TORONTO — Andrew Albers remembers minor-league life well. Being broke, bothering old friends for a place to sleep, bothering old coaches for facilities to throw in, scrambling to keep his dream alive. He was released (twice). He pitched in independent ball (twice). He went to professional try-outs. He went to Venezuela to play winter ball. He worked as a substitute teacher during off-seasons, throwing side sessions in a high school gym. He went through it all. Among pro ballplayers, it’s not an uncommon story.
And yet he’s not sure what he’d do if it were still his situation today. If he was still one of the many minor-leaguers facing uncertain futures as the COVID-19 pandemic delays the beginning of the 2020 season until, well, we’ll see.
“You definitely feel for those guys. That’s why you hope it won’t be that long of a layoff,” Albers says from Rokko Island, Japan, where the North Battleford, Sask., native is now pitching for NPB’s Orix Buffaloes. “Because it’s going to be really tough to find a job for two or three weeks, right?”
Off-seasons are already a challenge for non-roster players, who often seek short-term jobs in the gig economy — think landscaping or food delivery or driving for rideshare companies — that provide some income while allowing them to still dedicate time and energy to maintaining their skills and conditioning. Spring training brings with it the stability of regular stipends — albeit, meager ones — and the luxury of team facilities to train within, cafeterias to eat at, and affordable lodging to sleep in.
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But now there is no spring training. Most minor-leaguers have been sent home from team camps. Private gyms and training facilities across the continent are shuttered. The economy’s spiralling, squeezing even the unglamorous temp jobs most minor-leaguers turn to during off-seasons. There is some question as to whether minor-leaguers will even qualify to collect unemployment insurance while under contract to their organizations.
Some good news came Thursday, as MLB promised its minor-leaguers will receive a lump sum payment equal to the spring training allowances they would have been paid by their teams through April 8. According to Baseball America, that will amount to around US$400 per week. Probably not enough to live on, but it’s something. What happens after the first week of April remains unknown.
“Finding a place to stay would be the big one. You just hope that you have a place you can go crash at for a few weeks while you figure things out,” Albers says. “But that could be a struggle. And that’s a lot of guys. Whether you’re looking at guys that are on the fringe of making it or whether you’re looking at your 10th round pick who’s just out of college and trying to go play this year and see what happens.”
Not that long ago, Albers was that guy. A 10th-round pick out of the University of Kentucky just trying to find somewhere to play for a year and see what happens. Six years into his professional career he finally broke through, getting up to the big-leagues for 60 innings with the Minnesota Twins. The next season he was in Korea. And the season after that, when he signed a minor-league deal with the Toronto Blue Jays, he made all but one of his 21 starts at triple-A.
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Albers’ real break didn’t come until he was 32, when the Buffaloes signed him away from the Seattle Mariners to go play in Japan. He pitched to a 2.88 ERA over 21 outings in his debut NPB season, earned a contract extension, and has now made far more money over two years with Orix than he did in a decade chasing his dream with a half-dozen organizations in affiliated ball.
He doesn’t have to spend his winters working as a substitute teacher any more. But he hasn’t forgotten what that minor-league grind was like. And he can tell you how difficult circumstances are for minor-leaguers at this particular moment in time.
“Those players don’t get paid during spring. And right now there will be guys that can’t necessarily afford to stay there and pretty much have to go home. Those are the kind of guys who might be in a lot of trouble,” he says. “They might be struggling to get ready whenever everything starts back up again. Because they might not have facilities at home. Especially pitchers who need to throw.”
Albers is facing his own uncertain future, albeit one practically all of those minor-leaguers would gladly trade places with. Like all major sports, NPB has postponed its opening day, which was originally scheduled for Friday. The league has indicated to clubs it’s aiming to begin play around April 10, but even that seems awfully optimistic.
Like most countries along the Pacific rim, Japan has already been through the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic that North Americans are becoming familiar with now — from the slow creep of initial cases, to the exponential rise of new ones as the virus spreads through communities, to the public health efforts to flatten the curve like closing schools and enacting travel restrictions. As of Thursday, Japan had 1,619 confirmed cases, 712 of them having disembarked from a British cruise ship at the Port of Yokohoma.
