A few days later, the sound of the 2020 baseball season is that of an iPhone dropped from a height of three or four inches on a table.
Sean Doolittle, a pitcher for the Washington Nationals and one of hundreds of players, coaches and employees who live the unstable reality of when and where, on Sunday morning they had been tested for COVID-19. As promised by Major League Baseball protocols, it had been evaluated two days after the last one.
He had worked for three months to get ready for baseball, to introduce himself to his teammates and himself, to earn a living, maybe just to have a little fun. He had leaned in the saddle of his road bike, logging 30 miles several times a week, and regularly thrown into a net.
A couple of days later, he looked at a camera from behind a desk and waved at the checkerboard. He wore a sleeve that covered his face from the bridge of his nose to Adam’s apple. He scooped up the top as he slid down and exposed smudges of darkness under his eyes, and removed the fabric from his mouth when he spoke.
They are trying. All of them. In 30 camps, men and women who resist discomfort, elite athletes who suddenly don’t know what to do with their hands, confident people who measure each step as if they were evaluating new legs. They would like to play baseball, Doolittle included.
“I feel ready to go,” he said, “but, you know, while I’m sitting here talking to you …”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, held it in front of his face, and pecked at the screen.
“Let me. Wait. Let me check something,” he said.
He moved with his index finger.
“Yes, while I’m sitting here talking to you guys, I still don’t have my test results from Friday’s test,” he said. “So, I had the test again this morning without knowing the results of my test on Friday. So we have to clean that up. Right? That’s something that makes me a little nervous. “
It was then that the phone hit the table, a noise that asked what we are all doing here, a dull noise that resonated in a baseball panorama of daily positive tests and rejections, a clonk that sees a country too selfish or with right or political or blind to play and a league that, according to Doolittle, has not provided Nationals personnel with adequate equipment (masks, gowns, gloves) to protect themselves from disease.
Nationals relay pitcher Sean Doolittle says he performed a COVID-19 test on Sunday without receiving the results of the test he conducted on Friday. (AP Photo / Sait Serkan Gurbuz)
“There are a lot of players right now who are trying to make decisions that might be participating in camp that are not 100 percent comfortable with things right now,” Doolittle had previously said. “That’s where I am. I think I plan to play. But, if at some point I start to feel insecure, if it starts to affect my mental health, with all these things that we have to worry about, and just a kind of cloud of uncertainty about everything, then choose not to. “
Ten minutes before Doolittle arrived, the Chicago White Sox announced that they had tested positive for two players. When Doolittle left the room, and after a staff member cleaned the chair that Doolittle had occupied, Nationals manager Dave Martinez sat down and said two of his players had tested positive.
Eight players, three of them, along with players like David Price, Felix Hernández, Ian Desmond and Mike Leake, have chosen to spend the season, and it is difficult to find a player who does not harbor some reservations about the risks involved. coming.
A good portion of the league’s workforce, its players, has one foot out the door. Gambling is one thing. A game that can’t cover lags in the system, that can’t deliver on the promises it made after some early wobbles, that can’t return healthy players to their families, and maybe that’s just impossible, is another.
“Those results,” Doolittle said, “have to come back. That’s one of the most important things, there were a lot of guys who were on the fence who decided to try playing to see how this was going to work, because we were going to have our results in 48 hours. Hopefully it’s something we can address and improve in the future. “
Like most Doolittle was on day three. What is out there, in games, on trips, on planes and hotels and buses, in a country that cannot be disturbed, is a mystery.
“It was weird, man,” he said. “It has been really strange. And that’s kind of a thing, I mentioned it before, my mental health is something that I’ll really have to be aware of. I can already tell this is going to be a mental routine, and it could drive me crazy first of all. There is a cloud of uncertainty. There is this kind of, you are always waiting for more bad news. Every time I get a text message or something on my phone during the day, I worry that it’s bad news, like someone in the league has tested positive or someone has chosen not to or has broken protocol and there are photos of people that go to social networks when they shouldn’t be. Like, there are all these things. And, then, only the regular procedures of the day. Its alot. It is very, very different. And unfortunately there is not a long period of adjustments and there is not much margin for error. Then I do not know. I do not know.”
And, well, since it was on a roll, Doolittle explained again what it looked like from where he was sitting, in an almost empty room, behind a table, in a chair that had been disinfected just for him. His wife has health problems that put her at greater risk than most during the pandemic. They live separately because of that. His are voices that carry something. They use them They represent good things, good people, a better us.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but I mentioned these things because I want to play. I want there to be a season. And I want everyone to be as safe as possible. The sooner we solve these things, the greater the chances of resuming the 2020 season. Https://t.co/PaTtizVG1w
– Obi-Sean Kenobi Doolittle (@whatwouldDOOdo) July 5, 2020
Beyond that, Sean Doolittle would really like to play baseball. But he is not going to stay there alone. That would be dangerous. That would be silly.
“I think it reminds me of where we are in our response to this as a country,” he said. “We are trying to get baseball back during a pandemic that killed 130,000 people. We are much worse as a country than in March when we closed this. Look at where other developed countries are in their response to this. We have done nothing of what other countries have done to recover sports.
“Sports are the reward of a functioning society. And we’re just trying to get it back, even though we haven’t taken any of the steps to flatten the curve, whatever you want to say. We flatten the curve a bit, but we don’t use that time to do anything productive. We just reopened for Memorial Day. We decided that we’re done with that. If there are no sports, it will be because people do not wear masks. The response to this has been so politicized. We need help from the general public. If you want to see baseball, please wear masks. Social distance. Keep washing your hands. We can’t just have viral fatigue and think, ‘Well, it’s been four months that we’ve gotten over it.’ “
