Walking into PNC Park on this steamy, soggy Thursday afternoon, I was struck by the sight of new black-mesh fencing being erected on the main concourse behind home plate. This a day after temporary tents popped up closer to the field.
Should've guessed: More safety.
Inside the fencing, as seen in the pic I snapped above, the Pirates' strength and conditioning coaches were setting up exercise bikes. Maybe a dozen of them. Stretching all the way down the first base line. Right where ushers would typically be taking fans' tickets. Right where vendors would typically be selling beer, peanuts and stuffed Potato Pete toys.
This setup, plus the tents, are part of the plan to keep players, coaches and other team personnel and participants more socially distanced once the real games begin a week from now.
Yeah, they're all tested every other day. Yeah, there's a Purell dispenser every few feet throughout the place. And yeah, there was a worker spraying seats in the upper deck as the team scrimmaged far below ...
... which I still can't believe I witnessed.
But then, consider this assessment afterward from Derek Shelton, the new field manager who often steps way out into the seating areas to watch his players: "There’s things that happen that we don’t discuss, whether they're injury-wise or test-wise. And the biggest part of it -- I think we talked about it the first day we met -- is we just have to adapt and adjust to what's put in front of us. And that’s what we’re doing every day. We’re going with what we have."
They really are.
The Pirates' summer camp, you'll recall, opened the day after Allegheny County's June 30 ordinance limiting indoor occupancy. That night, their management, all the way up to team president Travis Williams and stadium manager Dennis DaPra, scrambled to abide by any impact the ordinance might've had on their operations. Fact is, the ordinance didn't really apply to them, and they knew it. But they took zero risk and, among other physical and procedural changes, they tasked Shelton's bench coach, Don Kelly, with splitting the Pirates' players -- who'd already had their stalls spread through the home clubhouse -- that much further by utilizing the visiting clubhouse at the opposite end of the facility. They altered drills to create smaller groups. They avoided getting too close together when surrounding an instructor.
They often wore masks, too. Meaning on the field, even though they aren't remotely required to do so. That directive, for the most part, originated with Joe Musgrove, who eloquently admonished his teammates early on not to 'bitch and complain.'
They'll make it. They'll push through.
Not because they're tougher than coronavirus, or any similar nonsense. But rather, because, as I've been predicting all along, they'd be in the best possible position to push through once they'd be able to test.
Testing, testing, testing.
Get this: When Major League Baseball performed that universal testing of all players and staff a couple weeks ago, the positive rate for coronavirus was 1.8%. And that was considered a pleasant surprise, given that the national rate is closer to 5%. Well, according to the Wall Street Journal this week, another round of testing conducted after all 30 teams reported to their respective camps showed a positive rate of 0.2%. Barely anyone.
And bear in mind, unlike the NHL, NBA and Major League Soccer, there's no bubble in play for baseball. The Pirates aren't being secluded in or even near PNC Park. They're in their homes, with their families. And when they board their charter flight next Thursday for St. Louis, it'll be the beginning of a highly typical schedule apart from, of course, the 60-game brevity.
That positive rate, again: 0.2%.
The process hasn't been perfect. Testing results from MLB's facility in Utah -- converted from its usual usage as a lab for testing steroids samples -- have been delayed. A few players have received positive tests, followed immediately by negative tests. According to both Rob Manfred's office and the union, 71 total players have tested positive, at any point.
But the optimism being expressed at PNC Park from the outset, if anything, has only grown.
“I continue to be optimistic because of the effort I know is happening every day with teams, at the league level, with the cooperation of the players' association, and at the lab,” Ben Cherington was saying here a couple days ago. “There are factors outside of that, that we don’t fully control. We have to take that really seriously. We have to be extremely disciplined. Our players need to be really disciplined. Everybody needs to be really disciplined if we’re going to get to games, pull this off, play successfully and get through a season.”
They will.
I've read the news, and I've seen the latest data, too:
Our updates is published. States reported a record number of tests (831k) and cases (71k). At 977, the reported death count is the highest since May 29. Patients hospitalized with COVID-19 rose to a level we haven’t seen since April 23. pic.twitter.com/wiybSfnetX
— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) July 16, 2020
It's awful, and it's even more potentially awful, once that single-day record of 71,229 cases -- preceded by so many similar days -- invariably leads into more hospitalizations, more deaths to contribute to the appalling total of 138,255. For a while, mercifully, the latter two weren't coming. But the way this thing works, the cases come first, and then there's a lag of two or three weeks before ICUs are packed and people start dying in bulk.
Yesterday, we lost 977 Americans to this. That's a 51 percent increase from where we were at the start of the month. Emergency rooms in Miami and Houston are overflowing. Mostly rural South Carolina lost a record 69 lives. Funeral homes in Phoenix had to turn away bodies. The states of Florida, Texas and California are approaching crisis levels previously seen only in New York, Italy and Spain.
This ain't a hoax, folks. And it sure as hell isn't political.
It's medical. It's as real verifiable as the death certificates and the devastation left in its wake.
So when I'm discussing sports, I'm downplaying neither the virus nor the damage nor the challenge still ahead. Please understand that.
In the same breath, though, I can state with greater confidence than ever that this is the time for sports to return. At least professional sports, which face infinitely fewer logistical hurdles than anything at lower levels.
