Outside the Ballpark – Ballparking It

Inside Yankees’ Minor League Quarantine

Social Distancing Day 20 …

On my 16th day of self-isolation (and what would’ve been Opening Day of Major League Baseball), I talked to a friend who works in the Yankees’ minor league system about his two-week quarantine in Tampa.

(This is the closest thing I have to baseball right now, and the miniature Reese’s I bought on my only grocery store run in the last 20 days aren’t numbing the pain.)

Quarantine Experience

Jon arrived at the Yankees’ spring training complex in Tampa, Florida, on Jan. 27. In his fourth year as an athletic trainer in the Yankees farm system, he was looking forward to kicking off another season.

He has spent the last three summers with the Staten Island Yankees, the Class A short-season affiliate and namesake of the big-league squad.

Official team workouts start in March, but Jon wanted to be there early to help with individual workouts as players trickled in.

Fast forward two months, and the season is in jeopardy. All sporting events have been canceled or postponed, and he just wrapped up a two-week quarantine with the players he was looking forward to helping.

“Once we had the meeting and shut everything down, everybody didn’t know what to do with themselves,” Jon said. “Baseball players are such creatures of habit, so they have their routine. It was like, ‘Can I still throw?’ ‘What can I do?'”

Both the MLB and MiLB shut down spring training and postponed their seasons on March 12. Three days later, baseball had its first confirmed case of COVID-19. That player was a minor leaguer in the Yankees farm system.

“It was weird being the first organization with a confirmed case,” Jon said. “I wouldn’t say there was panic, but it was just uncertain.”

Jon and the rest of the staff and minor league players were told to stay in their hotel rooms (or alternative housing) and leave as infrequently as possible, only when essential.

As part of the medical staff, Jon was there to check on players and help if anyone experienced symptoms. He also helped deliver the meals he was so appreciative of receiving.

“The (Yankees) organization was great. They took great care of our guys and provided everybody with meals during the quarantine period.”

But this new role didn’t take up as much time as the role he typically plays.

“We don’t usually have any days off in March,” he said. “Once we hit the first workout, it’s 6:30 (a.m.) to 5 in the evening. If I wanted to lift, I’d have to lift after work. And then it’s go home, eat and go to bed, and get up and do it again the next day.”

Luckily, the athletic trainer with newfound (forced) free time bought a PlayStation just before the quarantine.

“That was a great investment,” he said. “I’ve absolutely dominated some NHL. I started a career and stuff, although I got drafted by the Red Wings, so that kind of sucks. But we’ll work our way out of that.”

He’s also doing a Bible-in-a-year study and says he has enough space in his room to refine his putting skills and play around with his golf clubs.

“I’ve been doing some hotel workouts, too,” he said. “It’s tough with just doing body-weight stuff. I had been on a really good lifting routine before this all started, so (I’m) just trying to stay in that.”

Jon says players were also given body-weight workouts and other programs to help with their mobility.

Players were released from quarantine on March 26, but international players who were unable to return to their home countries stayed in Tampa.

Jon and a lot of the staff are still around as well.

Although (like many Americans and people around the world) he and the team are trying to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation, he says the waiting game is tough.

“I’m down here to work,” he said. “It’s weird to not be in the complex with these guys and building relationships and hanging out in the dugout. This is just so different than anything I’ve experienced in baseball.”

Thank you to Jon for giving us an inside look. He also shared his recommendations for all of us to stay in shape during this time of staying home.

“Get up and move. Body-weight workouts can be great for overall fitness, and if you’ve got stairs or weight equipment, that is even better. Blocking out 30-45 minutes a day to move and get your heart pumping is a great start to any day.”

So Jon, where do my miniature Reese’s factor in to the equation?

The Opening Day That Wasn’t

Social Distancing Day 16 …

The closest thing I’ve had to human interaction in the last 16 days was the delivery guy dropping off my buffalo wings tonight … so I’m now writing to baseball.

