Baseball, Phillies spinning out of their comfort zone

Baseball, for so long a sports netherworld where throwing leather rocks near someone else’s head at 100 mph qualified as acceptable 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 with Joe the Manager at Citizens Bank Park and so many Average Joes across the street at FDR Park, 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 on the field, but in our Year of the COVID, not doing so in crowded public spaces is to be frowned upon outside of the common political rally. Thus, there they were, these young Phillies at CBP over the weekend, 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 al

lowed. Bless their souls, the players are 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, 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 away from it. Like several other players who would be expected to act as if everything was essentially status quo amid a season that not only was imposed on the players by commissioner Rob Manfred, but is scheduled to last 60 games, Wheeler simply doesn’t know how he’s going to start this summer much less finish it in the fall.

Like the Angels’ Mike Trout, the standard bearer of everything Baseball wants to be, Wheeler’s wife is pregnant. 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 keep asking myself that every single day.”

The prospect of the Phillies playing without Wheeler for part of this short but bittersweet season, much less all of it, could easily be the difference between fighting for a playoff spot and wondering why they entered into this season in the first place.

Commencement Day for 2020, such as it is, is less than three weeks away, but already the Phillies’ 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 and everybody else around here is supposed to keep quiet about.

Elsewhere, HIPAA rules be damned, players are talking about being put on COVID-19 injury lists due to positive tests or late-arriving results or because they rubbed elbows with people who tested positive or 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 at crowded beaches, and hospitals reaching breaking points in a rapidly increasing number of states and presidential politics stupidly overshadowing a national health care crisis that the federal government continues to treat as a problem for individual states ... 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.

Baseball Fever ... try not to catch it, OK?