Antsy big leaguers embrace impending end of extra down time

Randy Dobnak had finished making his morning omelette one day last week when his wife, Aerial, asked the Minnesota Twins pitcher to keep the eggs out so she could make a sandwich.

For the base she used a hot dog bun, an ingredient so bewildering to her husband that he took it as the latest sign that baseball's pandemic-induced hiatus had dragged on too long amid strained negotiations between owners and players over adjusted pay.

“It's time to get back to work,” Dobnak tweeted. “Tell us when and where!”

Finally, major leaguers have their answer. Teams can start training together again next week, with the truncated 60-game season slated to open on July 23 or 24.

“We’re all ready to get back, because baseball’s literally been our lives for our whole entire lives,” Dobnak said in an interview from Hedgesville, West Virginia, where he and his wife have been living with her parents. “To have the last three months now not playing baseball, it’s definitely weird.”

Twins teammate Taylor Rogers, after arriving at home in the Denver area when spring training was canceled in mid-March, quickly found himself in the same strange state of mind that the thousands of pro ballplayers have experienced in recent months.

“I was asking my parents, ‘What’s the weather here this time of year? I don't even remember,'” Rogers said this week, describing his mild case of cabin fever that lingered into the summer. “I've had those days where I didn’t feel like I was in the right place. I thought I had to be somewhere else, even though there’s nowhere else to be.”

Dobnak has a small group of college and high school players in his area he can throw batting practice to, but there are only so many hours in a day the body can handle working out. Video games, often...

source https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Antsy-big-leaguers-embrace-impending-end-of-extra-15366814.php