friday, march 13 , 2020. the washington post eZ sU D7
BY JESSE DOUGHERTYWEST PALM BEACH, FLA. — It was
a normal day and a normal e xhibi-
tion game — except for the list of
ways that it wasn’t.
At 12:54 p.m. here, in a stadium
shared b y the Washington Nation-
als and Houston Astros, the na-
tional anthem was sung.
At 12:56 p.m., the Big West can-
celed its conference basketball
tournament, becoming the latest
league to act amid heightening
concerns over the coronavirus
outbreak.
At 1:03 p.m., with a sellout
crowd filing in, the Nationals
jogged out to face the New York
Yankees.
At 1:06 p.m., Patrick Corbin
toed the rubber, eased into his
windup and fired the first pitch of
the first inning toward Mike
Ta uchman. Play ball.
Then at 1:13 p.m., from the oth-
er side of the country, ESPN re-
ported that Major League Base-
ball expected to suspend spring
training games and delay the start
of its regular season. That hap-
pened while the Nationals and
Yankees began a contest that
won’t c ount.
The Nationals’ facility was filled
with quiet confusion from the
morning on. The NBA suspended
its season Wednesday night, the
NCAA had announced it would
hold March Madness without
fans, college conferences c anceled
tournaments by the h our, and gov-
ernment officials from D.C. to Se-
attle either advised or ruled
against mass gatherings. The
NHL suspended its season when
the N ationals a nd Yankees were in
the middle of the third inning. By
the end of the afternoon, the
NCAA had canceled its men’s and
women’s b asketball tournaments.
But MLB did not act until just
after 3 p.m., when it announced
that spring training games were
canceled and the regular season
will be delayed by at least two
weeks. Before then, in the hours
leading into this game, the Na-
tionals were left with their palms
tilted skyward. No one knew what
was going on. Manager Dave Mar-
tinez sat down around 9:45 a.m.
and a sked reporters for news. Max
Scherzer, a key member of the
Major League Baseball Players A s-
sociation, nearly spoke with the
media about 15 minutes later,
right after finishing a bullpen ses-
sion.
Then he decided to table the
conversation, holding it at noon,
because of how fast developments
were happening.
“Yeah. I mean, guys want to
play. We play baseball,” Scherzer
said before the remaining exhibi-
tions were canceled. “We’re told
that, right now, d own here i s actu-
ally one of the safest areas in the
country. We’re healthy g uys.”
A reporter mentioned recent
news in West Palm Beach, w here a
person who had tested p ositive f or
coronavirus had arrived on a
flight from New York on Wednes-
day night.
“Well, it shows you how rapidly
this situation is unfolding in front
of our eyes. We’re seeing a worst-
case scenario play out nationally,
right in front of o ur eyes,” S cherzer
said. “Everyone is responding attheir own s peed.”
“I think we’d b e kind of naive to
think that there’s n ot one p layer in
any one of the camps across MLB
right now that has not contracted
it yet. You’ve got to think here that
somebody probably has it,” he
added. “It’s just going to matter at
what point now. That’s what kind
of the experts are projecting here
with this outbreak. So how are we
going to handle that? That’s the
direction of the medical experts
and how MLB wants to handle
that. We’re going to obviously fol-
low t heir guidance.”
Doing so — following their
guidance — turned into a lagging
wait. Close to a dozen fans did not
want their names used when ap-
proached for an interview. The
pretense was discussing why they
were still attending spring train-
ing games, and one young woman
laughed before saying: “I don’t
want to publicly go against health
experts who are advising other
leagues. Sorry.”The overarching feeling,
among those fans, was t hat if MLB
decides it is safe to attend games,
they will attend games. The exhi-
bition with the Yankees was the
Nationals’ first announced sellout
of spring training. The announced
attendance was 8,043. The stadi-
um utilized a secondary parking
lot to accommodate a bigger
crowd than usual. And while there
wasn’t a person in every seat, the
concourse was packed with peo-
ple while many others lounged in
the g rassy hill beyond the o utfield.
“I’m probably not supposed to
say this, but people I beg of you
please do not come to games right
now,” t weeted Eireann D olan, who
is married to Nationals closer
Sean Doolittle and has an active
voice on baseball social media. “I
know they’re still inexplicably
playing them right now, but that
doesn’t mean it’s safe to attend.
