‘So much bigger than baseball’: How Clemson is dealing with coronavirus impact
At 6:02 p.m. Wednesday evening, Clemson left-handed pitcher Keyshawn Askew tossed the first pitch of the Tigers’ midweek game against Winthrop.
By the time Chad Fairey delivered Clemson a walk-off single for a 3-2 victory at 9:55 p.m., nearly four hours later, Tigers coach Monte Lee and the rest of the Clemson baseball team had to catch up on just how much the coronavirus outbreak had changed the sports world in the United States.
At 6:37 p.m., the Big 10 announced that all future Big Ten winter and spring sport competitions will be limited to teams, event staff, family members and credentialed media members.
At 9:12 p.m., the SEC followed suit, announcing that all games through at least March 30 will have the same rules.
At 9:27 p.m., reports surfaced that Utah Jazz all-star forward Rudy Gobert had tested positive for coronavirus, and at 9:37 p.m. the NBA had suspended its season.
Lee was delivered all of this news following Clemson’s walk-off win and had less than 20 minutes to process it before offering his thoughts to the media.
“It’s tough to comprehend, just the reality of it,” Lee said. “You really feel for people who are dealing with this right now. I feel for our country and I feel for the people across the world that are dealing with it. This is just so much bigger than baseball. It’s just such a bigger situation than that. It’s hard for me as a baseball coach to really put into words what we’re all dealing with.”
Clemson is scheduled to leave for its series against Wake Forest on Thursday, before facing the Demon Deacons in a three-game series over the weekend.
It remains to be seen if that series will take place with fans in attendance or if the ACC will follow other leagues and ban fans from attending spring sporting events. After the NBA suspended its season Wednesday night, it wouldn’t be a shock for the games to not take place at all.
“This is kind of uncharted water for us. I’ve never dealt with a situation like this. It’s my job to make sure I’m prepared to put our players’ best interest first. And we have great leadership at Clemson University, from the president down. And our athletic administration, they are on top of this,” Lee said. “We have had many conversations about it. We have been educated on certain areas. And they will let us know what measures we need to take as well moving forward. So we are ready to make any sort of adjustments that we need to make.”
For now Lee’s concern is keeping the 37 members of Clemson’s baseball team, the coaching staff and the support staff safe as the country and the world deals with the coronavirus.
“What I can do as the baseball coach is try to educate our players, make sure that we’re taking the preventative measures as a coaching staff to keep them clean, to keep them safe, to the best of our ability. But it’s certainly a concern. It’s certainly something that, myself, I worry about. I worry about the safety of my players. That’s my first priority. The safety of my players and the safety of my family,” Lee said. “I don’t think any of us understand it quite yet, as far as the impact that this is going to have. We don’t know.
“It’s very humbling. It’s a humbling time for coaches, for student athletes, for people across this country in general and across the world. It’s something that you just hope and pray that we can find a way to overcome it.”
