Cardinals History: COVID-19 pandemic shut down the baseball world 5 years ago today

It's hard to forget where you were five years ago today.

The evening prior, the NBA shut down its league after WHO declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. The floodgates opened following that historic announcement as sports leagues, universities, workplaces, and pretty much every institution were rocked by the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19.

On March 12th, 2020, Major League Baseball announced that spring training had been suspended and Opening Day was going to be delayed due to the pandemic. Most of us were still wrapping our heads around the idea that the world was shutting down before our eyes, and few of us realized just how long things would be different for many of the things we've grown accustomed to having in our lives.

The MLB season finally began on July 23rd and was shortened to a 60-game season where teams would only face off against "regional opponents" in order to cut down on travel in an effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Fans were not allowed at the ballpark, so teams got creative with pumping in crowd noise or putting up cardboard cutouts of fans all across the stadium. It was a very strange year, to say the least.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to one of the most difficult seasons in franchise history for the Cardinals.

The St. Louis Cardinals were arguably impacted by the pandemic more than any other team. Just a few games into the season, the club had a COVID outbreak among the players and staff, and it led to a 17-day break between games, the longest midseason break in MLB history that was not due to a work stoppage after a total of 18 players and staff ended up testing positive.

Due to this, the Cardinals were scheduled to play 53 games in 44 days, an insane stretch of baseball as the club played catch-up with the rest of the league. Doubleheaders became extremely common, and the club relied on its depth heavily to get through that grind to end the season. The Cardinals amazingly still made the playoffs (albeit in a much-expanded format), but would fall to the San Diego Padres in the first round.

Personally, it's wild to think that it has been five years now since the world shut down. Everyone's lives were changed by this global pandemic, and while it has become a politically charged topic on both sides of the aisle, it's worth pausing today to remember and reflect on what it was like to live through that moment and how it has shaped each of us in the aftermath.

Sure, we could spend many articles talking about the impact COVID had on the Cardinals organization, how it could have accelerated the deterioration of their player development, and how different things could have looked if we had never had this pandemic, but the more important conversations will revolve around us personally. Some of you reading may have experienced loss due to the pandemic in a variety of ways (loss of life, jobs, financial security, mental or physical health, etc.), and our world is still feeling the impacts of it in so many ways.

In some ways, it feels like the longest five years, and in other ways, that milestone snuck up on me. I'll never forget where I was when the world shut down, and I hope I can say I've used this tragic situation to evaluate my priorities and pursue what matters most. I encourage you to take a moment to pause today and reflect on that as well.