D6 eZ M2 the washington post.wednesday, march 11 , 2020
deal. There was almost this half-
asleep feel because there was no
energy. There were no people
there.... As baseball players, as
teams, we feed off energy, and
where there’s nothing there, it’s a
very surreal and weird feeling that
I’ll never forget, but I kind of wish
I could.”
The orioles pumped music over
the loudspeakers between in-
nings, and the public-address an-
nouncer recited t he names of each
batter before he stepped into the
box — if only to maintain the
normal rhythms of a game — but
otherwise the stadium was free of
manufactured sounds: No
t rumpet-call “Charge!” No score-
board exhortations to “ make s ome
noise!”
Palmer, who c alled the game f or
mASN alongside play-by-play
man Gary Thorne, recalled being
able to hear every word coming
from the booth next door, where
Ken “Hawk” Harrelson and Steve
Stone did the visitors’ broadcast.
“It was surreal,” Palmer said.
“People [later] told me they could
hear my voice in the dugout.
Normally we have to talk over the
crowd. It’s in our headphones. But
that day you could hear every-
thing.”
When orioles first baseman
Chris Davis hit a three-run homer
in the first inning — the decisive
blow in the orioles’ 8-2 victory,
played in a crisp 2 hours 3 minutes
— Harrelson called it in typically
understated fashion on the White
Sox telecast, saying, “ Get f oul.... It
won’t.”
But alongside Harrelson’s
voice, loud as day, was Thorne’s
voice from the next booth over,
rising to a crescendo as Harrel-
son’s trailed off.
“Goodbye!” Thorne said.
“Home run!”
[email protected]Jesse dougherty in West Palm Beach,
Fla., contributed to this report.leagues stand to lose untold mil-
lions o f dollars with each gate that
is lost.
That helps explain why, to this
day, the April 29, 2015, game
between the White Sox and ori-
oles in Baltimore remains t he only
game in major North American
professional sports to have been
played with no fans.
The decision came four days
after Camden Yards was briefly
placed on lockdown because of
public-safety concerns near the
end of an orioles-Boston red Sox
game, when protests just outside
the stadium became violent. In
the aftermath, the first two games
of a scheduled three-game series
between the orioles and White
Sox were postponed until the fol-
lowing month, but mLB needed
the third game to be played. (A
subsequent three-game home se-
ries against the Ta mpa Bay rays
was moved to florida.)
Because bringing tens of thou-
sands of fans to Camden Ya rds in
such an atmosphere would have
required dozens of police officers
who w ere needed e lsewhere i n the
city, mLB made the decision —
late in the afternoon the day be-
fore — to stage the game without
fans. And because the city had
implemented a 10 p.m. curfew, the
game was moved to the afternoon.
That l eft the o rioles with l ess t han
24 hours to prepare.
Although team o fficials and sta-
dium personnel tried to keep ev-
erything as normal as possible,
from batting practice to the ex-
change of lineup cards to the
playing of the national anthem,
when White Sox leadoff man
Adam Eaton stepped into the bat-
ter’s box to face orioles right-
hander Ubaldo Jiménez, nothing
about it felt normal.
“I underestimated” how jarring
it would be, Eaton, now the Na-
tionals’ right fielder, t old the B alti-
more Sun. “When I first went into
it, I didn’t think it would be a big— to spring training facilities in
Arizona and florida or minor
league stadiums away from major
outbreaks — than to play them in
empty stadiums.
for U.S. sports, the situation is
perhaps most reminiscent of the
fall of 2001, in the aftermath of
9/11, when the NfL postponed
Week 2 of its regular season, mov-
ing those games to the end of its
schedule, and mLB took a six-day
pause before resuming the final
month of its regular season, with
World Series games pushing into
November for the first time.
The notion of games played in
empty stadiums o r arenas, howev-
er, goes against the very nature of
sports as entertainment. Instead
of bringing massive crowds to the
Coachella Valley music and Arts
festival, for example, organizers
postponed the event until october
rather than have the bands play to
an empty California desert.
“It would be awful,” Washing-
ton Nationals first baseman ryan
Zimmerman, speaking before a
spring training game in West
Palm Beach, fla., said of the possi-
bility of playing in empty stadi-
ums. “... We’re entertainers.
