Goldeyes’ season full of surprises so far

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This article was published 15/07/2020 (1930 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The first road trip of the season got off to a nightmare of a start for the Winnipeg Goldeyes and it had nothing to do with baseball.

After their season-opening six games in Fargo, N.D. — where the team is based for 2020 and playing 42 of their 60 games in a shortened American Association campaign owing to COVID-19 — the Fish hopped on their bus on Friday to head down the road to Sioux Falls, S.D., for a six-game road trip.

But before the Goldeyes made it to Sioux Falls Stadium for their 7 p.m. matchup with the Sioux Falls Canaries, they had a wakeup call in more ways than one. Roughly 20 minutes outside of Sioux Falls, the front right tire burst on the team bus.

“It was my first time on a sleeper bus. I was listening to music while trying to sleep and next thing I know I hear a big boom and I hear ‘Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!’ screamed,” said Goldeyes outfielder Jordan George prior to Wednesday night’s game against the St. Paul Saints.

“So in my mind, I’m like ‘What’s going on? What’s happening?’ Apparently we hit a guardrail that ended up helping us out a ton because we were heading pretty fast at that moment. We hit the guardrail and it messed up the right side of the bus and the trailer. Thank God we’re all still here and I think it was a moment that everyone realized how fortunate we are to still be here playing baseball, especially at a time like this.”

Luckily, no one was injured and the Goldeyes were able to play that night, though they ended up losing 8-6. The team was stuck on the side of the road for more than an hour before a bus from Sioux Falls came and picked them up.

Independent baseball is infamous for its long road trips in less-than-ideal conditions, but Fish infielder Kevin Lachance, who’s in his fourth season of pro ball, has never experienced anything like Friday’s incident before.

“I’ve been pretty fortunate. We’ve had a few times where buses are kind of broken down, but not on the road, more like it wouldn’t start up or the AC wasn’t working,” said Lachance, who played 13 games for the Fish last season before his contract was purchased by the Arizona Diamondbacks.

“Little things like that where it needed to be repaired and we had to get a new bus, but never anything quite as scary as that.”

Despite being only three weeks into the season, it wasn’t the first time the Goldeyes had a scare. The entire team was tested for COVID-19 on Day 1 of training camp in Fargo on June 25 and the results for several players came back positive. The club wouldn’t confirm the exact number of positive tests, but they did say the entire team has been tested two more times since the initial test. The league protocols are that anyone who tests positive has to pass consecutive tests before rejoining a team.

“I think everyone went into this season knowing that there was some risk involved,” said Lachance, a Clifton, Va., native.

“Obviously, with everything going on, you kind of had to be OK with that. I think it does make it a little bit more real when you know people that you’re around that have it. I think you just kind of have to be cautious. I think that the league has kind of left it up to the teams and the individuals to make sure that they’re doing the right thing to be as safe as they need to. So, it’s kind of up to us. Like I said, I think the guys knew coming out here what the risks were and obviously we’re all doing this because we love playing the game. I think you just have to be careful this season more than others.”

George, who was acquired last month from the Kansas City T-Bones in the American Association dispersal draft, said travelling during a pandemic to play baseball doesn’t make him feel uncomfortable.

“I haven’t even thought about that too much,” admitted George, an Arkansas product who played in the minor leagues for both the Chicago White Sox and Kansas City Royals organizations in 2019.

“As far as COVID goes, we’re all still keeping our distance and staying away from people that we’re unfamiliar with and I would say we still feel comfortable on the road like we do back in Fargo, which is our home for the season.”

The Goldeyes have cooled off a bit since arriving in Sioux Falls. They began the season with a 4-2 record before dropping their first two games on the road trip at the hands of the Canaries. They avoided a sweep by grabbing an 8-2 win on Sunday, but the Goldeyes followed up the victory with a dud of a performance on Tuesday, when they were shellacked 16-9 by the St. Paul Saints, who are playing out of Sioux Falls, in the opener of their three-game series. In a typical year, teams have some time to get into the swing of things as it’s a marathon of a season that consists of 100 games. But with only 60 games on this summer’s schedule, every single game means that much more.

“We knew that going in and it definitely hurts a little more when we take an L at the end of the day. We know that. But we know we’re an experienced team and it’s still early,” George said.

“If you really look at it from a normal season where you’re preparing for a month of spring training, we haven’t even had a month of total baseball yet. But we feel fine. I can tell our team feels confident. We are confident. We just had some unfortunate things happen that kind of got us off track. But this team, we’re so experienced, we’re so gritty that we’re going to get back on track.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31