#Strange sight outside Mets-Red Sox another sad reminder

BOSTON — We don’t require daily reminders of the different world we now inhabit, but we get them anyway, every day, no matter where we are. Outside Fenway Park’s Gate B, there sits a splendid statue with the word “TEAMMATES” on the base.

From left to right stand bronze likenesses of Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky and Dominic DiMaggio. Ten years ago this was added to the Fenway milieu after a terrific book of the same name written by David Halberstam, celebrating the seven years — 1942, then 1946-51 — in which that quartet formed the foundation of some good-but-not-good-enough Red Sox teams.

On game days in normal times, this is a popular destination spot. Even with no game, folks always wander over here for a group photo or a selfie. Monday, of course, they were all by themselves. And, almost as naturally, there was something a little different about their appearance.

All four were wearing face masks.

It seemed an appropriate greeting from this city on a beautiful 93-degree day, one that, by civic ordinance, would normally be decreed “a perfect day for baseball” but, then, in the final days of July 2020 there really is no such thing. Not when one team — the Miami Marlins — has been ransacked by COVID-19.

Not when two more teams — the Yankees and the Phillies, in whose ballpark the Marlins’ quartered as their outbreak grew from four to 11 over the weekend, in whose visiting clubhouse and dugout those players congregated — had to cancel a game.

“This,” Luis Rojas said, “is part of our reality.”

It tells you about where the baseball season sits right now that, given a choice, Rojas would have far preferred to be have been pondering the Mets’ plummet into Panic City before the game, following a lost weekend series against the Braves. Even the feel-good slugfest the Mets would enjoy on this night — a 7-4 win over the Sox powered by home runs by Michael Conforto, Pete Alonso and Dom Smith — felt almost secondary.

For it is impossible to conduct business now without the looming specter of the virus loitering in the room, sitting silent sentry everywhere. It is impossible to escape. A road trip to Boston is usually the easiest of all excursions for the Mets or the Yankees, either a 45-minute charter flight or a leisurely train ride; the Mets took a caravan of six buses here, seven or eight man per vehicle. They have two floors all to themselves in their hotel.

“Our little bubble,” Rojas called it.

But there is no bubble, of course, because even when baseball was pondering the plausibility of bubbles the places they figured would be optimal in March — Arizona, Florida, Texas — are sprawling petri dishes now. There are clearly defined protocols but no real way — other than hopeful wishing and good luck — to make sure they keep everyone healthy.

That’s what you must remember about the electric waves of shock that ricocheted through baseball Monday: this was always not only a possibility, but a likelihood. Worst-case scenarios might only have been whispered about but they were out there. Certainly, the sport would have preferred a longer wait than three whole days before facing its first moment of truth, but if there is one thing we know about the virus it is this: it is a lousy business partner.

“We knew something like this might happen,” Rojas said. “The best we can do is keep following the protocols and be consistent with what’s being done here.”

That is baseball’s only hope, and every team preaches the same thing — accountability, discipline, reliance on all members to do the right things. But good intentions aren’t enough. The Marlins apparently took a team vote whether to play Sunday after they already knew four of them had been infected; the virus isn’t a sprained ankle you can grit your teeth and grind your way through. It can’t be on them to make that call. Players will always err on the side of playing.

The Mets? To a man they have spoken hopefully through July of how serious they take the protocols. Yet the one hyper-joyful moment of their season so far — Yoenis Cespedes’ game-winning blast on Opening Day — resulted in a dugout celebration that was plucked straight out of 2019, 2018, or any other pandemic-free summer going back to 1869.

In the moment, it is easy — understandable even — to smile and say, “Well, boys will be boys. Old habits are hard to break.”

From 30,000 feet it is different. Because everything is different. Because the Teammates are wearing masks, and Ipswich Street was eerily dormant Monday, when even early on a game day it is usually kinetic with energy and life. Nobody much wants that view, because like everything else in our world these days it’s less enjoyable than what we’re used to, what we want.

Just another day. Just another daily reminder.