That’s what we get paid to do. We
enjoy playing in front of fans.
Playing in an empty s tadium — it’s
hard enough to play [spring train-
ing games in front of ] two, three,
four, five thousand people.
“That’s why it’s so hard to play
down here. You know the games
don’t count, and there is no atmo-
sphere. So having to play games
that count in no atmosphere, I
think the product would be tough.
We’re all professionals, and I’m
sure we would do it, but I don’t
think it would be good.”
Staging games without fans
also goes against the concurrent
nature of sports as massive busi-
nesses. Although broadcast rights
have long since passed ticket sales
as the top revenue driver of pro-
fessional sports, teams andbaseball
“It’s funny because when I was
asked the question, ‘Would you
play without no fans?’ I had no
idea that it was actually a conver-
sation going on behind closed
doors about that particular virus,”
James said. “obviously I would be
very disappointed, you know, not
having the fans, because that’s
what I play for. I play for my
family. I play for my fans.
“They’re saying no one could
actually come to the game if they
go to that point, so I’d be disap-
pointed in that, but at the same
time, you got to listen to the
people that are keeping track of
what’s going on. If they feel that
it’s best for the safety of the
players, safety of the franchise,
safety of the league to mandate
that, then we’ll all listen to it.”
mLB, if only because its open-
ing Day is still more than two
weeks away, is in a somewhat
better spot, t hough league officials
informed teams in a conference
call monday night to begin mak-
ing contingency preparations for
the possibility of the outbreak
spreading. Baseball is also used to
having individual teams’ sched-
ules upended by weather, with
florida- and Te xas-based teams
occasionally having games moved
to other locations.
An mLB spokesperson said
Tuesday that no decision had been
made on altering its schedule for
the coronavirus, but that it would
be moving forward on a team-by-
team basis; in other words, the
Seattle mariners, whose home c ity
is among the hardest hit in the
United States, could require more
urgent action than a team farther
from an outbreak. At this point,
mLB is more likely to move gamesSouth Korea’s KBo have pushed
back the starts of their regular
seasons indefinitely.
American teams could be de-
ciding soon whether to postpone
or relocate games, or play them
without fans. Chief among them
are the NHL’s San Jose Sharks,
who play in Santa Clara County in
California, where public health
officials, citing an increase in cor-
onavirus cases and the dangers of
community spread, have banned
public gatherings of more than
1,000 people for three weeks. The
countywide ban could affect three
Sharks home games, as well as
NCAA women’s basketball tourna-
ment games at Stanford and one
home game of the mLS San Jose
Earthquakes. The mid-American
Conference and Big West Confer-
ence announced Tuesday that
their men’s and women’s basket-
ball tournaments would be held
this week without spectators.
Both the NHL and NBA are in
the final weeks of their regular
seasons, with the playoffs set to
begin in April, adding a compli-
cating factor to decisions about
how to proceed in the event the
outbreak gets worse. The NBA this
week circulated a memo instruct-
ing teams to prepare for the possi-
bility of games in empty arenas —
a notion that initially did not
appear to sit well with one star
player.
“I play for the fans; that’s what
it’s all about,” LeBron James said
days ago. “If I show up to the arena
and there ain’t no fans there, I
ain’t playing.”
James clarified his comments
Tuesday.virus from D1Empty stadiums would
be ‘surreal’ — and rare
BY JESSE DOUGHERTYWEST PALM BEACH, FLA. — max
Scherzer was sunburned, s weating
and honest. That’s typical for
spring training. He skipped his
scheduled start Tuesday, has an
“ailment” on his right side caused
by a mechanical tweak and had
lobbied to pitch b efore relenting to
his manager and the Washington
N ationals’ m edical staff.
“Just a combination between
lat, serratus, oblique. Just that
whole general area,” Scherzer ex-
plained, pointing to the area
around his right rib cage. He had
just used the word “ailment” to
describe the issue. “once I adjust-
ed my mechanics to alleviate the
rhomboid stress, I shifted out to
the side where I always had it. Just
that part was just lagging behind
in terms o f where my a rm strength
was and how I was long-tossing in
January.
“It’s just been playing catch-up.
