The Washington Post - 19.03.2020

D2 ez re THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAy, MARCH 19 , 2020

“our lives are already in flux,” rosenblum-Larson, 23, s aid when asked what the feeling is among minor league players. “So when this kind of thing happens, it throws us for a loop a little bit. We’re not really sure what’s going to happen.”

‘we have to be really smart’ When the meeting ended at the Nationals’ complex and they were all ushered into limbo, a few players s tarted doing the m ath. one still had most of his $140 stipend. He went to a restau- rant that offers well-priced, healthy m eals that can be refriger- ated. He spent $80 for about a week’s worth of food for him and his girlfriend. That c ould get them to friday — or monday, if they’re conscientious — and by then, he hopes to have a plan. “We have to be really smart with how we spend our money,” the player said. “We have no idea how long this is going to last, so you really can’t t ake any chances.” But one of his teammates was already playing catch-up. This past friday, w hen p layers received their stipends, he spent $22.50 on dinner to celebrate the start of spring training. He called that “splurging a little bit.” So when they were t old t o go h ome and that they wouldn’t get paid, he was mad a t himself for the d ecision. He then went to a mcDonald’s down the street from the complex and o rdered off the d ollar menu. [email protected]

shutdown. “It doesn’t make sense to me at all. It’s really disappoint- ing to see where the priorities lie, as i f it would have been t oo e xpen- sive to keep us in camp. C ome on.” The rays are giving minor leaguers $400 per week for the rest of march, according to Simon rosenblum-Larson, a pitcher in their organization who is more Than Baseball’s director of player personnel. many players are not receiving the same assurance, as indicated by more than a dozen people familiar with t he situation. They were counting on housing, two meals per day at the team facility and their modest weekly stipends until the season began. That would hold them over along with any savings they accumulat- ed in t he offseason. Instead, they are scrambling for answers a nd p art-time w ork. Peter Bayer, a minor leaguer in the oak- land Athletics’ system, recently tweeted that he made $62 deliver- ing food as a DoorDash driver. more Than Baseball lent a player $200 for a two-hour t axi r ide from the airport to his family’s house in Venezuela. rosenblum-Larson recently spoke to a young p layer w ho is planning a wedding for the fall and doesn’t know whether he will be able t o afford i t. The minimum salary f or Class A players was $5,800 in 2019. many players in higher levels made around $15,000. T his winter, mLB announced a raise for minor league wages that will not kick in until 2 021.

COLLEGE B ASKETBALL

Kansas ranked No. 1 in final AP poll

After the u nprecedented cancellation last week o f the NCAA tournament, Kansas finished a top the final Associated Press To p 25 p oll that was released Wednesday. The regular season Big 1 2 champions, who were 28-3 when the s eason abruptly ended after the f irst day of the c onference tournament amid t he w orsening coronavirus pandemic, received 63 of 65 first-place v otes f rom a national media panel. That e asily outdistanced No. 2 Gonzaga and No. 3 Dayton, each of w hich received a first-place vote. No. 4 florida S tate and No. 5 Baylor rounded o ut t he t op five. The AP d oes n ot declare a national champion in college basketball because o f the N CAA tournament, a nd Kansas C oach bill self w as u nwilling to stake claim to a ny k ind of title. “That’s not the w ay t his is all intended to be,” S elf said. maryland was No. 12 in the poll, a nd V irginia was No. 16.

TENNIS The ATP and WTA professional tours suspended all competition through a t least June 7 and froze their rankings “until further notice.” In a rare joint statement b y the men’s a nd w omen’s tours, t hey announced that the e ntire clay- court c ircuit “will not be held as scheduled” — a day a fter t he start of the french open, a lso played on that surface, was postponed from may to September. The ATP To ur a nnounced last week it w as s uspending play

through t he week o f April 20, a nd the WTA Tour s aid monday it was suspending play through may 2.

SOCCER Spanish team Alavés said 15 people with its club h ave become infected with the coronavirus: three players, seven members of i ts coaching staff and five other employees. The club already h ad reported that two members of its staff were infected.... Atlanta United s tar Josef martinez u nderwent surgery on his right k nee more than two weeks after h e tore h is ACL in the club’s mLS o pener feb. 29. martinez is expected to be out for m uch o f the year, t hough the season is n ow on h old.

