BRADENTON, Fla. — They occurred within shouting distance here at LECOM Park. But in reality, they were separated by so much more.
With the five-year anniversary of the COVID-19 shutdown arriving Wednesday, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own experience from that time as someone who covered spring training in 2020 before the pandemic arrived, then all through the Zoom era and things opening back up again.
As I walked laps around LECOM Park on Tuesday morning, I found my mind drifting back to the last interviews we did before the shutdown.
Six players spoke: Jarrod Dyson, Derek Holland, Chris Archer, Josh Bell, Joe Musgrove and Bryan Reynolds.
“This is obviously a serious deal,” Holland said.
“It’s very real for all of us,” Bell added.
It’s wild to think about now, the same for a group of fans who snuck into the ballpark to watch what was supposed to be a closed workout once things opened up a little.
I can still remember interviewing them in left field, as well as the excitement I saw when I waited by the gates on March 2, 2021, for the first fan to enter.
“It’s a good feeling,” a female Pirates fan from Maryland named Lauren Gallagher told me. “But the best feeling will be as soon as I crack an I.C. Light in about 30 minutes.”
We needed a lot of that to get through those times, didn’t we?
Covering this era of Pirates baseball is something I'll never forget — although I admittedly didn’t think about it a ton until realizing that the 5-year anniversary was upon us.
That fall, I actually covered instructional league at Pirate City, but I couldn’t talk to any players in-person. The Pirates — who were actually tremendous with pandemic policies and procedures — arranged phone interviews with prospects.
That next spring, I remember walking along the outside of Pirate City, where fans could sit with lawn chairs and watch from a distance. It was there that I met a Connecticut native who grew up idolizing Roberto Clemente and moved to Bradenton around 2016.
The 61-year-old retiree was there with his bulldog, just watching ball.
“I like coming out here,” Eddie Alicia said. “Basically all you hear is the crack of the mitt and some of the players talking. To me, it’s calming.”
Other times weren’t as calm.
I remember the opening Sunday in St. Louis, when Holland was seated in the stands — common for pitchers in this era as a way of social distancing — and was thrown out by home-plate umpire Jordan Baker for arguing balls and strikes.
Shelton would later have a social-distanced argument with Baker, which was hilarious.
Noah Hiles wrote an excellent piece chronicling the shutdown and what it took to restart the season, but my memories from that time are a bit more obscure.
I remember being thrilled that the Westin across from Busch Stadium actually served food, rare in those days. The Post-Gazette actually continued to pay for travel, which I loved, and we stayed on the road. Alex Stumpf (MLB.com and formerly DKPittsburghSports.com) and I were two of the only writers in the country who kept going.
A big deal back then was the idea of in-person interviews. Once a week you could request a player, and you’d chat somewhere outside for 5 or 10 minutes. I used one of mine on Richard Rodriguez, another on Jacob Stallings. I can vividly remember sitting with Stallings in the seats at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, thrilled to feel some sense of normalcy.
Then again, that ballpark is also where one of the craziest moments of the 2020 season occurred.
On Sept. 12, there was an active shooter at Arrowhead Stadium that delayed the start of the Pirates’ game that night against the Royals. If that wasn’t strange enough, I learned about it while pulling off the highway near the two facilities.
Great timing for yours truly.
“I remember us being like, ‘No one is allowed to go anywhere. How’s this happening?’” Mitch Keller said. “It was just kind of crazy.”
As poorly as the baseball went that season, I meant what I said above — the Pirates were actually among the most reasonable and helpful teams during this time.
They kept their facilities clean. They actually served food, a crazy concept but something that disappeared during COVID. The communications team of Brian Warecki, Jim Trdinich and Dan Hart also worked extremely hard to ensure we had multiple players to interview on Zoom.
Oh, yeah, those.
I can’t walk into a major league press box without thinking back to that time and where I’d go to find quiet. How Stallings — the nicest man ever — would just appear so beaten down on the screen, or how Gregory Polanco would take a day and a half if we requested him.
I remember where I was sitting in Milwaukee when Chad Kuhl blamed a poor start on the baseballs. The same for Holland talking about watching boxing videos before every start or walking out of Great American Ball Park when two games were ultimately postponed because of a positive COVID test, unsure whether I should wait it out or go home.
That was a similar memory I have from prior to the shutdown, when we were all monitoring what was happening around professional sports.
I remember sitting at the dining room table of my Bradenton Airbnb, having just gone out to get Five Guys, when I saw the NBA was shutting down.
I knew that was it.
But I also didn’t know what to do — should I cancel the rest of our rental or just two weeks? If you can believe it, we actually thought we’d be coming back. Hard to believe now.
Along with those fans who snuck in and the players who talked, I’ll never forget covering the Pirates’ final game that spring — when it actually extended past the shutdown time.
I remember not really paying attention to the action. Up in the press box and down on the field, we were all trying to get information, direction on what was going to happen. Later, those six players talked about what was only a two-week suspension at the time.
“It’s going to be interesting to see what happens,” Musgrove said. “We don’t really know yet.”
We eventually learned. And I hope we never, ever have to go back.
First Published: March 13, 2025, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: March 13, 2025, 12:26 p.m.
