It wasn’t that long ago they were playing ball on a little league field, warming up with a game of catch, or competing against each other at East Valley high schools.
Now?
The suspension of the Major League Baseball season due to the COVID-19 pandemic has former Arizona high school stars Cole Tucker, Scott Kingery, Kevin Cron, Cody Bellinger, and Jamie Westbrook working out and training together in Arizona.
They're all back in Arizona, staying in shape in hopes of the return of the game that has been the one constant and common thread in keeping them bonded together all these years.
Only now, they're forced to train with no one else around, in an unnamed location, where they have been given the keys to a local baseball facility.
“You do what you can, right now,” said Cole Tucker, a Mountain Pointe product who made his major-league debut for the Pittsburgh Pirates last season. “We’ve got a great place to go. We can do some hitting, push the cages back and get throw some fielding and throwing in. All you can do is stay in shape as best as you can.”
The pandemic has put players in limbo; mandated to put in work on their own and away from their franchise’s facilities, staying ready for the news to come down from New York that the 2020 season will be resumed.
Sure, they get instructions from their strength and conditioning coaches, and are in touch with management, but the day-to-day work comes down to putting in time on their own.
Don’t get it wrong.These guys are human, and doing some of the same things as the resto of us to pass the time- binge watching Netflix and eating way too much food (Tucker's vices are watching Ozark and eating lobster ravioli from Costco), but they're still making sure to seek out locations all across the Valley of the Sun, like Fischer Sports Institute, to work out the best they can.
Former Mountain Pointe star and current Diamondback Kevin Cron has been working out with teammate Tim Locastro in order to be prepared when they are called back to the Salt River complex.
“The day we got banned from the facility, Tim Locastro built a gym. We’ve been running hills,” said Cron, who hit .211 with six home runs and 16 RBI in 39 games with the Dbacks last season. “We have to keep the body moving, but it is really hard to replicate spring training and game action.”
At this point, the season is expected to resume. The latest report is floating a late June start, with the players getting a mini-spring training in order to get prepared for a 100-game season.
“We have to be careful and take everything under consideration,” Cole Tucker said. “We haven’t heard anything official from the (Player’s) Union. It will have to be without fans, I’m assuming, because we can’t that kind of risk. It’s above our pay grade.“
It will be different. We all want to play. It’s what we love to do, but it if comes down that we can’t play again this year then there’s nothing we can do about it.”
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Cody Bellinger, a Hamilton product, and Scott Kingery, a Mountain Pointe product, are established major leaguers, with Bellinger winning Rookie of the Year and MVP awards for the Dodgers, while Kingery has nearly two years of service time for the Phillies. Cron and Tucker are still trying to get that first full year in the majors, so spring training in 2020 was supposed to be a chance to show management they’ve made that jump. Meanwhile, Jaime Westbrook, a Basha product, is in his first year with the Giants organization after being drafted by the Diamondbacks in 2013.
Spring training was taken away mid-stream, and so naturally, it's going to be harder to come back and make a good impression on management.
“I felt like I was starting to get hot and really come into my own when we stopped,” Cron said. “I was determined to show I belonged in the major leagues from the start, and never look back. It’s different now, and we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but I want to be ready to make that jump when the time comes.”
Until then, they will keep working out the best they can, competing in some way or another just to keep themselves ready for the game they love- just asthey did when Big League Chew was in their back pocket and big-league dreams were in their heads.
“When you’re young and in a group of players you talk about being a big leaguer someday,” Tucker said. “We used to do that and now we are. It’s not lost on us, but it is becoming common, too. We are all establishing ourselves, but when we get together like we do it is just us hanging out and working together.“
"But when you head to Philadelphia or Los Angeles and play against some of your best friends it is pretty surreal. Hopefully, we’ll be back doing that again at some point, but until then we’ll just keep doing our thing.”