AUTO RACING The 24 Hours Le mans endurance r ace was postponed for t hree months and will now run Sept. 19-20. The race w as i nitially set for June 13-14.... formula one moved its midseason b reak f rom A ugust t o march and A pril. The break was also extended from 14 days t o 21. four of the season’s 2 2 races have been postponed, and t he sport is hoping that m oving the annual break forward c ould m ake it easier to find new dates later.

SLED DOG RACING Norwegian m usher Thomas waerner e asily won the Iditarod Trail race across A laska, one of the f ew U.S. sporting e vents not canceled. Waerner, 46, c rossed the f inish line in Nome, Alaska, a bout five hours ahead o f his nearest competitor. — From news services

DIGEST

BY SAMANTHA PELL

Less than a week after the NHL
suspended the 2019-20 season, an
ottawa Senators player became
the league’s first athlete to test
positive for the coronavirus, the
team announced in a statement
late Tuesday night.
The player, whom the team did
not identify, has had mild symp-
toms and is in isolation. The
Senators are in the process of
notifying anyone who has had
close contact with the athlete and
are working with team doctors
and public heath officials.
“A s a result of this positive case,
all members of the ottawa Sena-

tors are requested to remain iso- lated, to monitor their health and seek advice from our team medical staff,” the team said in its statement. The Senators’ last three games before the season went on pause march 12 were at San Jose, Ana- heim and Los Angeles. ottawa played in San Jose on march 7, in one of the three games held at SAP Center after officials in Santa Clara County recommended against holding events with large gatherings. Before the news of the league’s first positive test, the NHL’s hope had been to complete a full regular season and award the Stanley

Cup in 2020. The latest NHL directive sent out monday told players, who previously were directed to remain in quarantine in their NHL cities, that they were allowed to go h ome, including to any foreign country. The directive also said players must remain in self-quarantine until march 27. The league also cited the eight-week ban on large gatherings recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and proposed a best-case scenario of training camps reopening around late April. Earlier Tuesday, N BA s uperstar Kevin Durant also tested positive

for the coronavirus, along with three other players on the Brook- lyn Nets. That brought the con- firmed cases of the novel coronavirus among NBA players to seven. According to the Nets, only one of the four players, who were not identified by the team, had exhibited symptoms. The four Nets players joined rudy Gobert and Donovan mitchell of the Utah Jazz and Christian Wood of the Detroit Pistons among those who have tested positive for the coronavirus. Gobert’s positive test led the NBA to suspend its season march 11. [email protected]

Senators player is first in NHL to receive diagnosis

and there is nothing they can fall back to,” said Jeremy Wolf, a co- founder of more Than Baseball, a nonprofit that provides housing, food and equipment aid to minor leaguers. “ They d on’t h ave a union that supports them, so they really have zero say.” While decisions were m ade on a team-by-team basis, mLB made clear recommendations on what to do with minor leaguers. In a memo sent to all 30 clubs Sunday, mLB required teams to keep their spring training facilities open to big league players. Those players should continue to receive allowances for food and housing, the memo stated, and be free to work out individually with a limited staff. minor leaguers, though, were to “return to their offseason residenc- es to the extent practical.” Teams are expected to cover travel costs and to work with players who cannot feasibly return home, whether home is another country or a high- risk area in the United States. In- jured players could stay at spring training to keep rehabbing with their club’s m edical personnel. But t hose were the o nly s tipula- tions. “There are all these reports saying it’s not safe t o travel, t hen they tell us to head h ome immediately,” said a minor leaguer who was training in Phoenix before the

‘They really have zero say’ It w as assistant general manag- er mark Scialabba who broke the news to Nationals minor leaguers Saturday morning. Position players had arrived in West Palm Beach, fla., toward the end of the week and had h ad only one f ormal workout. Pitchers hadn’t been around much longer. Scialabba, who is in charge o f player d evelop- ment, offered to answer any ques- tions. most centered on whether there would be a ny f inancial r elief from the organization, according to three players who were in the room. Each also described a line from Scialabba in a nearly identi- cal way: If it were up to him, the players would receive their usual per diem and get paid come early April. But it’s n ot up to him. When asked monday whether there was a plan to provide finan- cial relief to minor league players in the coming weeks, a Nationals spokeswoman deferred comment to mLB. An mLB spokesman then declined to comment on any spe- cific club’s situation. The under- standing is that mLB is in discus- sions with the players association about how to pay major leaguers during this break and will shift its attention to the minor leaguers after t hat is figured o ut. “[minor league] guys are strug- gling, guys don’t have answers,

