LeMahieu tests positive for Covid, Freddie Freeman hit hard by virus

Updated Friday, July 6, 2020

Major League Baseball and its Players Association do not agree on much, but they have agreed to try to protect the identities of players who test positive for COVID-19.  Officially, 48 big-league players have contracted the pandemic, with varying symptoms and sometimes none at all.  Piecing together reports from multiple sources, the number of infections among the players is, very unofficially, probably more than 60.

A few, such as the New York Yankees’ MVP, D.J. LeMahieu; Colorado Rockies’ $21 million outfielder Charlie Blackmon, and Atlanta’s All-Star first baseman Freddie Freeman, have admitted contracting the virus.

The most serious case so far is that of Freeman, whose wife posted that her husband “was hit like a ton of bricks,” that he was suffering “body aches, headaches, chills, high fever.”

And like so many victims, she claims “we’ve been very strict for four months, haven’t gone to a grocery store, haven’t been out to dinner once.”

Unfortunately, the Freemans are in a pandemic hot spot, Georgia, whose governor, Brian Kemp, has been among those least proactive against coronavirus.  Blackman is quarantined at his off-season home in north Georgia, though not reporting miseries such as Freeman has acknowledged. 

MLB, like the federal government, doesn’t like to spread news of the spread, afraid of economic damage as much as – maybe more than—the health issues.

But with the corona-curtailed season scheduled to begin July 23, Yankees at Washington, most teams are expected to be missing some of their starting lineup.

Eduardo Rodriguez, who was scheduled to be Boston’s opening-day starting pitcher, is in quarantine, as is Brad Keller, 24-year-old starting pitcher for Kansas City.

Joey Gallo, Texas Rangers All-Star outfielder, is quarantined after multiple tests that were both positive and negative.   Which points to a national problem that has been an embarrassment to American Exceptionalism since February.  This country has no national program for testing, and it can’t keep up.

Sean Doolittle, Washington pitcher who first raised concerns about long-term lung damage from Covid, was tested last Friday and did not learn the result of that before being tested again on Sunday.  Speaking at a press conference, and wearing a mask, he said, “We gotta clean that up, right?  That’s one thing that makes me a little nervous.”

There’s nervousness everywhere.  The A’s, Angels, Astros, Cardinals and Nationals reported testing malfunction that prevented them from practicing.  The USA is waiting until November to decide if it wants more testing or less.  

For now, the process is left to the states, and many have governors such as Kemp, Texas’ Greg Abbott and Florida’s Ron DiSantos, who are openly doubtful about scientific claims of the seriousness of COVID-19.

As the numbers spike like Ty Cobb barreling into second base, the season itself becomes more doubtful. 

Tradition would have the President making the first throw, but this is no year for tradition.  He’s tweeting, twiddling, whistling Dixie — trying to preserve the Confederacy, whose dead generals interest him more than American soldiers in Afghanistan that his pal Vladimir is trying to kill.  

In a country literally aflame with protest, MLB’s opener could be marked by social unrest, more drama outside the arena than inside.  Do Black Lives Matter enough in baseball?  Rockies center fielder Ian Desmond says no.  In announcing his decision to sit out the pandemic, the biracial Desmond lamented that just 8% of big-league players are Black and a lower percentage are managers or coaches.   

Also missing, as “spring” training reopened, in regular-season parks: David Price, Ryan Zimmerman and Mike Leake, all salaried, like Desmond, at $15 million+.  They determined that compensation discounted 63% wasn’t worth the health risk.   The sport’s greatest star, Mike Trout, is unsure: “I don’t feel comfortable playing baseball under these conditions.” 

We’re trying to ignore a pandemic because we want to have jobs and parties.  The President tries – or not — to distinguish between reality TV and reality.  

The fact that names of most players with Covid are being withheld tells us this disease has a stigma.  More troubling: Most who test positive show no symptoms but are very contagious.  Which makes this illness impossible to control, causing many to ask why even try.

There are more symptoms than most people realize. Lungs, head, heart and kidneys are commonly attacked.  Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert, a/k/a Patient Zero, the first professional athlete to report contracting the virus– four months ago — is still afflicted.  He says his toes sometimes burn “like ants are stinging them.”

If history teaches us anything – and I have doubts – it’s that global tragedies are more devastating than initially believed. Agent Orange was harmless for years, until it wasn’t.  The world isn’t old enough to know the full effect of its nuclear experiments and other atmospheric contaminations.  Everything the President’s coronavirus task force told us to do, most of us, including the President, are not doing.   COVID-19 will be here longer than we think.  A problem for scientists, we say, but not for us lab rats.