PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

Okay, I was wrong.

I wrote a few days ago that baseball, in a nod to trying to re-start in the coronavirus pandemic, would outlaw spitting.

Good, I said then, as I noted how often I have been tempted to count the number of times baseball players spit when I watched a game on TV.

Stop I would say – and it was a welcome development when the pandemic would do the deed.

But the Wall Street Journal set me straight this week with a story under this headline:

Actually, There Will Be Spitting in Baseball—When Players Are Tested

MLB’s plan for playing through coronavirus involves what may be the most high-profile use of saliva tests, rather than swabs, to screen for infection

The story went on:

“In the bizarro season Major League Baseball (MLB) hopes to have this summer, players will be forced to do the unthinkable in order to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus: Refrain from spitting, a tradition as much a part of the game as the ceremonial first pitch and seventh-inning stretch.

“Under MLB’s proposed health and safety protocol to play amid a global pandemic, sunflower seeds and smokeless tobacco are considered contraband. Communal water jugs are outlawed. Licking one’s fingers is against the rules. Players will be required to keep their saliva in their mouths at all times.

“Except, that is, in one key instance: when they’re being tested for the virus.

“MLB is betting big on saliva tests for coronavirus as the mechanism that will allow it to proceed this year. In doing so, it will become perhaps the highest-profile employer to embrace the approach on such a large scale. The league plans to test all personnel—including players, coaches, umpires and other employees deemed essential—several times a week as part of a plan to play a fan-less, shortened schedule that does not subject employees to a quarantine.”

So, horror of horrors for me, a partial baseball fan, we’ll be back to spitting, part of the so-called “national pastime.”

Makes me want to spit!