Yahoo! Sports, May 29, 2020
In mid-May, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Blake Snell started an uproar with comments he made about a potential COVID-shortened 2020 Major League Baseball season. "For me to take a pay cut is not happening, because the risk is through the roof... it's a shorter season, less pay… I gotta get my money," he said on a live Twitch feed. The former Cy Young Award winner, who in 2019 signed a five-year, $50 million contract, was pilloried as a very wealthy man worried about his fortune while an estimated 40 percent of households making less than $40,000 lost their jobs in March. The optics were not good. Snell hurried to clarify, telling the Tampa Bay Times, "It's just scary to risk my life to get COVID-19 as well as not knowing and spreading it to others. I just want everyone to be healthy and get back to our normal lives, 'cause I know I miss mine!"