There’s not even a strain. There’s
no mrIs. There’s n othing like that.
This is purely just a fatigue, endur-
ance thing.”
So, given that, it seems his con-
cern level is not too high?
“No,” Scherzer said. “A bsolutely
not.”
The regular season is 15 days
away. The Nationals expect Scher-
zer to be on the mound, as their
ace, when they begin it against the
New York mets. When manager
Dave martinez was asked about
Scherzer on Tuesday morning —
before Scherzer spoke with report-
ers — he did not reveal the lat,
serratus and oblique pain, and he
laid out an alternative plan: S cher-
zer, like Stephen Strasburg and
Patrick Corbin, would throw a6 0-pitch bullpen session in place
of the scheduled start. martinez
added that Scherzer will be “pre-
pared t o pitch on Sunday a gain.”
Scherzer, 35, long-tossed in
place of a bullpen Tuesday, then
described the minor setback.
When martinez was asked about
the ailment again, after the Na-
tionals lost an exhibition to the
miami marlins, 3-2, the manager
remained coy. martinez does not
expect Scherzer to be knocked off
track by this discomfort. They b oth
expect Scherzer to return at the
end of the week.
But the competing details, and
how they trickled out, felt like a
continuation of last season. In J uly,
the Nationals announced three d if-
ferent diagnoses for Scherzer in
the span of 16 days. He wound up
missing most of July and most of
August, and he later had complica-
tions in the World Series, when
neck spasms kept him from start-
ing Game 5.
“Look, we talked to him aboutnot pitching,” martinez said in his
second session with reporters
Tuesday. “If he says his side is
bothering him a little bit now, I saw
him throw today at 300 feet. We
just want to make sure he’s ready
for the start of the season. my
biggest concern is to make sure
he’s ready. I think he’s ahead. We
pushed everybody back. He want-
ed to pitch t he first day. H e’s throw-
ing 65, 7 0 pitches in the bullpen.”
martinez shrugged.
“He’s going to be in good shape,”
he continued. “This will back him.
We’ll keep building up his work-
load and get him ready for the
season.”
Earlier in spring training,
Scherzer outlined a change in de-
livery that should help keep him
healthy. He was nagged by a mid-
back strain, bursitis in the scapula
below h is right shoulder blade and
a mild rhomboid strain last sum-
mer. He initially had trouble find-
ing the root of those issues. With a
closer look, Scherzer noticed hisfront s ide was coming up too early,
which w as placing too much s tress
on the middle o f his back.
Shifting his mechanics a bit, and
dropping his front side faster,
shifted that stress back to his lat
and serratus. That’s where he
wants i t. And that’s what ultimate-
ly led to this ailment.
“How I was going through my
offseason program, [I] just didn’t
build that [area] up to the same
degree, just the way I was throwing
the ball,” Scherzer said Tuesday.
“It’s just an endurance thing. Like
today, I was out there, here’s your
recipe: You could go o ut there, long
toss. I f you long toss, it really opens
up everything. And if you’re throw-
ing it mechanically correct, then
my side’s getting more and more
endurance. Like, I’m throwing the
ball plenty far. Everything’s firing
on all cylinders. They just didn’t
want to be in a game today.”
These are always tough conver-
sations among Scherzer, martinez
and the club’s athletic trainers.This is the pitcher who throws
bullpen sessions in full uniform,
trains year-round and only breaks
to be a father and husband or to
scuba dive with sharks. He prides
himself on pitching every fifth day
— he calls this “posting” — no
matter if it is february, march or a
pennant race. He has one speed.
But this time of year, and at this
stage of his career, requires extra
caution. Before last season, when
he made 27 starts, he had topped
30 in every year since 2009. Scher-
zer says he knows his body and
when to push it or not, priming
him to “handle s ituations like this.”
He wanted to take the mound and
not go all-out. The training staff
had another play. It won this
round, and Scherzer only conced-
ed that “we’re both probably right.”
“I thought I could go out there
and just throw jabs and punches,
and not throw haymakers,” Scher-
zer said. “But they didn’t want to
take that chance.”
