Recommended Best Practices for the Field-of-Play:

1. Follow all local and state guidelines for facilities and events.

2. The managers meeting at home plate should be limited to one coach from each team plus the umpires. No players at plate meeting. Eliminate the meeting, if possible.

3. Where possible, consider options for limiting both the pitching and the scorecard exchanges, in order to reduce person-to-person contact.

4. Teams must spread players out; expand the dugout area when room permits and only if player safety will not be compromised. Expansion of the team dugouts should not be done into foul ball areas. Attempt to limit bench personnel to essential team personnel.

5. Parents are encouraged to supply their players with antibacterial wipes and hand sanitizer for disinfecting shared playing equipment and cleaning hands between innings.

6. PPE (Personal Protective Equipment):

   1. All managers/coaches, volunteers, umpires, etc., should wear PPE whenever applicable and possible, such as cloth face coverings and protective medical gloves.

   2. Players should wear cloth face coverings when in close contact areas and in places where recommended social distancing is challenging or not feasible, such as in dugouts.

   3. Players should not wear protective medical gloves on the field during game play.

   4. Players, especially at younger divisions, are not required to wear a cloth face covering while on the field during game play.

   5. Players will be permitted to wear a cloth face covering on the field during game play, if physically able to do so, based on any directive of a medical provider or individual determination of the player/parent/guardian.

   6. Cloth face coverings should not be placed on young children under age 2, anyone who has trouble breathing, or is unconscious, incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the mask without assistance.

7. Teams must clean their dugout of all trash and other items after each game, and to wipe down (clean) hard surfaces such as benches, bat racks, etc.

8. Upon arriving at a dugout for the first time, teams are to disinfect hard surface areas (benches, bat racks, etc.). Procedures #7 and #8 here will comply with the CDC recommendation of a two- step process for cleaning and disinfecting.

9. Consumption of food, gum and sunflower seeds on the field and in the dugout is prohibited.

10. Player Equipment:

    1. Player equipment should be spaced accordingly inside the dugout to prevent direct contact.

    2. Players should have their own individual batter’s helmet, glove, bat, and catcher’s equipment.

    3. Avoid, or minimize, equipment sharing when feasible

    4. Some critical equipment may not be able to be obtained by every individual. When it is necessary to share critical or limited equipment, all surfaces of each piece of shared