Emptiness in sports world
D-Backs, MLB’s hiatus brings memories of past pro sports stoppages
Baseball’s opening day on Thursday was closed. The four major pro sports all have had work stoppages before, with parallels to today as players and fans alike share feelings of not knowing when things will return to normalcy.
Baseball stadiums across America were quiet on Thursday, empty and eerie. Instead of Opening Day – normally reserved for big crowds and flyovers – baseball season officially entered a stoppage, a postponement aimed at helping contain a deadly virus.
In early spring baseball typically joins the NBA, NHL and college basketball in sports’ busiest point on the calendar. Instead, every stadium and arena is dark.
Every big four sport has dealt with shutdowns before, and although the parallels to what’s happening today aren’t perfect, there are common feelings of loss, of not knowing what to do, of not knowing when things will return to normal.
When sports should be happening but aren’t, fans and athletes alike share the sensation of an itch that cannot be scratched.
Here are some memories from few former athletes who were impacted by past work stoppages.
MLB: 1994 strike
In a late game on the west coast, the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics were playing what turned out to be the final game of the 1994 season. Infielder Torey Lovullo, then with the Mariners, remembers it well.
“We walked off the field and got in the clubhouse and everybody looked at one another and said, ‘What now?’” Lovullo recalled. “Our player (union) rep said, ‘Don’t come to work tomorrow. Head on home.’ Which is what I did.”
In that sense, Lovullo said, his experience during the baseball strike in 1994 has some overlap with what has been happening in recent weeks with the coronavirus pandemic, which has brought the sports world to a halt.
“That was obviously a different flavor -- a work stoppage by choice -- but you get that feeling that you’re supposed to be somewhere,” said Lovullo, the Diamondbacks manager. “Your body and your mind are trying to tell you to go one place and your heart is telling you to go in another. It’s an awkward feeling.”
Lovullo remembers returning home to Southern California and doing his best to stay up to date with the bargaining talks; in the days before social media and 24hour news cycles, that meant constant phone calls to Mariners catcher Dan Wilson, the team’s union rep.
Lovullo also remembers working out with other major leaguers in the Los Angeles area. In that respect, he wonders how the coronavirus experience will end up comparing, given the social distancing recommendations and the closing of gyms.
“It’s such an odd comparison because of the uniqueness of what we’re dealing with,” he said. “Nobody knows what to do. Every time I’m standing next to somebody, I’m worried. I’m doing my part now to stay clear of everybody else.”
Another MLB player who was impacted by the 1994 strike, which began Aug. 12 and wiped out the rest of the season was Detroit Tigers shortstop Alan Trammell.
He was nearing the end of what would be a 20-year, Hall of Fame career when the baseball season abruptly stopped.
“There’s one similarity,” Trammell said, comparing that year to what is happening now in the sports world. “The similarity is that there’s no baseball. But that’s about it.”
When the players went home, they hoped it would get the owners’ attention, an agreement could be reached and the season could be saved. It did not work out that way. Instead, the World Series was cancelled and baseball did not return until late April 1995.
“(The strike) was done by choice, so to speak, whether from the players’ side or the owners’ side,” Trammell said. “Baseball wasn’t being played, but there was life and everything else was normal. This, as we know, is not. This could be lives -- this could be death.”
During the strike Trammell tried his best to stay in shape. He did cardio work. He threw. He did a little hitting. For a short time, he also helped coach the University of Michigan baseball team.
Eventually, the strike ended and baseball returned. Trammell hopes that, in the end, there might be other similarities between then and now.
He recalls how players were able to hurriedly prepare during an abbreviated, three-week spring training in 1995. He remembers how rosters were expanded to 28 for the beginning of the season to help ease pitchers back into shape.
But, for now, all anyone can do is wait to see how things play out.
“These players, with the clocks in their bodies, it’s foreign to them to not be able to crank it up right now,” Trammell said. “Not knowing what’s going to happen, for any athlete in all sports, it’s uncharted waters.”
