A16| Tuesday, April 7, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
THE MOST PRESSINGcon-
cern in Los Angeles Dodgers
pitcher Ross Stripling’s pro-
fessional life these days in-
volves avoiding injury. Not to
his body, necessarily, but to
his pride: He needs to hop
over a chain-link fence to play
catch, and a mishap might
permanently fracture his ego.
Stripling considers his
climbing adventures an occu-
pational hazard under the
current circumstances, with
the baseball season—and ev-
ery other American profes-
sional league—on an indefi-
nite pause because of the
coronavirus pandemic. The
hiatus has forced players to
find creative ways to hone
their skills, like Stephen
Curry struggling to assemble
a hoop in his driveway or
Joey Gallo building a make-
shift batting cage in his
apartment.
But pitchers can’t do that.
The very act of hurling a ball
overhand 100 times or more
every five days leaves pitch-
ers in a perpetual state of
risk for serious injury.
“A basketball player could
have a gym to stay in shape
and get shots up, so when
they call, they’re ready to go
in a matter of days,” Stripling
said last week. “For a pitcher
that’s, quite frankly, impossi-
ble.”
Avoiding injury requires
pitchers to maintain a rigid
schedule, with no room for
even the slightest deviation
from mid-February through
September. During spring
training, they progress back-
ward from opening day to
slowly prepare their arms for
the rigor of the marathon
known as a baseball season.
When training camps
abruptly closed on March 12,
two weeks before opening
day, most starters had ad-
vanced to about 70 pitches
per outing. Now, no calendar
exists, leaving pitchers in a
weird limbo. They need to
keep throwing to remain fresh
Odorizzi said. “Taking time
off would be too detrimental.”
Not everyone has that lux-
ury: Lucas Giolito of the Chi-
cago White Sox said that he
has been throwing into a net
set up in his backyard and a
fence at a nearby park.
“As a starting pitcher it’s
important to try and get off
a slope as much as possible
and try to get up-and-down
work to maintain that stam-
ina,” Giolito said. “We’re do-
ing our best to do that with
limited resources.”
At some point the pitch-
ers will have to try to ramp
back up after cooling down,
a reality they’ve never had
to contend with before.
Striplings said he thinks
pitching rotations would
need 3 to 3½ weeks of a
second “spring training” be-
fore playing real games.
Odorizzi hopes he could
be ready with just two exhi-
bition starts, enough to go
from 70 pitches to around- Still, he acknowledged,
“Starters are the ones at
biggest risk when all this
The Masters, which would
have been played this week
but was called off in response
to the coronavirus, has been
given a new home on the golf
calendar.
The “intended dates” for
this year’s Masters at Augusta
National Golf Club are now
Nov. 12-15, placing the presti-
gious tournament seven
months after it was originally
scheduled.
“We want to emphasize
that our future plans are in-
cumbent upon favorable
counsel and direction from
health officials,” club chair-
man Fred Ridley wrote in a
memo. The average tempera-
ture in Augusta, Ga., on Nov.
15 is 69 degrees, according to
the website Weather Under-
ground.
Also on Monday, the Brit-
ish Open was canceled for the
first time since World War II.
Previously, in March, the
Players Championship was
called off after the first
round, as event organizers
slammed the brakes on large
gatherings.
The PGA of America said
that the PGA Championship,
which was originally set to
take place in May, is now
scheduled to tee off Aug. 6
and will remain at TPC Hard-
ing Park in San Francisco.
The USGA rescheduled the
U.S. Open for one month after
that, starting on Sept. 17. The
tournament will stay at
Winged Foot Golf Club in Ma-
maroneck, N.Y., and had been
originally set for the middle
of June.Tiger Woods at the MastersFROM LEFT: GREGORY BULL/ASSOCIATED PRESS; ERIK S. LESSER/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCKcomes around.”
Any schedule in 2020, no
matter when it starts, will be
more compressed than usual.
Both MLB and the players’
union have said they want to
try to play as many games as
possible. They have discussed
having scheduled double-
headers, scheduled off days
and regular-season games
through October to cram
more games into a shorter
period.
