BRADENTON, Fla. — Spring Training can be something of a bubble.
While the rest of the country toils through the cold, wet, damp and occasionally still snowy months of February and March, ballplayers, snowbirds, and yes, baseball writers flock to southern locales for a taste of baseball in paradise. It’s 60 degrees warmer than it is back home, and the PA announcer will remind you of that every day. There’s palm trees, sun, and freshly painted chalk lines — a bucolic, baseball paradise.
For all of about three days.
After that, it’s work. Because for the people who are really involved in it — the players, the coaches and the front office staff, all the way down to the clubhouse staff and yes, the reporters, Spring Training is a grind.
It’s like the movie Groundhog Day, but set in a place with nicer weather. The days are long. The work is both exhausting and monotonous. The paradise that surrounds it exists only in theory — or on an off day.
Everyone is trapped in a far-flung locale that might be a nice place to go on vacation if they had time to take advantage of it. Instead, the hours are spent in the batting cage, taking pitcher’s fielding practice, throwing bullpen sessions, and playing in meaningless game after meaningless game after meaningless game.
But being trapped there, with nothing to do but work and be with each other, is probably the best thing baseball teams have going for them. The clubhouse isn’t so much a clubhouse but the central locale of a compound where days are spent playing dominoes, telling stories, pulling pranks, and becoming, well, a team.
“Just being around each other in the clubhouse like this for an extended period of time, you create those relationships,” Pirates shortstop Jordy Mercer said. “You’re all vying for one thing and that’s to win. All that extracurricular stuff, what’s been said and whatnot, kinda get throw out the window.”
What’s been said, of course, is in reference to the men seated to Mercer’s left in David Freese — who lambasted seemingly everyone in the organization to the media the first day he reported — and Josh Harrison — who demanded a trade before arriving. To see the veteran players, stashed in the corner of the locker room, interact with one another and the rest of the team, you’d never know it.
The mood in Pittsburgh remains sour, with fans continuing to circulate petitions and form protests in regards to the offseason the team had. The narrative in the clubhouse, though? It’s entirely different.
“It is,” manager Clint Hurdle said. “Especially with the narrative through the winter and then you watch how things are now. It’s a whole different deal, and if you’re not in this vacuum, you can’t feel it or you haven’t been able to see it, but if you watched the men, how they worked through the conversations, the thoughts and how we’ve continued to have clear communication, there’s been no hidden agendas. Nobody’s been trying to drive something that’s not right or isn’t appropriate. We’re listening and making adjustments along the way.”
There’s a sense of optimism, that would probably be greeted with a strong sense of incredulity by the fanbase, that persists despite the loss of stars Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole.
“I think it’s great,” Mercer went on. “Over the course of the last number of years, we’ve had the same guys in place. You know what you’re going to get out of everybody. Now, there’s a lot of unknowns, so nobody really knows what’s going to happen. I think that’s what’s exciting.
“So far, as camp’s gone on, we’ve grown closer together. The new guys have jumped right on with us guys that have been around for a while. It seems like we’re just growing closer and closer and that’s what you want to be on the doorstep of Opening Day.”
Mercer went on to say that he feels that this year’s team has the capability to be better than last year’s.
“People can make predictions, but who really knows what Colin Moran is going to do with a full season?” Mercer said. “Who knows what Joe Musgrove is going to do with a full season in the rotation?”
The thing that could have hampered that process could have been a rift in the clubhouse. Established veterans like Freese, Harrison, Mercer, Ivan Nova, and Francisco Cervelli didn’t sign up for another re-build. But they’ve said their peace, bought into the plan, and have set about being the examples the Pirates’ slew of young regulars need.
“At the end of the day, we needed to get all the distractions off the table and get ready to play baseball and I think that’s what they’ve done,” Hurdle said. “It needed to be done the first day that we got here and it’s been happening every day since.”
The work has been put in, the boxes have been ticked, rosters whittled, notebooks filled and filed, bonds created, friendships formed and skills acquired. But the grind isn’t close to ending. At the end of six weeks of non stop baseball stands Game 1 of 162 against the Detroit Tigers on Thursday.
“Our team is ready to play,” Hurdle said. “Now, the season is going to start. The games are going to count and we’ll be judged on our play. We’re all looking forward to that. … It’s time to play ball.”
