FARGO, ND – Forget about everything else for a moment and take a look at this:
The retired number 8, used in this city by Roger Maris, Fargo’s revered son, on the facade above first base. Red, white, and blue bunting covered the railings. Ball players heating up the foul lines.
People are finding their seats, and somewhere the big red pet is getting ready. At any moment the referees will arrive, fully dressed and with their baseballs and walking directly from the parking lot to the field.
It was late, but here it is: opening day.
The last time the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks played was in September.
“We didn’t know what was going to happen in the next few months,” Jack Michaels, the team’s radio man for a quarter of a century, yells at his audience. “But all I know is this: 297 days later, the fans are in the stands, the teams are in the shelters, and baseball is back.”
Major League Baseball will kick off its pandemic-shortened season this week, but there will be no fans in the stands. The minor league season was canceled, depriving dozens of small baseball cities this summer. Two prominent independent leagues, the Atlantic League and the Frontier League, are also not playing.
That leaves us with four cities in Central America: Fargo; Sioux Falls, SD; Franklin, Wis .; and Rosemont, Ill., where professional baseball is played in front of fans, cautiously, cheerfully, but rarely.
After months of uncertainty, the American Association, an independent league where players earn around 2,000 per month and whose rosters are filled with former minor league players and sprinkled with former major league players, began its season over the weekend. July 4th.
Six teams in four cities. Locked to host games in Canada, the Winnipeg Goldeyes are playing their home games in Fargo, where the dimensions of Newman Outdoor Field are those of Yankee Stadium, a tribute to Maris. The St. Paul Saints will play their own in Sioux Falls, where during a recent series they dressed in a hockey stadium that hosted a Bull Riders pro competition and crossed a parking lot, cleats creaking on the pavement, to reach the countryside.
“There are a lot of things to think about right now,” said Chris Coste, acting manager of the RedHawks, who has played at all levels of professional baseball, from here in Fargo to the Mexican League and the Philadelphia Phillies. “Fans. Public health. The health of the players. Winning games. It’s almost always about baseball on opening day.
“But today it is about a little more than just baseball.”
A new beginning
Baseball alone is enough for Nancy and Terry Peterson. They have lost just one opening day in Fargo since 1996, and said it was worth risking going back to the stadium and claiming a measure of normality and ritual. But signs of the pandemic are everywhere: a local distillery, a whiskey and gin maker, provides hand sanitizing stations; all employees, as well as referees, wear masks; every other row of seats is cordoned off to impose social distancing.
The Petersons are in line early because the team is selling only a limited number of general admission tickets, about half the stadium’s capacity of 4,500, according to virus protocols, and they want to get their usual seats.
Once inside, Terry Peterson is delighted: “Baseball is back. Cold beer. The sun is shining.”
At the end of the third, Blake Grant-Parks, a former prospect in the Tampa Bay Rays system, smashes the first home run of the year, on the left field wall. On the field, the RedHawks, heeding warnings to avoid touching each other, are smiles and awkward ghosts.
They’re also not supposed to spit sunflower seeds or dip tobacco, but if you look closely, you’ll see that these baseball vices are hard to break. Signing autographs and throwing dirty balls into the stands is also prohibited.
At the end of the ninth, Dario Pizzano reaches the plate. A former Columbia Ivy League Player of the Year who played AAA for the Seattle Mariners, Pizzano, 29, spent the first few months of the pandemic with his fiancee in his Hoboken apartment, waiting for a season. At Fargo, he maintains a rally with a line-to-right single.
Social distancing is forgotten in the excitement of the moment, now full of punches and slaps. The RedHawks rally falls short, but by the time the post-game fireworks begin, and with Bruce Springsteen blasting from the speakers, it felt like the American summer had been restored.
‘There is no script for this’
Every day when the players arrive at the ballpark in Fargo, they meet an inmate at the entrance who takes their temperature and reads them on a printed sheet. “To the best of your knowledge,” begins the question, “Have you had direct contact with anyone who tested positive for Covid-19 in the past 24 hours?”
Every day in the league it plays out against an undercurrent of anxiety.
There has already been a scare: two players in Milwaukee Milkmen tested positive for the coronavirus and one game was canceled. Players were removed from their apartments or the homes of their host families, including the center fielder who lives with the team’s owner, and were quarantined at a hotel until everyone retested and were allowed to play.
