Players communicate in different ways these days

Clubhouses quickly empty after games are completed.

SURPRISE, ARIZ. — Hall of Fame third baseman George Brett remembers sitting in the Kansas City Royals clubhouse with teammates long after games ended talking baseball, often sharing a bunch of beer and a bag of potato chips.

When Bruce Bochy was a catcher for San Diego at the end of his playing days in the mid1980s, nearly a decade before becoming the Padres manag- er, there were many late nights listening to stories told by well-traveled championship reliever Rich “Goose” Gossage.

“He’d stay there until 1 or 2 in the morning,” said Bochy, who has won two World Series in San Francisco the past four seasons. “You wouldn’t go home. You felt guilty if you tried to leave, and it’s hard to find a little space in between his stories where you could say, ‘I’ve got to go.’”

That was how many oldschool players spent their time after coming off the field, long before social media and the amenities now so common for major leaguers. Sure, players today still talk baseball and spend plenty of time together — but not the way it used to be.

“The biggest change, guys are in the clubhouse really early. And, after games, they’re out quick,” said Los Angeles Dodgers manager Don Mattingly, who spent his entire 13-year playing career with the New York Yankees. “Now guys are at the ballpark by 1 o’clock — there’s a bunch of guys there already.”

That’s generally six hours or more before first pitch in most parks.

As clubhouse attendants went through their nightly routine of laundry, shining shoes and preparing everything for the next game, it used to be a very crowded space. Players, some still in uniform and others in their underwear, would be talking about the game they had just played or maybe dealing another hand of cards. The clubbies might even have their tasks interrupted to go pick up pizza for the players, or maybe buy more beer and cigarettes.

“We didn’t have a chef, we didn’t have video, we didn’t have a room you could go watch all your at-bats,” said Brett, who played all 21 of his major league seasons with the Royals. “We didn’t have a players’ lounge. We had a locker room.”

These days, it usually doesn’t take very long after games before the clubhouse workers are alone in the smoke-free space as players head home, out to eat or back to the luxury hotels where they stay on the road.

Even when players are headed to the ballpark now, Chicago White Sox manager Robin Ventura notices that most everyone is on a smartphone, usually talking or communicating somehow with someone on the outside instead of teammates sitting with them on the bus.

Mattingly said one thing really hasn’t changed: Players still talk about the game.

“I see them watching the TV screens and talking about different players and things like that,” he said. “It’s just done a little differently.”