For Pirates, March 12 marks ominous 1-year anniversary of spring training shutdown

When the calendar flips to March 12 on Friday, it represents an ominous one-year anniversary for the Pittsburgh Pirates. It’s the day a global pandemic interrupted spring training and stopped the sports world for months.

The previous night, the NBA stopped its season when Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for covid-19 just moments before tip-off of a game. Soon, the NHL and NCAA conference basketball tournaments would do the same.

While the Pirates were playing a Grapefruit League game against the Toronto Blue Jays at LECOM Park in Bradenton, Fla., MLB announced that it was shutting down spring training for health and safety concerns.

“Yeah, I remember it like it was yesterday, honestly,” Pirates pitcher Mitch Keller said, recalling that Joe Musgrove was on the mound. “We were all just kind of in the clubhouse wondering why we were playing. The NBA got shut down, everything else was getting shut down and we were playing spring training games. It just kind of felt weird that we were still playing. Then we found out later that day.”

Pirates manager Derek Shelton said the coronavirus was a concern that both teams were talking about and found it “a little surreal” that the game was going on while leagues were pressing pause on games.

“Not ever having been through a global pandemic or not knowing what was going to happen, I don’t think any of us realized the severity of it,” Shelton said. “As the day went on and I remember candidly talking to one of the umpires that day and him telling me, ‘Hey, they’re telling us we’re going home.’ That was during the game. That really kind of stuck with me that, hey, we’re dealing with something that if they’re going to send the umpires home, we’re in a serious situation here.”

The seriousness, however, wasn’t lost on Pirates players. During the game, former Pirates pitcher Chris Archer voiced his concerns about the risk of continuing to play after coronavirus cases were confirmed in Manatee County: “The last thing we want to do is have one of the players get affected and then come into contact with somebody else.”

Pirates left-hander Steven Brault, who was a guest in the broadcast booth for Pirates television flagship AT&T SportsNet when the Archer interview aired, echoed the sentiment that as much as he didn’t want to stop playing baseball, the risk of getting thousands of people sick wasn’t worth it.

“Sometimes, life is more important than baseball,” Brault said. “You have to put that in perspective. It is just a game, just a sport. If it has to be pushed back, it has to be pushed back, and we’ll start playing again when we can.”

MLB resumed training camps in July, shortening the season to 60 games and playing in empty ballparks because of crowd restrictions. Despite outbreaks with the Miami Marlins, St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds that forced games to be postponed and required seven-inning doubleheaders for makeup games, baseball completed its season and the Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series.

A year later, after more than 530,000 covid-related deaths in the U.S., MLB teams have returned to their spring training sites and are still following health and safety measures for safe social distancing.

“It’s just crazy, how a year difference and … we know more about it but we’re still kind of going through the same struggles,” Keller said. “Hopefully, here soon, it will be over with and we can get back to playing baseball and not worrying about protocols.”