The Bay Area will have some live sports to look at for the first time in four months starting next Monday, July 20!
While both teams are doing their abbreviated after-spring training ahead of an abbreviated MLB season, the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A's will face off in a couple of televised exhibition games next Monday and Tuesday, July 20 and 21. The first game, as the Examiner tells us, will be at the Oakland Coliseum on Monday at 6:40 p.m. And the following night the teams will cross the Bay and play at Oracle Park.
These two exhibition games replace what might have happened in the Before Times after the two Bay Area teams finished up spring training in Arizona, but that training was halted due to the coronavirus and only just resumed last week after players and staff were tested for COVID-19.
One Giants prospect, outfielder Hunter Bishop, turned up with a positive test while still in his home state of Arizona, and was set to quarantine there before possibly traveling to the Bay. A couple of other unnamed members of the Giants organization turned up positive, but the team resumed workouts last week after all the players tested negative.
Last week, star catcher Buster Posey announced that he will be sitting this season out, in part due to virus concerns but mostly because he and his wife just adopted two twin baby girls who were born prematurely.
The Giants officially kick off the 60-game 2020 season on Thursday, July 23, at Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles. The A's kick off their season on Friday the 24th at home at the Coliseum.
When the Giants' games start getting televised at Oracle Park — possibly as soon as next Tuesday's exhibition game — you may be seeing goofy cardboard effigies of fans propped in in the stands. Season ticket-holders and other fans who ponied up the cost will get the weird privilege of seeing themselves staring back them from the stands on TV, in lieu of actual live audiences at games.
Previously: Giants Begin 'Spring' Training At Oracle Park Next Week With Cardboard Cut-Outs of Fans In the Stands