[email protected]Scherzer misses start with an ‘ailment’ on his right side
Nationals ace expresses
confidence that issue
is little more than fatigueASSOCIATED PRESSm ets outfielder michael Con-
forto strained an oblique muscle
on his right side, and it’s too early
to determine whether he will be
able to play in New York’s opener
vs. World Series champion Wash-
ington o n march 26.
Conforto was injured Saturday
against the Nationals and re-
turned to New York on monday
night to meet with mets medical
director D avid Altchek.
“We’re going to back him off
here from activities the next cou-
ple of days and then reassess him
next week,” mets General manag-
er Brodie Van Wagenen said Tues-
day.
Conforto, an all-star in 2017, set
career highs last season with 33
home runs and 92 rBI while bat-
ting .257 with an .856 on-base-
plus-slugging percentage in 151
games. He was hurt while catch-
ing a flyball.
“Awkwardly in the wind, in the
sun, he sort of fell to the ground,
and he was sore on his right side,”
Van Wagenen said. “He was feel-
ing better day over day over the
course of last couple of days, but
we wanted to be smart about it, get
an mrI d one.”
l WHiTE sOX: michael
K opech didn’t have any trouble
getting back up to speed after 18
months away f rom the mound.
“Yeah, I might have been a little
geeked,” t he Chicago right-hander
said.
Kopech threw 1 1 pitches a gainst
the Te xas rangers in Cactus
League play Tuesday — and six of
them reached 1 00 m ph.
It was the 2 3-year-old’s first
game action since undergoing
To mmy John surgery in Septem-
ber 2 018.
Kopech, who made four starts
in the 2018 season before being
sidelined, was a key part of the
five-player deal that sent pitcher
Chris S ale to Boston a fter the 2016
season.
l YANKEEs: New York catcher
Gary Sánchez missed batting
practice because he has t he flu and
will be r eevaluated l ater this w eek.
manager Aaron Boone said
Sánchez, sidelined since the w eek-
end with a sore back, was exam-
ined by team d octors.
“He had the fever last night,”
Boone said. “They tested him, and
it was positive for the flu. He’ll be
away from us for the next couple
days at least. We’ll see where he’s
at t hat point.”
Sánchez is set to be evaluated
again friday.
l YANKEEs: Gerrit Cole struck
out six over 3^1 / 3 innings, giving up
one run on two hits, in New York’s
4-2 win over To ronto in Ta mpa. In
his previous outing, the Yankees
newcomer w as hit h ard b y Detroit.
Blue Jays starter Ta nner roark
allowed one run and one hit in
four innings, striking o ut four.
l PHiLLiEs: Philadelphia out-
fielder Bryce Harper exited after
getting hit by a pitch on his left
foot in the first inning of Philadel-
phia’s 5-1 win over the Twins in
Clearwater, fla. Harper later said
he f elt f ine.
Zack Wheeler struck out six
over four innings, scattering four
hits and allowing a run o n a homer
by royce Lewis. J.T. r ealmuto and
Logan forsythe homered for the
Phillies.
spring training notes
Injury may
bench Mets’
Conforto
for opener
BY BEN STRAUSSPaul Sullivan has been covering
baseball for the Chicago Tribune
since 1987. He has roamed a lot of
clubhouses.
He got so close to To ny Phillips,
the former White Sox outfielder,
that Phillips used to commandeer
Sullivan’s t ape recorder and record
his opinions of the day. In the
mid-2000s, Sullivan heard from
countless Cubs players about how
they didn’t like the music that
Sammy Sosa played in the club-
house — information that proved
useful when a teammate smashed
Sosa’s boombox at the end of one
season. Just last week, Sullivan
interviewed Cubs first baseman
Anthony rizzo over lunch. They
ate in rizzo’s B entley, b ut the inter-
action had roots in the clubhouse.
“He would never have invited
me into his car if we didn’t have a
relationship built up over years of
talking in the clubhouse,” s aid Sul-
livan, who is president of the Base-
ball Writers’ Association of Ameri-
ca. “Players get to know you; they
trust you — and hopefully at some
point, they give you information
you can use.”
This access has long been the
foundation of the relationships be-
tween athletes and sports report-
ers. But it was interrupted this
week when major League Base-
ball, major League Soccer, the
NHL and NBA issued a joint state-
ment announcing that locker
rooms will be closed to the press
indefinitely because of fears about
the spread of the coronavirus.
