Cruel, pointless and utterly beloved.

A requiem for the minor league baseball season, and for summer as we know it.

Is it summer in America without minor league baseball? We’re going to find out.

By the time the announcement was officially made yesterday, it was practically a foregone conclusion that there would be no minor league baseball season in 2020. While Major League Baseball’s owners and players union battled through a protracted negotiation over the still-tenuous plan to hold an abbreviated season in the sport’s top flight, there was little to no public discussion of what would happen in its sprawling lower tiers. Minor league baseball was treated as it always is: as an afterthought.

The minors are a cruel enterprise when you truly stop to think about them: athletes who are among the very best in the world at their particular sport — but not the top 750 or so individuals — are rewarded for this near-mastery of a complex and difficult skill set by being treated like a carnival sideshow, made to wear Paw Patrol- or Star Wars-themed jerseys while grinding out a long schedule for sometimes less…