MILWAUKEE -- The Pirates had this date circled on their calendars for a couple weeks now.
Prior to their game against the Brewers on Friday night at American Family Field, Derek Shelton confirmed that the Pirates finally have 85 percent of their necessary players and Tier 1 staff vaccinated for COVID-19. They’ll be able to shed their masks and face coverings in the dugout and proceed with fewer restrictions and protocols which will include some family travel.
It didn’t take much to tell that the Pirates had grown frustrated with the restrictions -- many of which are still in place. Adam Frazier said that he’d gotten accustomed to things like wearing a mask long ago, and it hasn’t been a preoccupation throughout the season.
But he also noted that fans have long been in the stands for a while now and felt those protocols should have eased much sooner.
“Life's been getting back to normal, so I feel like we should be getting there with it,” he said.
Frazier, the Buford, Ga. native, is three weeks removed from playing in front of more than 150,000 people during a four-game series in his hometown of Atlanta at Truist Park, which can fit around 40,000 people.
“The rest of the world is living life, then we should be, too,” Frazier said.
PNC Park will operate at just 55 percent capacity, although it was able to be full for a while now, until July 1.
Major League Baseball announced that there are 22 teams who have now reached that threshold, including the Pirates’ two most recent opponents, the Brewers and Dodgers.
Due to the fact that they had to wait two weeks from the final dose before MLB’s medical protocol would consider them “fully vaccinated,” the Pirates knew exactly when this was coming.
The mood around the dugout seemed upbeat ahead of the start of the series against the Brewers, but the few players available to talk didn’t seem too worried about their new freedoms.
Gregory Polanco was pleased to be rid of some “annoying” restrictions, and get back to normal. But as a guy who has required a stint on the COVID-IL in each of the past two seasons, he understood what it took to get to this point.
“It's annoying. At one point we all needed to do it because of what's happening,” he said. “But now, you're thinking only about baseball.”
There is no “clean slate,” as Shelton described it, in the easing of some of these protocols. There will still be intake processes for players that have to do things like fly commercial, which is what Ka’ai Tom did when he found out he’d been claimed by the Pirates in April. He was held up in a hotel for three days waiting to clear testing, leaving his room only to go to the hotel lobby for testing before going right back to seclusion.
“Uber Eats was my best friend,” he said.
Things are obviously getting back to normal, and seeing players and coaches unobstructed faces during games is a step in the right direction. Tom even said that his mother is coming to Pittsburgh from Hawaii for a game, incidentally looking for some sort of baseball vengeance against his first organization, Cleveland.
Shelton was able to take the field for batting practice without his No. 17 neck gaiter for the first time at American Family Field. And on Friday night, he’ll work his first game as an MLB manager with nothing covering his face.
“I don’t know if that’s good or bad,” Shelton joked. “Maybe I’ll just wear it out there still, anyway, so you can’t hear or read what I’m saying.”