The Associated Press Sports Ed-
itors, along with the writers’ asso-
ciations of the major North Ameri-can sports leagues, agreed t o coop-
erate “in the name of public
health.” With major events being
canceled and others set to be
played in empty stadiums, the
writers seemed to acknowledge
that restricting some access to
pl ayers was, for now, a small and
understandable step.
But in their statement, the asso-
ciations raised concerns that the
leagues will use the temporary pol-
icy change to permanently cut off
access to one of the last places
reporters can freely mingle with
players.
“We also must ensure the locker
room access — which we have ne-
gotiated over decades — to players,
coaches and staff is not unneces-
sarily limited in either the short orlong term,” t he associations wrote.
The baseball writers did not
have input on the decision, Sulli-
van said, adding the policy would
mean fewer illuminating inter-
views, which would mean fewer
stories from reporters that take
readers behind the scenes, which
would impact fans. And in a world
where access to athletes is increas-
ingly managed by handlers a nd Pr
professionals, the locker room re-
mains the last place a reporter can
ask a player just about anything.
“If you look at the trend of ac-
cess, it decreases over time,” said
Emily Kaplan, a hockey writer for
ESPN and an executive vice presi-
dent of the Professional Hockey
Writers Association. “There’s a
move toward less interaction withplayers. I don’t believe the leagues
are trying to take it away, but these
are our l ivelihoods.”
reporters and teams confront-
ed this new reality Tuesday morn-
ing, with uneven results. Sullivan
said the Cubs reached out to re-
porters to set up a meeting to
discuss the guidelines. New York
Yankees writers, meanwhile,
showed up to the team’s spring
training facility and waited
around for nearly an hour before
they received any guidance from
the team.
“Good media departments are
going to work with writers,” Sulli-
van said. “The bad ones are going
to make it hard.”
Baseball writers typically get
about an hour of clubhouse access
around three hours before every
game. Hockey writers get around
20 minutes of dressing room time
after practice on game days. Bas-
ketball writers can roam the locker
room before games, too. Now, a ll of
that will have to be coordinated by
a Pr staffer, making interviews
harder for reporters to get and
easier for teams to control. (Players
and reporters will also be asked to
keep six to eight feet between
them.)
Jennifer Giglio, chief communi-
cations officer for the Washington
Nationals, said she had been in
touch with reporters covering the
team, urging them to request in-
terviews through the Pr staff,
which w ould c oordinate conversa-
tions with players somewhere oth-
er than the c lubhouse.
“The message from major
League Baseball is not to take away
access,” Giglio said. “It was that we
need to find ways to make sure theaccess reporters are getting con-
tinues.”
Locker room a ccess is unique to
American sports journalism; soc-
cer writers in the United Kingdom,
for example, have far less interac-
tion with players. And even before
the new policy, that access was
waning, Sullivan said. He used to
be able to approach players at the
batting cage, he said, but that prac-
tice is mostly frowned upon by
teams now, if not explicitly forbid-
den. He also used to be able to
return to the clubhouse after bat-
ting practice, but that’s no longer
allowed. It affects the coverage,
writers said.
“A ccess enables both players
and journalists to start to get to
know each other as human be-
ings,” said Josh robbins, a writer
for the Athletic and the president
of the Professional Basketball
Writers Association. “That empa-
thy carries over into the journal-
ism we produce. It is critical to
helping journalists portray ath-
letes as they are, which is human
beings. That basic humanity bene-
fits everybody — especially readers
and players.”
Both the NBA and NHL writers’
associations have been promised
by the leagues that the restrictions
are temporary and will be lifted
after the health scare abates.
m ajor League Baseball released a
statement that described all club-
house r estrictions as temporary.
“A l ot of writers I’ve talked to are
concerned,” Sullivan said. “I really
do believe mLB wants this to be
short-term. It’s in their best inter-
est for it not to be a long-term
thing. But who knows?”
[email protected]Coronavirus threat costs journalists their access to the athletes
John Minchillo/associated Press
The policy r estricting media access will mean fewer scenes like
this with Christian Yelich in the Milwaukee Brewers’ clubhouse.