St. Louis Cardinals adjust to a new sound in pandemic-era baseball — silence
From the press box at Busch Stadium, the overhang of the upper deck makes it difficult-to-impossible to see the green seats directly behind home plate.
Even while standing and purposely peering down with binoculars in hand, the obstructed view from slightly up the first base line made it impossible to see where Carlos Martínez was sitting on Tuesday night.
It was not, however, impossible to hear him.
Individual words may have been indistinct, but the unique timber of Martínez’s voice carried to the top level of the stadium and to the ears of those witnessing the first intrasquad game of the summer which included Major League umpires on the field.
It will not be the last time this summer that it’s possible to hear razzing of the boys in blue. With the coronavirus pandemic having removed fans from seats, baseball in 2020 sounds quite a bit different than in years past.
“I think more people are gonna know how much chatter there actually is and how much communication there actually is,” Cardinals pitching coach Mike Maddux said. “Guys are always in communication. But now that you don’t have the distraction of the fan noise or something going on or “buy me peanuts and Cracker Jack” down there, there’s just a lot going on outside of each pitch.”
Maddux pitched in the majors for 15 years and is entering his 18th season as a coach. He’s been in and around a major league dugout more often than anyone else in the Cardinals organization, and he sees the virtue in allowing those with less familiarity to have a window into the preparation that informs every in-game event.
“I think you guys will probably be impressed by how in tune and how synchronized a defensive ballclub is, or even an offensive ballclub is,” he said. “How much the base coaches interact with runners. How the coaches interact with the defensive players from the dugout itself. It’s gonna be kinda cool just to see the preparation that goes into it.”
Not all sounds on the field, however, are quite so wholesome. Martínez’s ribbing of the umpires was good natured, but once the games count, not all of the complaints will come with a smile.
Cardinals manager Mike Shildt delivered a now-infamous expletive-laden speech to his team after clinching the 2019 Division Series in Atlanta that was mistakenly captured on Instagram by Randy Arozarena. That was not, however, the first time Shildt was caught working blue.
In 2018, his first season as manager, he was ejected from a game in Kansas City and the field microphones picked up his somewhat salty reaction.
At the time, Shildt laughed as he recounted getting an earful from his mother about his choices in vocabulary. The rarity of those events contributes to their humor. There are concerns, though, that the wider public might laugh less if they happen more.
MLB is experimenting with a standardized track of crowd noise which will be piped into every stadium this summer. The sounds are designed in part to provide ambiance and allow players to get into the headspace which would typically accompany game action. By providing a standard track, there’s hope that teams will be unable to massage the noise to gain a competitive advantage.
The sounds also provide cover. Some habits are hard to break, and baseball has a vested financial incentive to make sure its product remains as family-friendly as possible.
“You’ll be able to hear everything from the dugout,” Cardinals catcher Matt Wieters said. “You’ll be able to not hear any fans. It’ll be an adjustment ... You always were able to kind of play the other team and play the competition on how the crowd was going, how it affected guys. Now it’s going to be how does the silence in the stands affect guys? And what do we do on our side to make sure that we’re keeping the adrenaline and keeping the intensity up for what will be a shorter season, so that adrenaline and intensity will be even more important?”
Wieters also spoke of the difficulty of relaying instructions from the dugout to the field, or in communicating on the mound between players and coaches. Maddux, who said there’s always been a skill in attempting to stealthily peer into the opposing dugout to pick up signals, agreed that there will be adjustments in in-game coaching.
Outfielder Dexter Fowler compared the vibe to minor league games and hearkened back to his days playing for the Chicago Cubs as renovations left the outfield bleachers uninhabitable for stretches at a time.
“It’s going to be a little different,” Fowler said. “Especially like the infielders, the pitcher talking to whatever, the fielders, you can hear everything.
“You get the fly balls and I’m talking to my right fielder or my left fielder, and I’m like, ‘Hey man, scoot over here a little bit.’ and they can hear me, which is weird. But it’s definitely going to be weird, different. It’s an adjustment we’ll make. I’m a talker in the box, so you’ll probably hear me talking a lot.”
If the broadcast hears Fowler’s jocularity or Martínez’s emphatic enthusiasm, the game stands to benefit.
The pop of the glove and the crack of the bat are soon to be supplemented by a cacophony of sounds which always existed but which may never have been so plainly revealed.
Do not adjust your speakers. These are the new, old sounds of the game.