Recognizing the issues, the
league appears willing to ex-
plore making structural
changes to help pitchers. One
possibility is having ex-
panded rosters, so teams
would have additional arms
at their disposal.
They’ll need them, since
nobody expects pitchers to
be fully ready when the sea-
son starts.
“Chances are we’re not go-
ing to have the perfect build-
up,” Johnson said. “So if
we’re not going to have
enough time, how can we
findwaystobecreativeand
innovative?”JASON GAY
An Opening Day That Wasn’t
A spring baseball ritual for Little Leaguers is canceled—but it’s a trivial matter in a deadly crisis
ROB CARR/GETTY IMAGES
An empty baseball field in Towson, Md. Little League is on hold this season.SPORTS
from the mound, sits down
for a while, and then returns
to the mound, just as he
would during an actual start.
He wants to hover at the 60-
to-70 pitch mark through the
end of April and then plan to
reassess based on whether
more information
has emerged
about when the
season might
start.
To do
this, he has
a portable
mound at his
home near
Tampa, Fla.,
and has gone out
to throw at a local
park with his teammate,
Tyler Clippard. Odorizzi also
has access to a local facility
that has opened its doors to
him so he can throw to a
catcher—all while practicing
proper social distancing to
avoid infection.
“We thought that was the
best plan of attack because
our bodies are so used to
throwing during this period,”enough to begin the season
quickly, without overdoing it
and hurting their arms.
Nobody knows the right
approach. Interviews with
several MLB pitchers and
coaches last week revealed
just one common truth: Mak-
ing the wrong choices now
could result in serious conse-
quences if the 2020 cam-
paign happens.
“There certainly isn’t a
scientific answer, because
it’s never happened before,”
Cincinnati Reds pitching
coach Derek Johnson said.
“There isn’t any sort of tem-
plate for this.”
Johnson is trying to create
one on the fly. He had all of
his pitchers fill out a survey
explaining their situation,
such as whether they have a
throwing partner or access to
gym equipment. Then John-
son gave each of them rec-
ommendations for a plan
based on their responses and
offered advice about how to
work out with simple house-
hold items.
Some pitchers have it eas-
ier than others. Stripling
hasn’t thrown off a mound
since everything stopped.
He’s been hopping over a
fence to get onto a field in
Houston to throw and
play long toss a
couple of times a
week along
with Minne-
sota’s Tyler
Duffey, Oak-
land’s Daniel
Mengden and
free agent
Scott Kazmir.
“It’s impossible
in this quarantined
life to expect 150 major-
league starters to find some-
where to throw four innings
and stay built up like it’s the
middle of March,” Stripling
said.
Right-hander Jake Odor-
izzi, an All-Star for the Twins
in 2019, is choosing to throw
a simulated game once a
week. That means he throws
an inning’s worth of pitchesBYJAREDDIAMOND BYANDREWBEATON
The Masters
Moves to
November
This pandemic has exposed fault
lines between the vulnerable and the
privileged. To fret about a Little
League parade is a blessing.
Still, a locked ball field on a sunny
spring day feels unnatural. So much
does on our locked-down planet
right now. The other day, President
Trump tweeted to the nation’s Little
Leaguers to “hang in there,” and
“you will be playing baseball soon,”
and that sounds great, but I don’t
know about that. Does anyone?
We’re still doing batting practice,
in a little concrete strip behind our
building. I’ve got a bucket of foam
balls that won’t break any of my
neighbor’s windows—at least I hope
not—and we’ve carved out a home
plate and give it a go a few times a
week. I’ve got the 7-year-old out
there, and the 5-year-old, too. The 7-
year-old swings like a drunk lumber-
jack; I need to get him my colleague
Jared Diamond’s new book, “Swing
Kings,” and explain to him that if he
doesn’t start focusing on an upward
trajectory, and improve his launchangle, he’s never going to get that
$350 million MLB contract and take
care of his old man.
The 5-year-old, she’s a natural. I
think we’ve got something there.
She’s got a year or so until Little
League, but watch out. Scott Boras:
call me.