You’re putting yourselves, the
staffs, and teams at risk. Please
don’t go.”“When you heard an athlete
contracted the virus, it was like,
‘Whoa,’ ” Martinez said. He was
referring t o Rudy Gobert, the U tah
Jazz center who contracted the
coronavirus. “That’s pretty hard. I
just hope they find a solution,
cure. I know MLB is working dili-
gently to people, and they’ve been
trying to come up with some type
of solution.”
When Yan Gomes doubled in
Eric Thames at 2:03 p.m. and the
home crowd cheered, that solu-
tion was not yet known. By the
next half inning, Virginia Gov.
Ralph Northam (D) declared a
state of emergency. A section of
traveling fans started a “Let’s go
Yankees!” chant. MLB’s an-
nouncement s tated that all spring
training games after 4 p.m. were
canceled.
But they kept playing baseball
in West Palm Beach, finishing
nine innings at 3:55 p.m., while
reality closed o n in.
[email protected]As world shifts, Nats play one last surreal game
michael reaves/agence France-Presse/getty images
The Nationals and Yankees played a spring training contest Thursday just as Major League Baseball postponed the start of the season.baseball
said. “A nd the ring ceremony the
next game — you want everybody
there, o r it’s j ust not the s ame.”
Even a fanatical perfectionist
such as Scherzer g ives little
thought to his own b aseball
conditioning regime compared t o
the p ublic’s h ealth.
“You’re dealing with a highly
contagious d isease here and what
effect t hat has on our f amilies,
how that affects fans, how that
affects everybody t hat’s in t his
complex,” S cherzer said. “We’re
going to follow the e xperts i n how
we want to handle the situation.”
By a pointed coincidence, it
turned o ut that a passenger o n a
flight that l anded Wednesday
night a t Palm Beach International
Airport, m inutes from the Nats’
complex, had b een traveling
while, tests showed, infected with
the c oronavirus.
“That shows you how rapidly
this situation i s unfolding,”
Scherzer s aid. “We are seeing a
worst-case scenario play out
nationally, right in front of our
eyes.”
Also on T hursday, Patrick
Corbin, w ho won both the
National League pennant-
clinching game and Game 7 of the
World Series, l ooked sharp in f our
scoreless innings. S orry, j ust
thought we might need that — a
familiar name w ith r eferences to
the w onderful doings by these
Nats j ust five m onths ago. Maybe
it will help tide us over.
The whole i dea throughout
sports at t his moment is t o trade a
big c hunk of i nconvenience and
disappointment n ow in hopes of
getting the s hortest, least vicious
possible v ersion of a pandemic. In
baseball, there are trades y ou l ove
to make. O ther unpleasant ones
are forced u pon you by
circumstance.
This was the right deal for
baseball — and the rest of our
sports — to make now. That
doesn’t m ean we can’t h ate it. For
many of us, this is the best time of
year in sports with spring training,
March Madness, NBA and Stanley
Cup playoffs, baseball’s O pening
Day and the Masters. Now they all
look like an art gallery full of
slashed paintings.
If only those could be o ur
biggest l osses. But that trade i s
not o n the table.
[email protected]For more by thomas Boswell, visit
washingtonpost.com/boswell.the most, 111. But the r ecord book
still shows Mike Schmidt as NL
MVP a nd Fernando Valenzuela, in
the s eason of Fernandomania, as
both the r ookie of the year and Cy
Young winner.
Suspending spring training
operations, a s opposed to playing
games in empty b allparks, is the
sensible choice because it
acknowledges the v irtual
impossibility of starting the
regular s eason on time at a
moment in U.S. history when
New York C ity — site of the
Nationals’ opening game — has
banned gatherings of more than
250 p eople.
The entire w orld i s in a tough
spot, f iguring o ut how best to
combat and minimize the
damage caused by the novel
coronavirus. Few countries,
institutions or individuals w ill
have easy — even relatively e asy
— decisions to make. Even fewer
will be, i n any sense, l ucky.
However, MLB may get off as
lightly as any entity.
Who w ants to go t o a baseball
game in l ate March or the e arly
weeks of April? It’s o ften cold or
rains. Players h ate it. Fans pay —
which i s the whole p oint.
“They’ve talked about
[shortening the season] for
years,” Nationals Manager D ave
Martinez said. Would a season
with 132 or 142 games, not 162, be
long enough to provide a
legitimate winner? “ I would t hink
so,” Martinez said.
Perhaps 100 t o 110, s uch as in
1981, w ould suffice i f it w as
absolutely necessary. Meanwhile,
we can stick pins i n covid-19 d olls
and w ish it a speedy, w arm-
weather demise — one possibility,
though p erhaps not most likely.
