Yay or nay, they’ll be ready to deal with it either way.

That’s basically the reaction officials from the New Hampshire Fisher Cats in Manchester and Lowell (Mass.) Spinners have to the report – since denied by Minor League Baseball – that the minor leagues will not see games at all for the 2020 season due to the pandemic.

“The best thing we can do is plan for all these different scenarios,” Fisher Cats president Mike Ramshaw said Friday. “It’s not just Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball telling us, it’s what is the government is going to tell us what we can do.”

Minor league baseball fans in the Nashua area frequent games for both teams and certainly had to be taken back by the original news. Reports surfaced Wednesday that word went out to minor league players that there would be no season in 2020 but that the major league teams would play with expanded (likely 40-man) rosters. Some reports also said that there would be a developmental league with training and players would potentially play games out of spring training facilities.

MiLB issued a quick denial shortly after the reports surfaced.

“The report circulating (Wednesday night) that the 2020 Minor League Baseball season has been canceled is false,” MiLB’s statement said. “Minor League Baseball has confirmed with Major League Baseball that no such statement was made. No decision has been made as to when it will be safe to begin the 2020 season.”

The Spinners are the New York-Penn League Class A short season affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. They’re in a different situation than the Fisher Cats , the Toronto Blue Jays Double A affiliate, as Lowell’s season isn’t scheduled to start until mid-June. Their owner, David Heller, sits on the board of trustees for Minor League Baseball.

“We have a direct pipeline,” Smith said. “We’ve been aware every step of the way what has been transpiring a little before it transpires. … All I can really do is refer to that statement from MiLB.

“MLB made it very, very clear, they’re going to rely on the CDC and government recommendations. MLB will be making the decision for us.”

The Spinners home, LeLacheur Park, has been shut down as a Lowell city facility. A couple of groundskeepers work separately, Smith said, to keep the field in shape and a couple of employees are allowed in sporadically to perform financial and on line merchandise sale duties.

The Fisher Cats office is closed to the public, Ramshaw said, and their employees are working from home, but their mission was to come up with ways to keep the team and the community engaged. “How do you get consumers to have confidence to buy during this but also help the community in doing so?” Ramshaw said.

The answer was some merchandise and ticket voucher programs that fans can see on the team’s web site to support the Granite United Way COVID-19 Relief Fund. The team has already developed an exchange program for tickets purchased for the April games that were cancelled and those coming up this month.

Meanwhile, Smith says that all the season prep work for the Spinners is done. They’ll be ready if they get the word.

But what will that word be? Play with no fans? That would be tough, said Ramshaw, since revenue – tickets, concessions and merchandise – is fan driven.

And if the season is indeed cancelled? “It would be difficult, but we’ll get through it,” Ramshaw said.

And Smith noted that any decision would impact the entire minor league baseball industry. One league at one level (say Triple A) wouldn’t play in one part of the country while another, say at Double A or Class A short season, would.

“It’s going to be all,” Smith said, “or nothing.”

And both the Fisher Cats, Spinners and their fans are rooting hard for the former.

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