We look like lunatics, a father and
two small children back in this alley-
way, foam baseballs bouncing all
over the place, but it’s my favorite
part of the day. It’s our ritual. Every-
one has rituals now. Perhaps you’re
cooking more. Perhaps you’re read-
ing books—not your phone, not a
device, but real-life books, with
pages and stuff. Perhaps you’re one
of these people who has organized
the garage, then organized the ga-
rage again, and then organized the
garage again, to the point where the
garage asks:Are we really going to
do this again? You know where the
rake is.
Perhaps you’ve done nothing at
all. It’s OK. Again: This is a judg-
ment-free column. I ate a cookie at9:30 a.m. yesterday.
The thing about these rituals is,
they’re comforting. Simply being
able to focus on little things is
deeply fortunate. There’s a lot of
unimaginable out there. There’s
bravery, but people are in crisis,
too. The sirens are constant. Every
time I think the sirens are starting
to calm down, I hear another.
This is the new normal for now,
a recalibration. In sports, you can
tell that people are getting jumpy
to get going again; the White House
huddled with league commissioners
over the weekend and kicked
around the possibilities of when
and how they might resume. But
this is all just talk, because nobody
really knows—the situation is far
too fluid; the risks unknown. A
story in the Journal put it suc-
cinctly:When will you feel safe
around 20,000 strangers again?
I don’t know. It sounds nice. But
I don’t know.
Fornow,wemakedowiththe
rituals, along with strange new hab-its. On Sunday morning, I watched a
“virtual” bike race contested by top
professional cyclists—the action un-
folding on a computer screen as
real-life quarantined cyclists ped-
aled furiously on stationary trainers
in their basements and living
rooms. It was a piddling substitute
for the actual thing, but even the
approximation was soothing. Some
NBA players competed in a basket-
ball videogame contest the other
night; ESPN covered it like it was
the Western Conference Finals. Now
they’re reportedly trying to arrange
a game of virtual H-O-R-S-E.
Sure. Why not?
Nothing’s surprising anymore. I
have a feeling it’s going to be a
good long while for us to return to
normal. I wonder what the normal
will be—if life will forever change
after this. I do know I want pa-
rades, but the first should be for
the doctors, nurses, emergency re-
sponders and essential workers.
Then the Little Leaguers, so we can
finally play ball.First of all, how is ev-
eryone doing? I know:
It’s weird and probably
a bit ooey-gooey for a
sports column to begin
with a question like
that, and I promise to knock it off
when this whole thing is over. But I
hope you’re doing OK. I hope you’re
healthy, and your loved ones are,
too, and you’re able to stay home, if
you’re able to stay home. If you need
to be out there working, thank you.
If you’re baking three pounds of
chocolate chip cookies every day,
and eating them by yourself, also
thank you. This is a judgment-free
column. You should see the haircut I
gave myself. I look like I was getting
a decent haircut, and then I got at-
tacked by a rabid animal. It’s fine.
It’s OK. I’m lucky and I know it, even
if I have a really terrible haircut.
This past Saturday was supposed
to be our local Little League parade.
If you’ve ever been to one of these
things, you know they’re the best.
Here it’s close to a thousand Little
Leaguers, from a few different or-
ganizations, all in their brand-new,
yet-to-be-grass-stained uniforms,
clickety-clacking in their cleats up a
closed-off street to the city ball
fields. It isn’t orderly; this ain’t
Macy’s Thanksgiving. It’s a bunch of
sugared-up Little Leaguers. Mr. Met
was supposedly coming. There’s a
band and a drum corps. Someone
gives a speech. The kids get bored
and clang their aluminum bats on
the ground. All they want to do is
chase each other around.
The important thing about the
parade is what it signifies:Play Ball.
Two words that no one’s gotten a
chance to say this spring, from the
major leaguers all the way down to
the first-timers in mismatched socks.
The fields around here are empty,
locked sometimes, with a sign on the
chain-link fence reminding about the
need for social distancing.
It’s the right thing to do, it’s what
everyone needs to do, if they can.
The situation here in New York City
remains an emergency, the worst
said to be still to come. Already the
suffering and loss is unspeakable.
Dodgers starting pitcher Ross Stripling warms up in the bullpen before a spring-training game.Pitchers Keep
Arms Ready
70
Number of pitches
most starters had
advanced to per outing
when spring training
closed on March 12.