(Reuters) – The St. Louis Cardinals will return to action this weekend after having a total of 14 games postponed while they dealt with a COVID-19 outbreak within the club, Major League Baseball said on Friday.
The Cardinals, who last competed on July 29, will end their two-week hiatus when they play a doubleheader at the Chicago White Sox on Saturday before concluding the three-game series on Sunday.
The two teams were originally supposed to open the three-game series on Thursday in Iowa with the “Field of Dreams” game but that contest near the site of the movie of the same name was previously postponed until 2021 due to the virus.
St. Louis had played just five games in MLB’s 60-game 2020 season when they were sidelined in late July after members of the team tested positive for the virus.
Additional positive tests involving Cardinals players and staff members kept the team from returning to the field in a season that was already postponed nearly four months because of the novel coronavirus.
MLB announced several rescheduling updates to help the Cardinals get their season back on track.
Among the changes, St. Louis will play three doubleheaders at the Chicago Cubs that will consist of the regularly scheduled game and a make-up from last weekend’s scheduled series.
In a separate announcement, MLB and the union representing its players said four of the 12,302 samples collected over the last week returned positive results, a figure that consists of two players and two staff members from the same club.
(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