The athletes and all participants, now demonstrably, couldn't be in a safer place than they are. Their friends and loved ones aren't made any less safe. So the long-standing thought that they'd be putting themselves in harm's way by playing is already being proven to be precisely the opposite.
Only one threat remains: Optics.
Already, there are complaints that athletes are getting tests while ordinary citizens can't. Uh-uh. Yesterday, the U.S. conducted a record 831,000 tests, and anyone anywhere can waltz into a Rite-Aid or drive-thru a clinic and get one for themselves.
There are also complaints -- still, incredibly -- about a lack of priority or sensitivity. Uh-uh to that, too. Sports matter in America. Maybe not as much everywhere as they do in Pittsburgh, but they matter. People have lost jobs. People are losing hope. People need the unique pick-us-up that sports uniquely offer to us as a society.
Heck, sports might be the only common ground we find in this country anymore.
See you in St. Lou.
• If it's baseball hope you seek, I first offer Mitch Keller:
Keller vs. Josh Bell saw two quick strikes working away, followed by two waste pitches inside, then that nose-diving slider under Bell's alligator-armed swing. And notice how Bell stands at the box for an extra second or two to fathom what just hit him.
The kid did that all day. So sharp. Precious little contact. Bunch of broken bats. Adam Frazier must've gone through a whole bundle himself.
Coaxed a whole podcast out of me today:
• Don't skip the pod. I've got some rather pointed thoughts in there, as well, about the ongoing absences of Keone Kela, Ke'Bryan Hayes and Gregory Polanco, particularly as it relates to closing.
Not one of them was seen Thursday, by the way.
• Bell isn't having a good summer camp. He's swing and missing at nearly everything. And oddly, that doesn't matter much. He looked just as off last spring, right through the two exhibition games in Houston, then erupted.
• A-Rod for president, you guys!
No, really, Alex Rodriguez, speaking on a conference call Thursday, went public with a plea for the players' union to be open to revenue sharing and, since one doesn't work without the other, a salary cap.
As in ... woooooooooooo!
"The only way it's going to happen is if they get to the table and say the No. 1 goal, let's get from $10 to $15 billion and then we'll split the economics evenly," A-Rod told the call, referring to the decline of baseball. "But that's the type of conversation instead of fighting and fighting against each other because there's too much competition out there right now."
Referring to his debut with the Mariners in 1994, he added, "Then, we had a stranglehold on professional sports. Baseball was No. 1. Today, the NBA has become an international conglomerate. The NFL's a juggernaut. Back then, there was no Netflix, no Snapchat, no Disney+, ESPN+, and everything they're doing to attract their attention. So today we have to really work collaborative, with the players and the owners, to say, 'How do we compete together to become No. 1?' "
OK, forget that A-Rod's a cheater. Forget that he collected $448 million as a player in the system he now wants to change. Forget, even, that his primary purpose for stating such a thing is that he and Jennifer Lopez currently have a bid in to buy the Mets.
All that matters is this: SOMEONE SAID IT.
As in ... woooooooooooo!
This, my friends, adds on to statements made by the top executives of the Cubs and Diamondbacks a couple months ago, and it only adds more smoke, if not a fire, toward what really needs to happen in baseball in 2021.
Don't think it's real?
Well, then explain Tony Clark wasting all of 0.5 seconds, from all appearances, to respond with a public remark of his own: "Alex benefited as much as anybody from the battles this union fought against owners' repeated attempts to get a salary cap. Now that he is attempting to become an owner himself, his perspective appears to be different. And that perspective does not reflect the best interests of the players."
If there was no worry about the sentiment spreading, why respond at all?
• New York ... Chicago ... Phoenix ... not exactly baseball's smallest markets, by the way.
• A cynic would suggest A-Rod wouldn't have made his money in a cap league. Maybe that's right, but go ahead and ask Patrick Mahomes, LeBron James and others if they can earn at that level in a cap league. They do all right.
Ben Roethlisberger's made $232 million -- with $68 million still due the next two years -- in a cap league. He's done all right. He's never once voiced a complaint about the NFL's cap system.
The only difference in a cap league is that the non-superstar players get more. In the NHL, a league so far on the fringe that A-Rod didn't bother to mention it, a player's minimum wage is $650,000. In baseball, it's $563,500. Same size roster. Same level of commitment, dedication required.
• Great observation here by Alex Stumpf:
Going by these projections, beating each team in the division one more time means the Pirates would be in first place.
60 game season is gonna be bonkers https://t.co/HfUCfL3tkT
— Alex Stumpf (@AlexJStumpf) July 17, 2020
• Unpopular opinion: You get used to the pumped-in crowd noise that the Pirates are now doing here. It's really well produced -- by sound specialists at MLB -- and it feels more like ... I don't know, echoing noise from Downtown across the river or something. It's a lot better than silence.
Now, it helps that PNC Park has a state-of-the-art sound system where the speakers are spread all over the facility for even distribution. Most stadiums have a central location or two for all audio, and that would be weird.
• Vaccine by September, anyone?
I don't care who gets it first, who gets it best. There are 158 known countries currently working on one, and that's fine by me. Between politicians and pundits, my only rooting interest in this scenario is for the researchers.
• One week. Southwest nonstop. Aisle seat. Mask, sanitizer and a big ol' Starbucks. Let's go.
MORE CAMP COVERAGE
• Piggyback to relief, Stratton fine
• Shelton's personality rubbing off
• Polanco absent from practice again