How long would it take for
MLB t o ramp back up to full
speed? Probably only about
10 days. In 1981, a labor
settlement was reached July 31, a
hurry-up A ll-Star Game w as
played A ug. 9, and the regular
season resumed Aug. 10.
For fans in at l east one city —
Washington — beginning the
season at a later d ate, with
normal Opening Day pomp,
would be e specially s weet
whenever as opposed t o trying t o
play every scheduled g ame but i n
empty s tadiums.
“It’d be almost u nimaginable
to think of celebrating winning
the World Series in a n empty park
— without your fans,” D oolittletake decisive action to slow down
the c oronavirus Wednesday,
including t he NBA, w hich
suspended its season indefinitely.
Even if baseball w as a beat
slow, i t made the right call. But
don’t b other giving the sport too
much credit. The NBA and NHL
are nearing their playoffs next
month — the highlight and the
moneymaker o f their season.
Baseball i s the o nly sport that
could miss a month or two of
games and b arely b e the w orse f or
it — except in the wallet. In 1 981,
the o wners forced the p layers t o
strike, a nd 38 percent of the
major league schedule — 713
games from June 12 until Aug. 10,
almost two months — was
canceled.
Many o f us wailed a t the t ime.
But i n hindsight, f ew m issed
those games — or at l east not f or
very long. The Los Angeles
Dodgers still fly the f lag t hey won
that year in the World Series. Oh,
it was a weird, deformed,
chopped-up split s eason. Some
teams p layed o nly 103 g ames, and
the S an Francisco Giants p layedcontact w e have w ith different
people... we could be at t he
forefront of being at t he
transmission of this.”
Often, the c ommon sense of
athletes, who live amid c onstant
instant r eality t esting, puts t he
pontification of politicians, who
can spin indefinitely, t o shame.
“We want to make sure we
aren’t a catalyst for spreading the
virus,” r elief pitcher Sean
Doolittle said. “ The unknown is
what’s so s cary. Maybe I watch too
many dystopian m ovies. But l ook
at I taly. They w ent f rom three
cases to 9,000 in t hree weeks.
Now the whole country is j ust
about shut down.
“I don’t know the a nswers. I ’m
just a left-handed r elief pitcher.
But w e do n eed to listen to the
scientists and doctors. These
days, we don’t s eem to respect
them as much as we used to, but
we should now,” D oolittle added.
“This isn’t t he time to be using
our ‘conspiracy brain.’”
MLB p robably needed the
example and perhaps the societal
pressure of watching m any sportsWEST PALM
BEACH, F LA. —
With a soft wind
wafting f rom right
field t o left o n a
blissful, sunny, 7 9-
degree day here at
Ballpark of t he
Palm Beaches,
Victor Robles of t he World Series
champion Washington Nationals,
back in the l ineup after a couple
of weeks nursing a sore side,
blasted a long home run into t he
New York Yankees’ bullpen on
Thursday. His s wing looked more
compact a nd swift than it had l ast
season as a rookie. Big things may
lie a head.
That’s i t for the b aseball
descriptions f or now.
Hope it holds u s all for a while
— like until m id-April (dream on)
or May 1 (with l uck) o r June 1 (my
date in the office pool). I f the next
baseball we watch from a seat in
the s tands i s in 2021, then we may
all be under a mountain of m isery
so high we will say, “ Baseball?
What’s that?”
Like sports l eagues across
America, as well a s countless
other businesses, Major L eague
Baseball s uspended its o perations
indefinitely Thursday. The rest of
spring training is canceled, as
well as the first two weeks o f the
regular s eason — the whole sport
put i nto suspended animation
until f urther n otice because o f
covid-19.
As w e know t oo well, that’s not
the n ame and number o f a rookie
but t he ID of a pandemic v irus
that is b ad if stifled e arly but
might be c atastrophic if neglected
until i t explodes exponentially.
“This is a nasty l ittle b ug,”
Nationals pitcher and p layers’
union rep Max Scherzer said.
“Everybody in the clubhouse i s
talking a bout i t. No o ne lives
underneath a rock. We’re all
getting a crash course in what
contagion is a nd with how rapidly
it’s m oving.... We see t he
projections o f what’s going to
happen i n this country; we’re on
the v erge of something big here.
That’s j ust what the experts are
saying.”
