In a Covid world, it’s going to be a long summer
Baseball, for so long the leader of a sports netherworld where throwing leather rocks near someone else’s head at 100 mph was deemed appropriate behavior, has suddenly become a standard bearer of civility in our very upside-down world.
As the Phillies took the field the past few days at Citizens Bank Park with Joe the Manager and across the street at FDR Park with so many Average Joes, there was little of the weirdness that for so many generations was part of the fabric of the game. In fact, it wasn’t allowed.
Normally, wearing a mask would seem a bit odd, but in our Year of the COVID, not doing so in crowded public spaces should be frowned upon.
Yet there they were, these young baseball athletes at CBP, every one of them wearing face coverings of various sorts as they plied their sweaty trades under a boiling sun.
If that weren’t enough, no one was seen ejecting saliva at every point of the infield, no one was patting each other on the butt, no one leaping on high for palm slaps or cheek rubs with a teammate.
Because in this new era of baseball, now a week or so old, such behavior not only would be inappropriate, it isn’t allowed. And bless their souls, they’re complying. And for good reason ... their jobs, at least for now, depend on it.
“Only time will tell,” Joe Girardi The Manager said Sunday. “If we’re able to do this and keep the players safe — and that is the No. 1 priority of Major League Baseball and everyone involved — then I would say we did the right thing. If we can’t keep people safe and all of a sudden we’re seeing a ton of positive tests, you could see Major League Baseball and everyone going in a different direction.
“There’s a lot of people out there who put themselves at risk with this every day when they go to work” — (that would be the Average Joes watching at a distance at FDR Park) — “and whatever we do in life, we could contract it. The difficult part about this is if someone comes into your clubhouse that is asymptomatic and has tested negative, and then it’s spread around, then we have an issue and so far we’ve been able to stay away from that.”
So far, so good.
That was the crux of the message put out Sunday by new Phillies starter Zack Wheeler, who has looked in tune on the field, but is still somewhat conflicted off of it. Like several other players who would be expected to act as if everything was essentially status quote amid a season that not only was imposed on the players by commissioner Rob Manfred, but is — against Manfred’s wishes — scheduled to last 60 games, Wheeler simply doesn’t know how he’s going to start this summer much less finish in the fall.
Like the Angels’ Mike Trout, the standard bearer of everything Baseball wants to promote, Wheeler’s wife is pregnant and the prospect of bringing home whatever might be hanging around in a tight, COVID-ridden clubhouse is downright frightening. But so far...
“We’ve just got to see how things go here at the field and the stadium,” Wheeler said on a Zoom meeting session with the media Sunday. “I’m happy with what I’ve seen so far, but things could change, especially after our baby is born. I always think about what’s going on around me — Is it safe? Is it OK? — literally every single day. I just have to ask myself that and I’m going to continue to keep asking myself that every single day.”
The prospect of the Phillies playing without Wheeler for part of this short season, much less all of it, could easily make the difference between fighting for a playoff spot and wondering why they entered into this season in the first place.
The season start is more than two weeks away, but already their situation seems somewhat dire. For not only is Wheeler spinning his thoughts over what he thinks is best, but No. 1 starter Aaron Nola hasn’t even shown up ... because (hint-hint) of one of those medical reasons that Joe the Manager or anybody else around the team is supposed to be allowed to talk about.
Elsewhere, HIPPA rules be damned, players are freely talking about being put on COVID-19 injury tests due to positive tests or late-arriving test results or because they rubbed elbows with people who tested positive or for any other number of reasons.
While these few days at the ballpark and across the street at the people’s park have seemed relatively stress free, know that the absence of Nola, closer Hector Neris (who did make his first appearance Sunday but isn’t in the clear yet), second baseman Scott Kingery and center fielder Adam Haseley are all part of the medically unseen.
And while the world around it has citizens fighting in public over whether or not to wear a mask, and Covidiots splashing around together on beaches, and hosptials reaching break points in a rapidly increasing number of states and politics stupidly overshadowing a national health care crisis that the federal government continues to treat as a problem for each individual, chaotic state ... Baseball will be promoting its new state of “normalcy.”
All while games are played before tens of thousands of empty seats.
In that sense, it’s going to be a long summer.
Reach Rob Parent at rparent@21st-centurymedia. com and follow him on Twitter @ReluctantSE