The COVID-19 outbreak in the Miami Marlins clubhouse shows Fauci was right — sports can't return without a bubble

• The Miami Marlins are going through an outbreak of COVID-19 cases within the clubhouse that has put the MLB season at risk.
• Over two days, 11 of the 33 players traveling with the Marlins tested positive for COVID-19.
• Dr. Anthony Fauci previously said the NFL season might be at risk in the fall unless the league was willing to play within a "bubble" as the NBA, WNBA, MLS, and NWSL were planning to attempt.
• Just four days after Opening Day, baseball, the first American sport back to playing outside of the confines of a bubble, seems to have proved Fauci's cautions correct.

Less than a week since Opening Day of the 2020 MLB season, the year is already looking like a potential disaster.

On Sunday, the Marlins played a game against the Philadelphia Phillies despite having four known positive cases within the team, including scheduled starting pitcher Jose Urena.

The next morning, a third of the team's traveling players were positive, and now the entire 2020 season is in jeopardy as the MLB figures out how to move forward.

The Marlins scheduled home opener against the Baltimore Orioles was canceled, as was the Phillies game against the Yankees on Monday.

—Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) July 27, 2020

The outbreak in the Marlins' clubhouse is a disappointing development for a league that had hoped to play out the season after delaying Opening Day by four months.

While the NBA, WNBA, MLS, and NWSL have all begun their respective restarts, MLB was the first American sport attempting to begin outside of a controlled "bubble" environment, with teams traveling to their respective cities and home stadiums for games.

In June, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious-disease expert in the country, told CNN that playing within a bubble may be the only way for sports to happen this fall.

Fauci was speaking about the possibility of playing football in the fall, but his comments could just as easily be applied to baseball given the outbreak on the Marlins.

"Unless players are essentially in a bubble — insulated from the community and they are tested nearly every day — it would be very hard to see how football is able to be played this fall," Fauci said, according to CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta. "If there is a second wave, which is certainly a possibility and which would be complicated by the predictable flu season, football may not happen this year."

Despite his warnings, Fauci didn't seem to be against the MLB's plan to restart, going as far as to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day for the Washington Nationals. That was just hours after the team found out that start outfield Juan Soto had tested positive and would be unable to play that night.

Playing outside of a bubble offers plenty of comforts for players and the league alike — players aren't forced to leave their families for months at a time, and the league is saved from the logistical nightmare of putting up 30 teams worth of players in one city and carrying out a season with some degree of normalcy.

But given the dangers of COVID-19 and how quickly the virus can spread throughout close-interacting groups, the advantage of the bubble is great. By bringing players into environments isolated from the outside world, it's easier to contain the outbreaks that may happen, and carry on business as usual once the bubble is established with two weeks without a positive case.

When the MLS first moved to restart its season with the MLS is Back tournament, two teams — Nashville SC and FC Dallas — were both forced to pull out due to an outbreak of COVID-19 cases in their respective clubs. Once those teams were removed from the tournament and their bubble was established, the league has been able to carry on without much trouble.

—Mark J. Burns (@markjburns88) July 27, 2020

It might be too late for baseball to figure out a plan that sends teams into a bubble to play out what was already going to be a shortened season. For the NFL, the logistics are even more difficult, given the large rosters and coaching staffs within the sport.

But even with the difficulties involved, it's possible that the NFL's best bet to play out the 2020 season in full is to look towards some sort of bubble plan, per Fauci's advice. If they don't, their season could be derailed by an outbreak just as quickly as the MLB.

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