IS COVID-19 HUMBLING BASEBALL?

Source: Associated Press

Baseball was a top shelf sport. Expensive. Over the top. Invincible. Standing the test of time. Then COVID-19 struck and closed America's pastime swiftly stopping spring training and forward progress for the 2020 season. In doing so, it humbled baseball. Perhaps, simplified it. At least that is what I am seeing in the Summer Camp squad games at Yankee Stadium this week.

“It’s about doing all the things that hopefully, as a whole, keep us safe and healthy but right now we feel like we’re doing a good job in here of managing,” said Aaron Boone as reported by the New York Post. 

Source: NBC NewYork

The Yankees looked like little leaguers practicing in the temple of all of baseball: The House that Ruth Built. JA Happ and Clarke Schmidt threw impressive baseball amidst the few cameras that captured the innings of the intrasquad twilight game in an empty stadium cut short by a storm to the New York area a couple of hours into the exhibition. 

Clint Frazier donned a mask while at bat during Saturday's game. Aaron Judge sat out with a stiff neck. Aroldis Chapman, Luis Cessa, and DJ LeMahieu all tested positive for the virus.  Baseball has become vulnerable, to something more than just mere injury or age. It has been humbled and likely changed as a result forever.

“It’s kind of hard to say that … we expected to go through the whole season without anyone testing positive. I think that would be remarkable,” Aaron Hicks said. “It’s part of what’s going on right now. You can get the COVID at any time,” reported the Post.

Source: SF Gate

Some players are opting out of the 60 game season entirely for the safety of their families. San Fransisco Giants catcher Buster Posey is one of multiple players who have decided to sit out 2020. Posey and his wife are celebrating the birth of their identical twin girls. He and his wife have four children.

"This ultimately wasn't that difficult a decision for me," Posey said during a Zoom call with reporters on Friday. "From a baseball standpoint, it was a tough decision. From a family standpoint and feeling like making a decision to protect our children, I think it was relatively easy," reported MLB.com.

Yankee Ace Gerrit Cole whose wife gave birth on June 30th to their first son, has decided to play. It is a personal decision to play or to opt out. Baseball has made a number of changes to help protect players, coaches and other staff. Zoom pre and post game interviews, masks, social distancing, and pitchers carrying their own balls to the mound are just a handful of ways of how baseball is pivoting during this new normal.

Is COVID-19 humbling baseball? Absolutely it is. It is showing all of us that we are not invincible. We are vulnerable, we all are, whether you are a baseball playing making millions a year to perform your craft or a health care worker, educator, first responder or a politician. COVID-19 is humbling all of us. And we will be forever changed as a result.

--Suzie Pinstripe

BYB Contributing Editor

Twitter: @suzieprof