Like the estimates o f how
rapidly cases of the coronavirus
can d ouble if i t isn’t c ontained or
at l east m itigated?
“Yes. It’s c razy,” S cherzer said.
“You realize this c an continue to
double, and we’re very cognizant,
as athletes, w ith h ow much
Delay of season feels like a bad trade, but MLB had no other choice
Thomas
Boswell
michael reaves/agence France-Presse/getty images
Juan Soto and the Nationals won’t start their season on time after
MLB decided to indefinitely suspend its operations Thursday.ASSOCIATED PRESSBaltimore Orioles first base-
man Trey M ancini underwent s ur-
gery Thursday to remove a malig-
nant tumor from h is colon.
The tumor was discovered last
week during a colonoscopy, team
officials said. Lab results and the
timetable for Mancini’s recovery
will not be known until n ext week.
Mancini left the team Saturday.
The Orioles provided few details
at the time, except to say he was
slated to undergo “a non-baseball
medical procedure.”
In a statement released by the
team Thursday, Mancini said,
“The outpouring of love and sup-
port I have received has made an
extremely tough week so much
better.... I would like to thank
everyone for their prayers and
kind words, which have furthered
my excitement to get back to play-
ing the g ame I love.”
Mancini, who turns 28 on
Wednesday, batted .291 with
35 home runs last season while
playing the outfield, at first base
and a s a designated h itter.
“We are doing e verything in our
power to ensure Trey recovers ful-
ly, and we can’t wait to see him
back on the field as soon as possi-
ble,” Baltimore General Manager
Mike E lias said.
l PHILLIES: Bryan Price ob-
serves, listens, suggests and tries
to lead pitchers to their own con-
clusions.
The new pitching coach could
end up being the most valuable
addition Philadelphia m ade i n the
offseason if h e can g et s ome t alent-
ed members of the staff to reach
their potential.
Price already has made a posi-
tive impression in c amp.
“He’s all about pitchers being
confident in what they’re doing
and h aving the a bility t o pitch and
not j ust throw,” a ll-star catcher J.T.
Realmuto said. “That’s where
finding their strengths comes in.... That’s something Price has
honed in on is pitching to your
strengths.”
Pitching is the team’s biggest
question mark. An offense that
features Realmuto, Bryce Harper,
Didi Gregorius, Rhys Hoskins,
Jean Segura, Andrew McCutchen
and Scott Kingery is expected to
produce plenty of runs.
But the Phillies need better
pitching to compete with the Na-
tionals, Braves and Mets. They
gave Zack Wheeler a five-year,
$118 million deal in free agency to
bolster the rotation. Then they
brought in several veteran reliev-
ers to compete for spots in the
bullpen.
They’re counting on Price being
a difference-maker. The veteran
coach was hired to first-year man-
ager Joe Girardi’s staff in October.
Price had success as pitching coach
for the Mariners, Diamondbacks
and Reds. He a lso managed Cincin-
nati between 2014 a nd 2018.
“He’s been awesome,” Aaron
Nola said. “He’s so experienced.
He’s been around a lot of great
pitchers. He’s been a manager, so
he knows how to handle a lot of
things. He keeps everything sim-
ple.”
Price emphasizes pitching to
strengths, mastering w hat a pitch-
er does b est.
“With the new swing paths,
[high fastballs] work for some
guys,” Price said. “However, you
can’t give up all the tools in your
tool box to be a high fastball pitch-
er if that’s not a strength.”
l BRAVES: New left fielder
Marcell Ozuna, who delivered
some huge blows to Atlanta in l ast
year’s National League Division
Series while with St. Louis, seems
like he’s fitting in well with the
Braves.
And he was quick to say how
much he was enjoying camp be-
fore Major League Baseball sus-
pended the rest of its spring train-
ing game schedule Thursday be-
cause o f the c oronavirus.
“The front office and everyone
here. I love them,” Ozuna said. “I
think it’ll be a good year for me.
Making the playoffs and winning
the World Series is a goal. I don’t
worry a bout anything e lse.”
Ozuna is expected to anchor a
corner off the outfield opposite
Ronald A cuña Jr., o ne of baseball’s
most exciting young stars. Both
have struggled at the plate this
spring b ut t here is n o concern.
Ozuna signed a one-year,
$18 million contract with the
Braves after he turned down the
Cardinals $17.8 million qualifying
offer. He also turned down a re-
ported three-year, $50 million of-
fer f rom Cincinnati.
spring training notesO’s Mancini
has tumor
removed
from colon
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