Hey baseball,

It’s been a while. When we said our goodbyes last October, I thought we’d be together again in five months. I thought it was just a pause, a break, a see you next spring.

I’m not saying I wasn’t bitter. We didn’t exactly end on good terms, did we? Ha, no, I was furious. The way we ended it … well, it wasn’t pretty.

Maybe I blamed you too much. Maybe I was too angry. Maybe I moved on a little too quickly. I guess football was right there to pick up the pieces.

But I promise, football could never replace you – not even with the most shocking upsets or improbable comebacks. And maybe you saw how hard I fell for basketball over the winter. But basketball isn’t you.

I mean, come on. We’ve ended on worse terms before, haven’t we? A four-game sweep in the NLCS is still an NLCS appearance.

Today was supposed to be something, one of those days I’d typically count down to in my head and constantly visualize and dream about. I was supposed to bounce out of bed and be distracted and overly excited all day.

There was no bouncing, just unceremoniously rolling over, picking up my laptop and propping myself up to start working from home after sleeping on the couch. (Any way to get a couple extra seconds of sleep, am I right?)

But I guess you’re sheltered in place somewhere, too.

Social isolation is weird, but maybe you’re used to it. You did just spend about a third of the year in hibernation. And I bet you hoarded all the best snacks. I can almost taste the endless nachos, hot dogs, ice cream and mini-doughnuts you’ve probably amassed.

You probably have excellent survival skills as well. You’re like what, 150 years old? You’ve seen it all – the world wars, the Great Depression, the Spanish flu, your own commissioner trying to change everything about you.

Anyway, I hope you’re doing well.

Don’t come back until it’s safe. But when it is, I’ll be waiting.

Love,

A socially isolated baseball fan

P.S. I wish I could say, “We will see you tomorrow night,” but I don’t really know when “tomorrow night” will be, so until then …

Not Ballparking It Anytime Soon

I’m usually an expert at being a loner. Some of my favorite pastimes are watching baseball by myself, watching basketball by myself, binge-watching TV shows by myself, going to Taco Bell by myself. I’m usually my favorite company.

But I’ve been working from home, and the last face-to-face conversation I had with a human was the cashier at Target telling me to have a good night … last Tuesday.

Since then, life as we knew it changed. We’re now living in what seems like a sci-fi novel, but it’s not fiction. It’s just science. And that’s the worst part.

I’ve already blown through the giant jar of trail mix I thought would last a few weeks (or at least more than the five days it lasted). I’m apparently not good at rationing … and I don’t even want to calculate how many servings and calories I ate in that short amount of time.

I’ve lost all ability to binge TV shows and now have zero attention span, and my apartment has started to look like a freshman dorm room.

So yeah, these are not exactly the circumstances I thought would bring me back from my hiatus.

In a perfect world (or at least one not in a global pandemic), we’d be in the heart of spring training right now. I would have maybe purchased baseball tickets and plane tickets. Maybe. (Let’s be honest … probably not. Being a procrastinator has its perks.)

But it hasn’t really hit me. I haven’t truly focused a moment on the thought of no baseball. One of my favorite things in the whole entire universe, and I haven’t even really thought about it.

I’m worried about a lot of things – from my grandparents to what’s going to happen if we have to fully quarantine and I run out of lime and jalapeno Ruffles.

And my little, basketball-loving heart wasn’t ready for the NCAA season to end so abruptly, which is probably why I haven’t thought about baseball at all.

My heart breaks for a whole lot of NCAA student-athletes who woke up one day and weren’t competing anymore. It breaks for all those who rely on income from working sporting events. It breaks for all the college seniors who don’t get to spend their final semester on campus. It breaks for all the high schoolers whose musicals and sporting events (and everything else) got canceled.

But I get it. Health and safety come first, and I’m going to do my part to make sure all these people didn’t sacrifice so much for nothing and do my best to help save each other. Thus, social distancing.

Whatever weird version of planet Earth we’re living on right now just offered up an excuse (more like a demand) to stay home and write.

