For baseball fans, few days are more sacred on the calendar than Opening Day.

Opening Day represents a fresh start, where optimism reigns supreme with a summer full of baseball upon us. Unfortunately this year, there is a cloud hanging over the start to the season in the form of the coronavirus.

Unless you have been living in a bubble (which might not be the worst thing in times like this), you have probably heard of outbreak of the coronavirus.

Precautions are being put under way all around the country to try to slow the spread of this virus. Limiting all public gatherings in effected areas is the biggest measure that has been taken to combat the coronavirus.

Just last week, the city of Austin was forced to cancel the widely popular SXSW Music Festival and Conferences, which brings thousands people to Texas each year.

On Wednesday the mayor of San Francisco announced a ban on all public gatherings of more than 1,000 people. Due to this mandate, the Golden State Warriors will be playing tomorrow’s home game against the Brooklyn Nets without any fans present and will continue to do such for the foreseeable future. The San Francisco Giants will be forced to take similar precautions as well.

All of which is to say that Major League Baseball is currently scrambling to come up with alternative plans to avoid a suspended start to the season. These plans could threaten Opening Day taking place at Citi Field on March 26th against the Washington Nationals.

The city of Seattle has announced a similar ban to San Francisco in regards to public gatherings, with the Mariners now searching for a new site to host their Opening Day. According to Evan Drellich of the Athletic, the Mariners may move their first series of the season against the Texas Rangers to their spring training facility in Arizona.

Major League Baseball has made it clear that their preference is to relocate games instead of cancelling them.

If this were simply up to the players, they would want the season to progress as planned without any interruption or changes. In a statement made by MLBPA executive director Tony Clark, he said that the player’s union is working with the MLB and all the local health and government officials to make sure the players are protected.

“Players want to compete and provide entertainment to fans. The Association’s focus will remain to find ways to do so in an environment that protects not just the players’ personal health and safety, but also the health and safety of fans, umpires, ballpark employees, club employees and everyone in the baseball family.” Clark said.

When speaking with the media after the Mets spring training game Wednesday, J.D. Davis did not seem overly concerned with the coronvirus threatening Opening Day in Queens.

When speaking with the media, including Metsmerized’s own Jacob Resnick, prior to Wednesday’s game, Pete Alonso echoed similar sentiments to Davis in regards to wanting the fans at Opening Day.

“Once you hear that crowd roar, you don’t want to play in front of anything else. It’s addicting…To not have that happen would be unfortunate…Having something as serious as coronavirus, you have to balance the risk vs. reward.”

With Opening Day just two weeks away, and the coronavirus hysteria only growing by the day, there is no telling what the impact will be on the regular season. As of now, the Mets have yet to announce any changes to their schedule, but things can change at any moment.

Hopefully the concerns of the coronavirus can be subsided soon enough and this does not effect the Mets season in any major way.