Royals hope to make the most of a ‘weird’ situation: playing in empty stadiums
Many a kid has played baseball in the yard and pretended to step to the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning with the bases loaded, two outs and a sold-out stadium going crazy.
Major League Baseball players could face that very situation this summer, with one notable exception:
No screaming fans.
“It’ll be different. It’ll be weird. It’s not ideal,” Royals utilityman Whit Merrifield said. “We have great fans here in Kansas City. When the place is rocking, it helps, and it helps get you going, helps your adrenaline and when that adrenaline is going to help that focus really lock in. I’m sure there’s still gonna be some but there’s nothing like a big situation hearing the crowd get real loud. There’s just nothing like that.
“So that’s going to be a challenge. It’s going to be different. But hopefully it’s just a quick challenge. Hopefully eventually fans will be back. Obviously not 100% at first, but maybe, you know, 20%, 40%, gradually gets a point where if you want to come to the game, come to the game. That’s my hope.”
The Royals share that sentiment. But so far no teams have announced plans to have fans in the stands during a season shortened to 60 games because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The closest any team has come is when the Colorado Rockies said this week that they hope to “allow a limited number of fans to attend 2020 home games at Coors Field.”
Royals vice president of publicity Toby Cook shared a statement from Major League Baseball that said no decision has been made about whether or not fans will be allowed to attend this summer’s games. That will be determined as local health authorities continue to evaluate, with the help of medical advisers, whether doing so is safe, MLB said.
The Royals have so far announced only that they will have plastic cutouts of pictures of fans in the seats at Kauffman Stadium.
“I think the goal is for every club to have some form of social distancing fans in their ballparks,” one Royals official said. “It’s just a matter of when, but we have to plan for it.
“You know, we we have a hope that it’ll happen here. And we have to make plans for it.”
If the stands remain empty for every home and road game this year, Royals manager Mike Matheny hopes the players will embrace the uniqueness of the season.
In some ways, it will mimic the short-season rookie-league ball that most of them played earlier in their careers.
“I hope we have the enjoyment that most of us had as a rookie ballplayers,” Matheny said. “First time you’re ever putting on a uniform and you are actually getting paid. I mean it was, it was pretty amazing. And we’re gonna have that conversation, too. And we started it with a lot of players about this could really be as fun as we want it to be.
“First of all, we’ve got to take some of that fear out of it, right? Replace that with that faith and trust, and after that, man, this thing could be one of the funnest seasons we’ve ever had, and what opportunity for an organization, from where we’ve been to where we potentially can be.
“And it’s not a stretch when you look at the talent that we have.”
This story was originally published July 9, 2020 at 2:49 PM with the headline "Royals hope to make the most of a ‘weird’ situation: playing in empty stadiums."