Eight minor league players spoke with The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity for fear that doing so publicly and without their team’s permission could lead to punishment. The Nationals player who described himself and others a s “def- initely scared” made $7,500 in 2019, with his l ast check coming in early September. He budgeted his winter income, which he made working at a golf course, to last until the middle of April. But now he will have to get creative with the $140 stipend he received from the t eam friday. “If it’s a couple weeks, fine, we can scrape by and handle this,” he said Sunday afternoon. “But if it gets to be a month, two months, you could see guys quit because they just have to do something e lse to support themselves. That’s my biggest worry, that this isn’t sus- tainable.” A few hours later, the Centers for Disease Control and Preven- tion made an announcement that few players missed: It recommended t hat organizers “ cancel or postpone in-person events that consist of 50 people or more throughout the United States” for the next eight weeks. mLB announced monday that it would comply with those guidelines. It will be a while before there are minor league games.

players three options: Stay in t heir
club’s spring training facility, g o to
their club’s h ome city or go t o their
offseason residence.
But minor league players were
not given the same choices. Base-
ball America reported t hat the
Ta mpa Bay rays, Detroit Tigers,
New York mets, Los Angeles
Dodgers, Boston red Sox, Cleve-
land Indians, San Diego Padres,
St. Louis Cardinals and miami
marlins will continue paying mi-
nor leaguers spring training sti-
pends and meal allowances.
many other players were sent
home w ithout pay or any promise
of weekly stipends, which were
supposed to get them t hrough t he
next few weeks, according to in-
terviews with players, agents and
executives and multiple media
reports. The minor league r egular
season was scheduled to start
April 9 — a date that could get
pushed back by a few months —
and the players won’t get paid
until games begin.
They cannot apply for unem-
ployment assistance because of
their agreements with mLB. They
will have trouble finding jobs, a
few players noted, because they
could have to pick up and l eave in a
week. Ye t without a union, they
have no negotiating power in
these instances.

mInors from D1

Minor league players deal with fear of the unknown

BY LES CARPENTER AND SAM FORTIER

The Washington redskins reached deals with three free agents Wednesday: safety Sean Davis (a former maryland and maret School star), linebacker Nate orchard and running back J.D. mcKissic. The redskins signed orchard in November after an improbable journey that included nine tryouts with teams in 11 weeks, and orchard registered four ta ckles (two for loss), two quar- terback hits, one sack and one fumble recovery in his first game with Washington. The 27-year- old made two crucial plays in the red zone to seal a redskins victory over the Panthers, which ended up being the last game ron rivera coached with Caroli- na. Washington also agreed to terms with the 26-year-old Davis, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. Da- vis, who w as a second-round pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2016, could be an intriguing addition for the redskins. He was a starting safety for the Steelers for m ost of the f irst t hree seasons of his NfL career, inter- cepting five passes and making 185 solo tackles in those years. A shoulder injury landed him on injured reserve one game into

last season, limiting his value on the open market. NfL Network reported that his redskins con- tract is f or one year a nd worth u p to $5 million. Davis fits a pattern for r ivera’s free agent signings in his first offseason as the redskins’ head coach in that Davis can play multiple roles. rivera has said he values versatility, and he has added an offensive lineman who can play all three interior line positions in Wes Schweitzer; three linebackers who can con- tribute in different ways in Jon Bostic, Kevin Pierre-Louis and Thomas Davis; and the team’s prime free agent addition, Kend- all fuller, who can play both outside and inside cornerback positions. mcKissic, 26, is a fifth-year running back out of Arkansas State who bounced around after going undrafted in 2 016 and signing with the Atlanta falcons. He can line up as a running back or wide receiver and is a passing- game threat out of the backfield. Last season with the Detroit Lions, he had 38 rushes for 205 yards and 34 catches for 233 yards. The move could mean rivera and the redskins will be moving on from running back Chris Thompson. [email protected] [email protected]

Redskins bring back Orchard,

sign ex-Terp Davis, McKissic

metaphorically. our hugs will have to be through phones, emails, texts and video calls. The dancing? Perhaps it will be in our hearts as we celebrate medical breakthroughs or falling infection numbers. or perhaps when we can summon the right composition of feeling, we can even dance a bit with anticipation of the day when the pandemic of 2020 will be a thing for history books. This will pass, though with many wounds. We all will find our own touchstones that make the future seem as exciting and expansive as the present seems disturbing and confined. Some of us will rely on the certainty that we will be able to say, “Baseball is back!” And when it is, one town will be able to rev its sense of daily life back up by welcoming the World Series champions to Nationals Park. By presenting big fat rings. Perhaps by saying thanks for “Go 1-0 today.” It will happen. And it won’t take 95 years. [email protected]

For more by thomas Boswell, visit washingtonpost.com/boswell.

