Tom Haudricourt
Players have a lot on their minds, on and off the field, during pandemic baseball.
One week down. Two to go. Fingers crossed.
That was the situation Saturday as the Brewers embarked on the second week of Summer Camp in Major League Baseball's grand experiment. So far, so good for the Bubble Boys of Summer but when you look around at the real world, COVID-19 isn't going away anytime soon.
With a virus as relentless as Lorenzo Cain chasing down a fly ball in the gap, players continue to duck their heads and follow protocols that are the new normal for baseball. Social distancing remains the order of the day, while life on and off the field carries on in a completely different way.
Players and staff have two more weeks to get used to things they've never done in their lives, all the way back to T-ball as children. Rules changes are one thing, and there are plenty of those. But lifestyle changes, both on and off the field, challenge muscle memory of elite athletes who are being asked to do things differently, for their own safety.
“It's been different,” said instructor Charlie Greene, who has run minor league camps for the Brewers for years in Phoenix. “It's been difficult for everybody. We got told on Friday, March 13 that spring was over and nobody knew if we were going back.
“Social distancing is tough because baseball is a very social sport. You're in groups, you're always with guys. To keep separate is sort of different. But it's a way of life that everyone's getting used to. Everyone's wearing masks off the field. I don't think I've
ever washed my hands this much.
“Everyone is trying to do their part. They understand how important baseball is and sports in general. Hopefully, football happens in the fall. It’s been tough on everybody because guys (not in camp) who have been in the sport longer than me, they can’t remember the last summer they had without baseball.”
Beyond trying to get ready for a shortened 60-game season, players are having to think about things they never had to worry about constantly in the past. Families have always been important, obviously, but never more so than now as they try to process playing baseball during a deadly pandemic that again is spreading like wildfire.
San Francisco all-star catcher Buster Posey announced Friday he is opting out of the season, and for very good reason. He and his wife are adopting twins who were born eight weeks prematurely and will need neonatal intensive care for some time.
Amazingly, there was some criticism of that decision by small-minded people who said Posey was bailing on his team when it needed him most. I have one piece of advice for those critics: Shut up and try showing a modicum of compassion. Players are making choices they’ve never had to make in the past. Milwaukee’s Brock Holt has a wife, Ladyn, who is seven months pregnant but, as a 32year-old utility player, he didn’t feel comfortable opting out without harming his career, so he is in camp. He stays in touch with her and young son Griff through FaceTime but they rarely leave his train of thought.
Brewers pitcher Josh Lindblom and wife Aurielle have a 3-year-old daughter, Monroe, who was born with the same type of heart defect that former Milwaukee infielder Travis Shaw and wife Lindy experienced with newborn daughter Ryann a couple of years ago. Monroe already has undergone two open-heart surgeries and obviously needs to be protected from any contagious disease that she would be more vulnerable to than other children.
The Lindbloms, who have two other young children, daughter Presley and son Palmer, moved up to Milwaukee from their home in Lafayette, Indiana, several weeks ago and, like all parents in these perilous times, are doing everything in their power to keep their family safe.
“We were kind of prepared for this, I feel like,” Lindblom said Saturday morning during a Zoom session with reporters. “After Monroe’s first open-heart surgery, when she was a week old, it was flu season. So, these were protocols that we took when it was flu season.
“She had her surgery around November (2016), so then we had Thanksgiving and Christmas, when families were gathering. If you were sick, we didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas with you. If you had a runny nose, you didn’t come over. No one held her. Everyone was washing their hands and we had hand sanitizer set up all over the house.
“So, we were kind of ready for this but that doesn’t ease your mind all the way. Knowing that I have a responsibility to protect her when I go to the field and take the extra precautions, it’s necessary.”
Because players and their families are all in this thing together, whether physically separated or not – Ryan Braun left his family behind in Los Angeles after the recent birth of a third child, son Carter – manager Craig Counsell arranged for a massive Zoom session on the video board at Miller Park at the outset of camp. Players on the field got to see their wives and children waving to them in real time, and under these circumstances, it was emotional for many.
“Everybody thought it was just kind of, like, a cool thing to have the families Zoom in, but the context was these are the people that we’re taking care of, too,” Lindblom said. “We had team meetings and Brock Holt said, ‘I’m doing this for your daughter. I’m doing this for your newborns.’ That’s the context that it was happening in, so it was really powerful for ‘Couns’ to do that. And just to hear teammates say, ‘I’m doing this not only for you, but for your family.’
“That’s what makes this a close-knit team, especially a team like we have where there’s a bunch of new guys.”
These are the things players are thinking about as they assemble each day at Miller Park in what has been an unusually long stretch of steamy weather. Yes, the no-spitting and no-high fiving rules are challenging in their own way, but they also serve as constant reminders that we are living in a dangerous world these days, one in which the family-first concept is ever present.
“We’re trying to stay sane,” Lindblom said of the parenting challenges during a pandemic. “One of the biggest challenges of this is our kids aren’t going to sit in the house all day. We’re trying to find safe ways to get out and not expose ourselves (to the virus).
“Kids are going to be kids. They are going to lick monkey bars and eat dirt, and stuff like that. We try to limit them from doing that.”
All while trying to prepare to play baseball at the highest level, under the most unusual circumstances ever created.
One week down. Two to go. Then on to a 60-game season and hopefully postseason baseball.
Fingers crossed.