On Day 1 of the remainder of their lives, Cubs gamers stepped out in their vehicles and had their temperatures checked.
After crossing the road from the gamers’ lot to an front past the wall in left at Wrigley Field, that they had their temps checked once more. Because who is aware of how issues may alternate for a man on this athletic top in, oh, 100 paces?
Once within, they entered the clubhouse thru a distinct door, and down a distinct staircase and hall, than they have been used to. Inside and out of doors the clubhouse, any choice of little issues have been other: the place the meals used to be, how a lot area used to be in between occupied lockers, which apparatus had disappeared from the burden room.
Where the heck have been the clubhouse couches?
Gone, that’s the place.
At Guaranteed Rate Field and at ballparks all through the key leagues, equivalent scenes opened up Friday as groups were given again on their grinds prematurely of a season.
For gamers and coaches, running shoes and groundskeepers, front-office staffers and media, it’s again to trade — with a major twist.
Fear? Anxiety? Vulnerability?
Depends who you might be, how you’re feeling and the way you’re stressed, I guess.
For some, it can be onerous to make sense of a phrase like “fear” as carried out to this kind of homey, iconic, romanticized position as Wrigley. These days, the ivy has taken over the outfield brick. The box is as gorgeous as ever. The Red Line rumbles within the background, now not as busy as same old however each and every bit as soothing.
As a boy, again ahead of the identify “Wrigleyville” got here into use, I chained up my bicycle on the nook of Pratt and Clark and hopped at the No. 22 bus. Not a couple of times, now not 5 instances or 10, however as frequently as I may just escape with it. From there, frequently by myself, it used to be directly to the least fearsome position on the planet. Opponents of the hapless Cubs most likely felt that means about it, too, come to consider it.
But I felt concern Friday. Or possibly nervousness is the easier phrase. I felt inclined, evidently.
Twice as previous as some gamers, and hardly ever in my athletic top, I labored in a press field that hasn’t ever been at a loss for words as homey or romanticized. To the Cubs’ credit score, it after all has been renovated and now not seems like wading right into a dying entice. Except for, smartly, you realize — the coronavirus factor. Wearing a masks for approximately so long as it takes to play a ballgame, we scribes sat, correctly distanced, and labored.
Heroes? Nah.
But the considered coming again on a daily basis makes me masses fearful, as I suppose it does many others. Like Angels celebrity Mike Trout, the sport’s biggest participant, who confided to journalists Friday that he’s “uncomfortable” with the entire association.
“There’s a lot of things on my mind,” stated Trout, whose spouse, Jessica, is due in August.
Cubs pitching trainer Tommy Hottovy, simplest 38, used to be so ill with the coronavirus — for a month — that he couldn’t discuss it with journalists with out crying. Manager David Ross and others have been in touch with Hottovy whilst he used to be laid low and watched him spiral.
“It was extremely frightening to watch and to see,” Ross stated. “He’s a healthy guy; he exercises, is in good shape. It made me think about what [COVID-19] might do to me. You start thinking about how that would play out.”
We’ve all performed our proportion of that by way of now, haven’t we? Some folks to such an extent, it may’t be wholesome.
“There’s a lot of people, unfortunately, that have gotten this and were not able to tell the story and were not able to see their families for one last time,” Anthony Rizzo stated.
Rizzo is a most cancers survivor. He wouldn’t be crushing existence, greater than a decade after his prognosis, if he scared simply. But even he’s stepping out of his automotive and sporting uneasy emotions into the ballpark presently.
“You can’t take days for granted,” he stated.
Not the most productive ones at Wrigley, nor some other type.