What MLB positives are telling us is that there is too much community spread to avoid the virus. What is more difficult is deciding how much virus to tolerate before changing behavior. The idea that everyone will be fine works, up until the moment it doesn’t.

Athletes might recover easily, but the process of playing will expose older adults like coaches, officials and support staff. The raw number of positives and inability to remain virus-free despite protocols is a warning to every institution considering a return to business.

We’re getting the exact same story from college football, only in larger numbers. Voluntary “workouts” are generating hundreds of positives, on campuses where students will soon be returning. Schools that failed to keep workouts safe will now manage thousands more in that space.

This is revealing our institutional ability to put aside threats to health and safety. As MLB and NCAA teams travel, there is a real possibility they spread virus along the way. The US is fighting a forest fire of virus, so these decisions increase risks to the polity.

We need to put the risks posed by playing sports outside of a bubble into a larger context. What does having hundreds of people traveling with a team cost us in terms of viral spread? What does potential spread mean we can’t accomplish as a society?

And again, sports have been the result of a functioning society. What we have now is the breakdown of that fabric, while trying to stand up sports as an homage to normality. The failure to do that is revealing how broken we are.

We need the discipline sports teach us, the teamwork, the fortitude at this very moment. But not to play games — to instead confront the real world challenge the virus presents. We’ve become so obsessed with a game that we have forgotten sports are practice for this challenge.

The only McManus I know I’m related to is my father. Anything else is possible.