After all, when their chances seemed worst with a 19-31 record last may, the Nationals’ motto was, “Go 1-0 today.” right now, I can’t think of a better mantra for a pandemic. When the size of the whole problem is too big to digest in one gulp, only a narrow focus works. When the total time demanded will be measured in months, maybe many of them, one day is an amount of time we can manage. The Nats pushed every day, against the odds, for more than five months. The Nats’ “1-0 today” lockdown was mental, psychological and competitive — and only about baseball. But with the months ahead for all of us — during which the daily focus on health, helping others and lockdowns on unhelpful behaviors is so vital — the Nationals stand out as an almost perfect illustration of making the most of a lousy situation. They boosted one another’s spirits, refused to point blaming fingers and excused the century’s worst bullpen. The Nats also did it while dancing and hugging. That won’t translate now — e xcept

passes, Sean Doolittle nailed it: “You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.” No matter how remote and vague it seems right now, baseball — and the Nationals — will be back. maybe this summer. No one can possibly know. But even as a hypothetical, a half- season starting around July 4 would be plenty of games to decide valid teams to play in a normal october postseason. In the strike-interrupted 1981 season, some teams played as few as 103 games. No one said the Los Angeles Dodgers’ win in the World Series was anything less than a legitimate title. my guess is that, whenever mLB returns, even if it’s next year — let’s not linger over that scenario because of all the far- larger negative implications it carries — the Nats’ concern about being the all-time afterthought champion may disappear. In fact, the situation may even be turned on its head. In Washington, perhaps even throughout American sports, if the timing seems right, the Nationals may seem like an especially proper group to praise.

and that probably will increase.
But when the game does return,
like many ordinary wonderful
things, it suddenly will seem like
an extraordinarily wonderful
thing.
Late last week, when one
element of society after another
shut down like the walls closing
in on a trapped character in a
horror story, the World Series
champion Washington Nationals
shook their heads in
disappointed disbelief. In those
days, the organization realized
that of all the teams that have
won the World Series — much
less the most improbable
comeback run ever seen in
october — these Nats were going
to be the most overshadowed,
upstaged and under-praised on
record.
first, they lost star third
baseman Anthony rendon in
free agency, dimming their
chances to repeat — at least in
the eyes of those in Las Vegas.
Then, the Houston Astros, the
team with which the Nats share a
spring training complex, were
tried and convicted by mLB of
massive team-wide cheating
during the entire 2017 season
and part of 2018, too. Suddenly,
the mountain of shame atop the
Astros’ 2017 World Series title far
surpassed the hillock of faint
praise for the Nats’ win over
those same Astros.
finally, the novel coronavirus
seemed like the last straw in
cosmic, almost comic disrespect.
At least it did as recently as seven
days ago, when the Nats were
still allowed to pack 8,000 people
into the stands for an exhibition
game with the New York Yankees.
Then, in a fraction of a blink,
everything in American daily life
changed, and proper credit for a
baseball championship — e ven
the first one in 95 years in
Washington — seemed
inconsequential relative to a
public health crisis.
The Nats passed that test
nicely, too, putting their concerns
in perspective quickly. max
Scherzer realized immediately
that pro athletes, by attracting
fans and also interacting with
them, were potentially quite
dangerous as virus vectors. “We
don’t want to be at the forefront
of the transmission of this,” he
said.
As for the need to shut down
fast and stay down until the crisis

boswell from D1

THOMAS BOSWELL

Just like last year’s Nats, let us all t ry to ‘Go 1-0 today’

JUlIo cortez/AssocIAteD Press A grounds crew member march 12 in west Palm beach, Fla., sported a sign of the times: a face mask.

The Washington Post - 19.03.2020

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