The Royals
Royals’ Dozier confident MLB can manage season despite personal experience with COVID
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Faced with more than a 100 pages of safety protocols, social distancing in the clubhouse, coaches on the field wearing masks and rising numbers of COVID-19 coronavirus cases across the country, Kansas City Royals outfielder Hunter Dozier remains hopeful that MLB can pull off a 60-game season.
Dozier is one of the 60 players who reported to Kansas City for spring training 2.0 at Kauffman Stadium.
A Texas native, he has seen the coronavirus in his home state accelerate to the point where the daily new cases quadrupled to more than 6,000 since May, and the positivity rate climbed from 4.5 percent to 14 percent. Dozier’s mother and father each contracted the virus earlier this year.
“My dad is a pilot for American so he got it and he passed it within like two days,” Dozier said. “He had symptoms for one day. He had to go get tested because of American Airlines, but I think he passed it within a couple days and felt fine.
“Of course, he had to take a couple weeks off, but my mom, it took longer. It took like two and a half weeks where she had symptoms every day and wasn’t feeling good. So it kind of got a little scary for her. Luckily, my sister was at home and she’s a nurse. So she was able to really take care of them, which was awesome. But my mom passed it too, and they’re both doing great.”
Dozier spoke to the idea of being vigilant about daily habits while not living in fear of the coronavirus.
“You have to do your part, you have to be responsible,” Dozier said. “But you can’t live scared, the way I look at it. If I do everything right and I still get it. Well, I mean, I can’t control that.”
Last season, Dozier enjoyed a career year with a slash line of .279/.348/.522 along with 26 home runs, 10 triples, 84 RBIs and 75 runs scored.
Dozier, who has his wife Amanda and their two children in the Kansas City area with him for the season, echoed sentiments expressed by others in the organization about players and staff accepting individual responsibility.
“It falls on the individual,” Dozier said. “You just have to be responsible. It might suck. It might be tough, but when it comes down to it, you have that responsibility to wear a face mask, to maybe not go out to eat, to try to keep yourself in your house because we don’t want this thing to blow up. We want to be able to start the season and finish the season. It’s on us.”
Royals manager Mike Matheny also contracted the virus and described his ordeal. Upon contracting the virus, Matheny quarantined alongside his wife, Kristin, who didn’t have symptoms or test positive.
“I did have symptoms,” Matheny said. “We knew. We had a family member test positive, so we knew even before the test because we had exposure, so my wife and I took off and we quarantined just the two of us. And it was kind of exactly the way they said, about three days later, I started feeling it.
“But we laid low and quarantined and stayed away from people and it ran its course. Fortunately I’ve been tested with the right antibody and looking forward to talking with our medical team about being able to donate some plasma and help out however we can in that regard.”
Matheny, 49, spent 13 years as a major-league catcher. He does not fall into the category of high risk of serious complications due to contracting the virus. He also realizes his players, for the most part, fall outside of the most vulnerable demographic.
That doesn’t mean he’s taking the pandemic any more lightly.
“I do realize that anyone at higher risk, they need to be extremely cautious with this,” Matheny said. “I consider myself in good shape and in good health and not at risk, not a high risk, certainly. But I felt it, and I could see somebody at a different place [healthwise] in their life, it would have knocked them pretty good.”