When players went on strike in 1994, pitcher Aaron Sele figured he might as well make good use of the time. He went back to college, enrolling in three courses at Washington State as he worked toward a psychology degree.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” Sele said. “Washington State had a great facility and they allowed me to work out there. I think in the back of my mind I was like, ‘I’ll go here for a couple of weeks and work out, and if I go back to work then I’ll just drop my classes.’ I didn’t end up going back to work, so I got a few more credits under my belt.”
Sele’s experience serves as another reminder of how vastly different that shutdown was in baseball’s history compared to this one. Current players have little choice but to sit at home and wait.
“This is national health crisis,” Sele said. “That was literally business.”
At the time, Sele was in his mid-20s. He had roughly a year’s service time in the majors with the Boston Red Sox. He said he barely knew where to park his car at Fenway Park, let alone anything about a labor negotiation.
He knew players before him had sacrificed in previous labor disputes, and he believed his generation was merely doing the same. He said he never thought otherwise, never had second-thoughts about the strike.
Back at Washington State, where he had played before leaving for a pro baseball career after his junior year, Sele took a statistics class. He remembers this, he said, because it was “the hardest class I ever took in my life.” But he passed.
Still, that semester marks the last college credits Sele earned. He remains short of that psychology degree. Now a scout with the Chicago Cubs, Sele could use his downtime in the same way.
“I was probably only three or four classes away,” he said. “I’ve actually thought about it.”
NBA: 2011-12 lockout
Jamal Crawford played 19 NBA seasons, finishing his career with the Suns in 2018-19.
Crawford was with Portland when the
NBA owners locked out the players on July 1, 2011, with the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement. It was the fourth lockout in the NBA since 1995, lasted 161 days and cut the regular season from 82 to 66 games.
“It’s tough with the unknown (about when the season might resume,” Crawford said. “During the last lockout, we were working out every day not sure when things are even (or) if they would get back to normal. You still do what you have to do to stay ready, and stay in shape, but the workouts may change over the course of time, just so it doesn’t get repetitive, and it keeps the mind fresh.”
Crawford said guys played “open gym” with many of them playing in Seattle, his hometown.
“A lot of NBA guys were here, so we would set up games. L.A. Fitness. Different places. Boys and Girls clubs.”
Crawford said he is still pretty connected with players in the league, and that under the circumstances “the players would be happy just to be back out there playing when it’s safe for everyone.
“I’m just hoping this is resolved soon, but it’s gonna take all of us working together from social distancing to helping your community in this time, and looking out for each other. Only way we’re gonna beat this.”
NFL: 1982, 1987 strikes
Like pro athletes today in a holding pattern, quarterback Jeff Rutledge, in his first year with the New York Giants, kept asking himself in 1982, “How long is this going to last?”
An NFL players’ strike lasted 57 days, reducing a 16-game schedule to just nine.
“I was meeting a new team,” he said.
“A tight end and I were meeting at a park and throwing. Just trying to do something, not knowing what was going to happen.”
He experienced a second strike in 1987, this one causing Weeks 4-6 to be played by replacement players. Rutledge, who had been a Giants backup, crossed the picket line, along with legendary linebacker Lawrence Taylor, for the third replacement players game. By then, the Giants, coming off a Super Bowl championship, were 0-5.
“Right or wrong, I went back and played one game,” said Rutledge, who led Alabama to a national championship in 1978. “It was what I thought was right for myself and my family.”
It’s a different situation now, with everybody impacted, not just athletes.
Rutledge said he feels for the current NBA players, who suddenly were forced to stop playing after Utah Jazz player Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus two weeks ago. The league suspended play the next day.
“It’s got to be devastating,” Rutledge said. “You play your whole year to have an opportunity to win a championship. Obviously, the health and well-being of our country is first. But you hate it for your guys, how hard it was.”
Rutledge, who was the quarterbacks coach of the Cardinals’ 2007 Super Bowl team and once coached Chandler Valley Christian High School, now resides in Nashville where he is near his 11 grandchildren, hoping a high school would hire him as a coach.
“Applied for a bunch (of jobs),” he said. “I still think I’ve got a lot of football in me.”