The standing-room-only press box at Camden Yards Wednesday for the closed-gate Orioles game against the Chicago White Sox meant national outlets and local reporters descended on the stadium to provide an account of a game only we had access to.
As such, there's plenty of coverage of the game, and it's all very good. Here's what they're saying about the Orioles-White Sox empty stadium game:
- I'd be remiss not to point you first to the accounts from Dan Connolly inside the stadium, and our Eduardo Encina and Chris Kaltenbach around the ballpark, and Peter Schmuck with the wide view. They represented the hometown paper very well on this bizarre day.
Other beat writers with nice pieces were Roch Kubatko, Luke Jones, Brittany Ghiroli, and Rich Dubroff.
- Our sister paper in Chicago was well represented, too, by Colleen Kane, who wrote up the White Sox players' perspective on the week's difficulties.
"The Sox called the atmosphere 'weird' and 'different.'
'It was just a surreal environment,' Sox manager Robin Ventura said. 'I don't think we really want to play another one like this. … I don't think (the Orioles) do either.'"
- Jere Longman of the New York Times recounted every small oddity of the game.
"The scoreboard was in operation. 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame' and John Denver's 'Thank God I'm a Country Boy' played as usual during the seventh-inning stretch. But the sound of the ball against the bat left a hollow echo in the vacant stadium. Buck Showalter, the Orioles' manager, said the bullpen phone could be heard ringing more than 400 feet from the dugout. Relief pitchers for the Orioles said they could hear strikes called by the umpire Jerry Layne, a rarity in the bullpen, and could even follow the chatter among the outfielders. This only added to a sense of desolation."
- Jonathan Bernhardt wrote for The Guardian that he never wants to experience anything like that again.
"It was a baseball game, that's all it was on the scorecard; just another lopsided baseball game in an April that's so far been full of them. It was everything around it that was wrong. Professional baseball without a crowd is an eerie, uncomfortable thing to watch, a half-measure, a strange compromise that adds nothing while robbing the sport of the very reason that it exists. That it happened at all is a testament to the crisis this city – and country – finds itself in. May it never happen again."
- In Time Magazine, Sean Gregory used the silence in the stadium and the buzz around it to frame the afternoon.
"Ah, the sounds of Baltimore Orioles baseball, on a day where there were no fannies in the seats. Pop, echoing throughout the empty stadium, when the ball hit the catcher's mitt. Thwack, bat on ball, especially during Baltimore's first inning, when the Orioles took a 6-0 lead over the Chicago White Sox. (Silent sluggers, these guys.) And plunk, as foul balls bounced off the seats with no fans. (Who's on foul ball cleanup duty?)
This eerie game—official paid attendance, zero—went off as advertised on Wednesday, and it was as surreal as everyone expected."
- Brendan Prunty used the fans outside to frame the game for Sports Illustrated, with one spectator explaining quite simply what the game meant for he and the city.
"He knows why the ballpark had to be closed. He supports that decision. But he wished that it could've been a place for a fractured city to begin to heal together, not on the outside looking in.
'Just think of what message could've been sent if we all were allowed in,' Fouse said. 'It's too nice of a day in Baltimore, not to be at a baseball game.'
He then picked Jolene out of her stroller, walked closer to the black iron fence and pressed his face up to it.
'It's too nice of a day.'"