, from 10.

Source: New York Times

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