Marlins players hold candid COVID-19 talk with a clear message: ‘We’ve got to be better’
The Miami Marlins team is physically divided but mentally still one.
Eighteen players are back in Miami after testing positive for COVID-19 over an eight-day stretch while in Philadelphia. The rest of the team is in Baltimore, getting ready to resume their season Tuesday with four games in three days against the Orioles after an impromptu week off to get the outbreak under control.
Five players who make up the Marlins’ player leadership group — shortstop Miguel Rojas, catcher Jorge Alfaro, outfielder Corey Dickerson, and pitchers Brandon Kintzler and Sandy Alcantara — had an open conversation about the past eight days as part of the team’s “The Clubhouse” series.
Rojas, Alfaro and Alcantara have all tested positive for COVID-19, with Rojas saying he had a “rough couple days” in Philadelphia while he dealt with symptoms including fever, sore throat and headaches. Alfaro and Alcantara say they have been asymptomatic.
“It tells you a lot about we’re suffering,” Rojas said on the show, which the team uploaded late Monday night. “We’re human beings, not just baseball players. We’re suffering from this virus. And it’s not just the three of us [Rojas, Alfaro, Alcantara]. We’ve got another 15 teammates that got the virus. This has to bring awareness. Not just to our team but to everybody throughout the league.”
Some takeaways from the 17-minute conversation:
▪ Alfaro, the first player the Marlins put on the injured list due to COVID-19, said he is unsure how he contracted the virus. “I didn’t know that I had it. I just knew when they gave me the news,” Alfaro said. “I don’t have any symptoms. I don’t feel weird or sick at all. Even when I played and was behind the plate, I had a face mask on under my mask just in case, but I have no clue. We’re fighting with something that you can’t see. You don’t know what it is. It could happen to anybody, any team. Bad luck that it happened to me first. I just have to be patient and stay positive and try to get back to the field.”
▪ Kintzler said eight of the Marlins’ 12 relievers tested positive for COVID-19. “I was just waiting every day for that text to come in or the call saying I was positive,” he said. “I couldn’t believe that I kept dodging this bullet. ... It’s just crazy. We’ve got to be better. We’ve got to do a better job to pay attention to the small details.”
▪ Dickerson, who was regularly in the same hitting group with both Rojas and Alfaro, said everyone on the team has to do a better job of giving everyone their personal space. “You don’t have to be any closer than six feet to do those things,” Dickerson said. “That’s something that we for sure need to do better at. ... I don’t need anybody to come any closer than that to have a conversation. We’re so used to the normal. Doing everything together. Helping each other out. But we have to look out for each other in a different way and give each other space.”
▪ Alcantara said he knew there were reports and rumors circulating online about what players on the team might have done while they were in Atlanta that resulted in the outbreak.
CEO Derek Jeter earlier Monday admitted some players broke league’s protocol by leaving the hotel to get coffee and clothes, while another had dinner at an old teammate’s house (that teammate did not have the coronavirus, according to two sources). They congregated in rooms, sometimes not wearing masks and sometimes not properly following social distancing protocols.
But Jeter remained adamant that “there was no salacious activity.”
“It’s a lot of people talking a lot of negative things about us and blaming us because we’re getting sick,” Alcantara said. “I know we’re sick but ... it’s something that happened. You have to care.”
▪ The team is still conversing in a group chat, which Rojas said has helped keep the morale of the players who tested positive high.
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