Yankees Mike Ford and David Hale to Give Virtual Baseball Camp Lessons to Kids

New York Yankees' players Mike Ford and David Hale have volunteered to give zoom lessons to kids who have been deprived of their baseball camp amidst the ongoing lockdown.

The novel coronavirus has rapidly spread to all the continents of the world except Antarctica, causing a halt in social activities, including Baseball camps for kids.

Every summer, the Rising Star Baseball Camp, which is located in New Rochelle, New York, usually opens its doors to kids. Unfortunately, this year there will be no baseball camp due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

In a laudable move, Yankees' first baseman Mike Ford and pitcher David Hale offered to give virtual lessons to young campers of the New York-based Baseball Camp.

The professional MLB players' zoom lessons will focus on different areas of the game, including pitching and hitting insights and a side-topic on how to stay motivated during the lockdown. Reacting to the news, the kids' coach, Darren Gurney, said:

"In the absence of the boys' ability to play, it is so important to continue to foster their love of the game and to encourage them to stay fit..."

In March, the MLB suspended spring training for the 2020 season and followed that up by indefinitely moving the opening day of the season forward as the virus wreaked havoc in the United States.

However, the MLB is considering scheduling the opening day for the 2020 season in July, after a historic virtual draft that will take place next month.

The United States currently has over 1.7 million confirmed cases, with more than 100,000 deaths.

According to a memo obtained by ESPN, the MLB will be holding this year's draft remotely, following in the footsteps of the NFL, which had its 2020 draft done virtually last month.

Meanwhile, in April, several players in the MLB volunteered to take part in groundbreaking COVID-19 antibody research, which is geared towards determining immunity. Speaking on the development, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford, and heading the research, said:

"This kind of study would have taken years to organize outside of this setting. With the help of MLB, we've managed to do this in a matter of weeks."

The study will include over 10,000 people scattered in different cities in the US. It will seek to determine how many people in different parts of America have been infected with the highly contagious virus.

Getting the exact amounts of people infected with the virus has proved elusive due to a lack of diagnostic testing for symptomatic and asymptomatic people.

The United States currently has over 1.7 million confirmed cases of Coronavirus, with more than 100,000 deaths, the highest death toll worldwide.

With the recent news about the remote draft and the opening of the league, the MLB is on course to be the first league to open in the US amidst the novel coronavirus pandemic.