Going through spring training with Orix, Albers could track that increase in mitigation measures day-by-day. Initially players were asked to stop accepting gifts from fans when they signed autographs, a cultural tradition in Japanese baseball. Then players were forbidden from signing at all. As pre-season games began, they were played behind closed doors. Sumo tournaments, too. And then, in a truly unprecedented move, Japan’s renowned spring high school baseball tournament — “Koshien” — was cancelled.
“That was a big deal. It’s one of the most popular events in the country all year and it’s the first time in history that it’s been cancelled,” Albers says. “Basically, everything that’s happening in the United States and Canada right now with cancellations and things being shut down, that’s what was happening here in Japan about 10 or 12 days ago.”
NPB teams have continued training through this period of uncertainty, playing exhibition games against nearby clubs in empty ballparks:
It’s eerie. On broadcasts, you can clearly pick up chirping and chatter from the two dugouts. In the background, photographers document this strange slice of history with masks covering their mouths:
“There are definitely a few more masks out there,” Albers says. “It’s interesting, I feel like we went through the hysteria phase that’s going on in the States and Canada right now a couple weeks ago where a lot of bread and toilet paper was gone from the markets. I still don’t understand that one. I don’t get it. This isn’t a virus that affects your digestive tract.”
Hard to argue with that. Japan appears to have had some moderate success flattening its curve, and the hope is it’s riding the pandemic out with only small, manageable increases in new cases day over day. But it’s still anyone’s guess how things will develop from here, and the country obviously hasn’t reached the peak of its curve just yet.
Just one community outbreak can change things in a hurry. And Japan’s government has yet to issue a formal ban on mass gatherings other than school closures and barring fans from sporting events. That’s why NPB teams are still training together every day and playing games regularly, with all players having their temperatures taken daily.
Of course, this all plays out in the looming shadow of the upcoming 2020 Olympic Games, which are scheduled to take place in Tokyo beginning in July. The country’s economy and tourism industry is reeling, which is no doubt one of the many reasons why the Japanese organizing committee has resisted calls to postpone the event. Thursday, the Olympic flame arrived at the northernmost end of the country for its final relay to Tokyo.
Albers might just compete for his country at those games, whenever they’re held — provided Canada qualifies (a qualification tournament scheduled for next week has been postponed). But first he has to get healthy.
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The 34-year-old had back surgery to address a nerve decompression in November and spent the subsequent three months recovering. His intention was to be ready to go for the beginning of the season, but a further nerve issue that weakened his plant leg set him back when he began ramping up last month. He’s just now back to throwing again and figures he’s only a couple weeks away from a return to competition — whatever that competition may resemble at the time.
Which is all to say, if there’s one guy who doesn’t mind NPB’s regular season being delayed, it’s Albers. It might just be the difference between him being in uniform on opening day or not.
“Yeah, I’ll take it,” he says. “I’m probably not as upset about it as a lot of people are. But the one thing is it was already going to be a long season here, with things being put on hold for three weeks for the Olympics. Our playoffs weren’t scheduled to start until November already. So, we’ll see what happens with that.”
It’s extremely difficult to imagine the Tokyo Games actually occurring as planned this summer, despite the IOC’s pledge to carry on despite these extraordinary circumstances. But if that happened, and NPB opted to make up lost games at the end of its schedule, Albers could be in for an extremely brief off-season this coming winter.
Of course, if we’ve learned one thing over the last few weeks, it’s that no one can accurately predict how this all will unfold. And we could all stand to take a breath and check out from the news cycle every now and then. That’s the odd blessing for a guy like Albers, living and working in a country where he doesn’t speak the language. He has no choice but to focus on the here and now.
“It’s not like I can watch the news or read the newspapers because I can’t understand any of it. All the information I get is online from media sources back in North America. So, the nice thing is I don’t get bombarded with it,” he says. “You’re kind of oblivious a little bit. That’s one reason why [COVID-19] hasn’t impacted my life a whole lot. You have to take the necessary precautions and I understand that. But I don’t sit around and worry about it.”