(Plus, it took away all the sports, so maybe it’s my duty to fill the void with some overdue ballpark recaps you never knew you wanted and other random thoughts from yours truly.)

So buckle up for my COVID-19 diaries with a lot of reminiscing and probably a lot of nonsense.

Let’s spread the love and baseball together … just in spirit, though. Not like together, together.

It’s a Metaphor

My brain typically works in metaphors, oftentimes sports-related, other times fairy tales or sci-fi plots … the usual. I can connect almost any life situation to an episode of “Community” or (more recently) a Queen song.

I like connections, symbolism, finding hidden meanings, surprise jokes. I’m better at math the more abstract it is. (For instance, I aced algebra through calculus, but I can’t make change on the spot at all whatsoever.)

Anyway, when I started this blog and chose a name, I realized it was a pun, and I liked it because it gave me a cushion, a little room to play around.

I would physically go to ballparks, but I could kind of talk about anything because I could relate almost any topic and claim it’s “in the ballpark.” Nothing needed to be exact because I’d just be “ballparking it.”

I’m disappointed it took me over a year to figure out the real metaphor.

I recently spent a week battling allergies (or a cold?) that hit all the usual stages – sore throat, uncontrollable sneezing, runny nose, congestion and uncontrollable coughing (the stage I’m in as I type this). My living room is a mess, and so are my kitchen and bedroom. I feel like I’ve lost a week to this surprise sinus misadventure.

The idea of my trashed apartment, Rudolphian nose and the ever-changing pressure in my head (which reminds me of a Queen song) got me thinking. This week didn’t go as planned, but hey, that’s life.

This led to another thought – how neglected my blog has been. Part of it has been actual busyness and legitimate excuses, and part of it is how indecisive I am and that I would rather watch a television show or baseball game than commit to what I want to say and publish it.

And that thought led me one step further. No matter how much planning, plotting or daydreaming goes into a project, we all kind of (educatedly) guess and check our way through life to some degree. Sometimes the result is what we imagined, and sometimes it isn’t.

We’re all just kind of ballparking it.

I thought Ballparking It was a symbol and celebration of turning 30 and starting a new chapter, and it is, but maybe that’s secondary. It turns out, I’ve been “ballparking it” since 1988, and my baseball road trips are no exception.

I got rained on at my first ballpark, threw up before the Brewers game, made what seemed like every wrong turn trying to get to Target Field, found out I don’t understand roundabouts at all, did the Mall of America with a next-level migraine and have revised my year two ballpark itinerary probably more times than I even remember right now.

Did I quit? No. I popped open an umbrella, rallied with a ballpark baked potato, found the Target Field parking lot, made it out of each and every roundabout I entered, discovered just how soothing the Mall of America Ninja Turtles ride can be and fully intend to visit multiple ballparks this year.

Shell Shock at Nickelodeon Universe in the Mall of America

Sometimes you put your hand in bird poop at the Ozzie Smith statue, and you know what? That’s OK. You can wash it off at Ballpark Village.

(This is literally what I did the night before the 2018 PGA Championship.)

Birds poop. (And that is not a commentary on any Cardinals losing trend, but it could be.) Does that mean they poop all over your dreams and you give up if something isn’t quite how you’d guessed it would be? Nope. You just keep ballparking it.

Maybe I accidentally (on purpose) get months (or a year) behind on posts. Maybe I’d rather rank songs or write about a TV show one day than recap a ballpark. Maybe I realize I’m more of a vacationer than a traveler. Maybe the Cardinals lay a big fat turd in the month of May. (Birds do poop, remember?)

If any of these not-so-hypothetical situations come up, I can just roll up my sleeves, rinse my hands, write the posts I want to write and enjoy (and hope the Cardinals have a better June).

Yes, I’m literally visiting 30 ballparks for turning 30, but no matter how old I am, like every other human, I’ll always be ballparking it.

That’s what this blog is, not a travel blog and not just the next chapter, but all the bird poop, random thoughts and roundabouts along the way.