Summer camp was as stilted as spring training was casual. Nobody wanted to catch viral cooties, but what's a batting cage for but to hang out, shoulder to shoulder? How can you tell if your clubhouse prank worked if you can't see a whole face full of anguish? And where's the party if there's no condo pool?

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The Mariners are open for the business of baseball training in Seattle Wednesday. Tuesday in Tacoma and Everett, baseball was closed for the season.

News of the fate of the the Mariners' Class AAA affiliate to the south and the Class A affiliate to the north was no surprise. It is hard is to play baseball without players.

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Puke and all, American sports fans will welcome back Major League Baseball.

Always have. Owners are betting fans always will be there -- even when they aren't permitted to attend in person. The belief has been supported by two bedrock truths:

Fans are suckers.

Owners are monopoly operators.

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In a time when no competitions were staged by America's most popular sports, a whole lot of sports is being watched -- through an entirely different prism.

Much of the industry is now inextricably intertwined with the racial politics of a polarized nation under an administration that seeks to keep it that way. The tension is as thick as it is unavoidable.

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We sentimentalize and romanticize baseball like no other American team sport.  Maybe that's why we keep giving it the freedom to break the collective sporting heart. We can't seem to quit on it.

But now might be the easiest time yet to slam the door off its hinges.

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If pro athletes need training camps before the re-start of sports, so do fans.

Here's a prep question for what I'm calling the new covid-based sports world (What? You thought the virus was going away, like a miracle?) to get your sports brain and heart going again:

Will you accept, with understanding, a decision by any of your favorite team's players to sit out games, and perhaps whatever passes for a season, for reasons of personal safety?

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Buried 58 paragraphs into a well-reported story by ESPN.com's baseball staff this week was the money quote regarding the degree of difficulty in re-starting baseball in a pandemic that acts like a stalled hurricane with dozens of on-off switches.

An executive of a risk-management firm, who chairs a Texas task force charged with safely bringing back sports and entertainment, admitted the work "fried my brain" and caused much loss of sleep.

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In March, the University of Washington baseball team was in line at SeaTac Airport to check bags for a flight to Los Angeles. Junior pitcher Jack Enger milled about, joking with teammates while mentally preparing to pitch the next day.

It was opening weekend of Pac-12 Conference play. The Bellevue native was scheduled to take the mound for the first time on Friday night, the spot generally reserved for each staff’s ace. When asked if he was excited, he flatly responded, “It's just another start.”

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As everyday life slowly crawls back up to the hilltop from which it was thrown seven weeks ago, some of the daily incremental developments provide a glimpse of hope. Even for the return of sports.

That includes an update from Gov. Jay Inslee Friday that outlined the four phases he and public health officials want the state's citizens to follow, lest we backslide from our quarantine results into an abyss from which even Seahawks coach Pete Carroll can't happy-talk us out of.

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You don't have to be an epidemiologist to have come to an understanding by now that confirmed cases of coronavirus can erupt anytime, anywhere, from an aircraft carrier in Guam to a prison near Seattle to a pork plant in South Dakota. That randomness haunts the nights of every elected in the country, perhaps save one.

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Mocking the stewardship of major league baseball is one of the game's great traditions, as fulfilling as dribbling tobacco juice down a chin, or second-guessing a manager's choice of reliever after the ball winds up in the right-field seats.

But this week, it's time to break from tradition. I have to admire the brain trust of MLB for conjuring up Bubble Ball.

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Due to COVID-19, there's no Mariners games. Or Sounders games. Or NBA games. Or the NHL or Final Four. If you’re sad that you can’t see any big-time sports this month (and maybe not for awhile) you can still enjoy sports  -- a step removed -- at DJ’s SportsCards, 1630 Duvall Ave. NE in Renton.

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Note: Along with the rest of MLB, Mariners spring training is shut down as sports copes with the novel coronavirus. Before the doors closed Thursday, Jim Caple caught up with rookie Evan White.

PEORIA, AZ. -- Just 23, 1B Evan White has not played in the major leagues, and played only four games at AAA Tacoma – in 2018. He played the 2019 season with the AA Arkansas Travelers, where he batted .293 with 18 home runs in 92 games.

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Below in italics is what I started writing Thursday night for posting Friday morning:

Hey, PGA Tour: The sports nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Following the most grimly astonishing 24 hours in American sports history -- a least, where no one died -- it appears the golfers have the fruited plain to themselves.

For awhile, anyway.

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Despite a smart, coherent, calm presentation Wednesday morning by Gov. Jay Inslee, executives of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan that was unique in civic history, my guess is there's still some skepticism about the drastic measures ordered to mitigate (not contain) COVID-19, the disease produced by novel coronavirus.

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PEORIA, AZ. -- Yusei Kikuchi started pitching when he was 14. He mimicked the American professional players he liked a lot, including one he was not much like.

“At the time growing up, Randy Johnson was my favorite player,’’ he said of the former Mariners star and Hall of Famer.

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Mitch Haniger was the Mariners’ best player in 2018, batting .285 with 26 home runs, 93 RBIs, playing very good defense in the outfield, making the All-Star team and earning some MVP votes. His play helped them to an 89-73 record, their best since 2003.

Haniger also has been an influence in the clubhouse.

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Baseball spring training is probably the most over-wrought annual occurrence on the national sports calendar. In part, that's because sportswriters traveling from lousy winter climates become deliriously rhapsodic when struck by warm sunshine in Arizona and Florida.

Their work strains to convey significance upon the daily developments, pushing back against the irresistible fact that the mammoth 162-game regular season will render moot nearly all trends or conclusions identified in February and March.

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"What's puzzling you is the nature of my game."

-- Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil

After attempting to understand Thursday from spring training the Astros' futile attempt to apologize for baseball's biggest scandal since PEDs, I confess to bewilderment. Mick Jagger's 1968 samba saga about the tangle between good and evil kept creeping into my head.

What is the nature of the Astros' game?

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Responding to a decade-long decline in attendance and relevance in American sports, Major League Baseball apparently is considering for the 2022 season expanding its playoff format from 10 to 14 teams, and throwing in a time-tested selection gimmick from one of reality TV's more mind-numbing shows.

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