Phillies: Larry Bowa says baseball needs to win fans back
By Matt Rappa
The pandemic and baseball
Bowa began managing the Phillies in 2001, his third season in the role overall having been with the San Diego Padres in 1987 and parts of the 1988 season.
The Phillies and Bowa were 143 games into the 2001 campaign before the tragic events of September 11 of that year. The 74-year-old calls those events “devastating,” but that once things “cleared up to some extent,” that baseball would resume.
“But, this thing here is not cleared up right now. And that makes it really tough right now because nobody knows who this thing attacks, what it attacks,” Bowa says. “The symptoms are all different on different people. Some old people get through it, some young people have been getting hit by it.”
“So, it makes it a little more difficult. There doesn’t seem to be any signs of it completely going away right now.”
Earlier this month, the Phillies were the first team in Major League Baseball to report a COVID positive case. As of currently, they have 12 such cases — six players and five staff that had been using their Clearwater, Florida, training facilities. There was also another COVID-positive player that had not been in the area. None were hospitalized.
Bowa says both September 11th and the current pandemic are “devastating,” but cannot say one is worse than the other: “What happened in New York on 9/11 was terrible. What’s happening now with the virus is terrible. People lost a lot of lives; relatives are in mourning.”
RELATED | Phillies: Joe Girardi discusses need to adjust amid pandemic
Players must ‘self-discipline’
Phillies manager Joe Girardi recently said on MLB Network that the sports industry has a “huge responsibility” to assure things are done the right way, that they protect each other, and that the guidelines are followed.
Bowa has confidence the virus can be controlled on the field, but before and after, there will be some difficulty and that the players will have to “self-discipline.”
“It’s after the game is over and somebody goes out for dinner, or somebody goes to the bar to have a drink,” he says. “Maybe the place they went to they have not paid attention to the rules, and things like that. That’s how this thing starts to multiply.”
“Hopefully the virus does not affect our teams, but I don’t see how it’s going to skip baseball players,” Bowa continues. “It’s hitting everybody else, so we have to keep our fingers crossed and hope nobody gets a real serious part of the virus.”
“The guys are mostly young players and their immune systems are a lot better than a lot of other people, so keep our fingers crossed for the health of the players.”