“There is no script for this,” said Duell Higbe, the general manager for the Sioux Falls Canaries. “No one has ever done this before. We are shooting with the punches every day. “
Unlike the big leagues, which can count on television revenue, playing without fans was never an option for the American Association.
“Zero chance,” said Brad Thom, president of the RedHawks. “Fans are our life blood.”
Still, each team, no matter how successful the season is, is likely to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. “Honestly it’s a mess,” said Thom. “We are seeing high six-figure losses.”
The stadium in Sioux Falls, known as Birdcage, was built in the late 1960s and has all the asymmetrical charms of a former ballpark: odd angles and corners in the garden, a grassy berm protruding from the third base above an old one. marker.
As fans walked in for a recent afternoon game, only a few hundred appeared in the scorching heat, but watched their Canaries beat the Saints, 3-0, the public speaking announcer told fans that they assumed the risks of contracting the virus at the ballpark. He urged them to obey social estrangement “so we can have baseball here at Birdcage all summer.”
Even pets have had to adjust.
“The interactions are different,” said Donovan Knott, 23, who is Cagey, the furry, yellow Canary mascot. “You can’t go grab a boy’s hat or rub a bald boy’s head.”
Knott often has a partner in Birdcage: Peep, a small bird also known as Nicholas Ellerbroek. At 11, he has made a name for himself, appearing in a Chicago Bulls game and on display at the Pet Hall of Fame in Whiting, Indiana.
It only took a few games for the first manager to be fired for violating social distancing guidelines. That distinction went to Lecheros’ Anthony Barone, who stepped over the third base line and argued for a bang-bang call at first base.
“You get lost in the game,” he said.
Still chasing the dream
KC Huth, the Canary Islands’ center fielder, was working and selling awnings and shade structures in Dallas when the pandemic hit. His gym closed and the fields where he practiced batting closed their doors.
“Man, I was jumping fences, I was doing my best to put myself on a patch of grass to get ready,” he said.
A handful of major league players, with guaranteed contracts and money in the bank, have decided not to play this season due to health problems. In the American Association, sitting was not a realistic option.
“Players play indie ball because they want to go back to affiliated ball,” said Rick Forney, the Winnipeg manager. “They are still chasing the dream of making it to the big leagues.”
“These guys, your window is short,” he added.
Leobaldo Pina, a native of Venezuela and Fargo’s third baseman, spent the offseason feeding cows and cutting grass on a farm in Pennsylvania. Matt Tomshaw, a left-hander for the RedHawks, was at Major League Baseball camp with the White Sox in March and also worked as a mortgage analyst. Andrew Ely, who rose to Class AA in the Cubs organization and was Gleyber Torres’ double-play partner at the rookie dance, is now the Canary Islands shortstop. He also works for a Los Angeles-based private equity firm, investigating distressed assets.
There are also other players with more pedigree.
Cito Culver, a shortstop for the RedHawks, was the Yankees’ first-round pick in 2010, briefly making him a possible heir to Derek Jeter. Pitcher Bradin Hagens spent four days with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2014. Drew Ward was a third-round draft pick and at Major League Baseball this spring with the Washington Nationals, hoping to start in the minors but believing “there would be I had a chance to go up this year. ” Now he lives at the Fargo Inn & Suites and hopes to return.
Almost all players have spent years in the minor leagues or on independent balls. However, this season is life on the lowest rungs of baseball, as it never has been. There are fewer bus trips and almost no nightlife to speak of.
Canary Islands manager Mike Meyer said he had trouble sleeping on Saturday nights, knowing he would receive weekly results from the team’s coronavirus test the next day.
“This is the most anxious and stressed time I have had in my 20 years in baseball,” he said.
However, for many fans, the return of baseball has meant less anxiety in their lives.
Among them is Jerry Bowman, who since 1994 has owned Seat 17, Section R, Row 10 at Birdcage. Bowman, 70, is one of the few fans to wear a mask for games, where he is in charge of sliding the ‘K’ signals on a zip line behind the plate every time a Canarian pitcher hits a batter.
“I was shocked and euphoric” to hear that baseball would return, said Bowman, who spent the first few weeks of the pandemic watching old westerns. “He gave me something to do. Being outside, watching baseball. There is nothing better “.
Just then a visiting batter struck out.
“Excuse me, I have to drop a K,” he said. “I’ll be right back”.
