No Crying in Baseball: A Season Cut Short

The following article was featured in the May 2020 edition of The Campus.

By Anu Shetty

On Sunday, March 8th, unaware of the events the future would hold, co-captain Cooper York walked up to the home plate to swing his bat for the last time as a member of the City College of New York baseball team.

At this point, New York state had 106 confirmed cases of the Coronavirus, but the only thing York and the seniors on the team had on their minds was finishing the season strong. Today, as York sits at his family’s house in Wisconsin, abiding by the state’s stay-at-home orders, he finds himself missing his teammates and the game he has loved his entire life.

With 25 games left in the regular season, co-captain Stephen Peters thought back to Friday, March 13th, the day the team was told that their season would no longer continue, and remembered, “The first word that came to mind was ‘frustrating.’ The season was already bittersweet because I knew my college career was coming to an end at the end of the season, but I expected to have a lot more time to compete with my team, and losing out on two months of the season was frustrating.”

After the emotional team phone conference where the players found out their season was over just five days after their last game, some of the players did not feel the enormity of the news immediately hit them. Was a pandemic, that was about to hit New York harder than any other state in the country, going to be the reason the graduating seniors were being told that their last season with the team they had been playing with for the last four years was over? One of the team’s pitchers, Jacob Schwartz, recounts, “We hoped we could still play the game, but it just wasn’t an option. Still to this day, I don’t think it’s hit me yet. Not just that the season is over, but my baseball career as well.”

For the seven seniors on the team, this final season was about more than just playing the game, it was about mentoring, playing together as a team, and changing the culture of baseball at City College. When reflecting on the season that could have been, York explains, “I was looking forward to helping the young guys figure out baseball at the college level. There’s more to expect from the game, and just helping them become comfortable with that change was important to me.” 

The bond shared between the players and their ability to work together are integral to their success on the field. Though playing the “what if” game is a fun way to pass the seemingly endless amounts of time nowadays, it will never be clear how this season would have unfolded. However, many players, like Schwartz, had a hunch that, “We had our strongest team since I’ve been at CCNY and we had a very good chance to win the CUNYAC this year.”

The CUNYAC is the athletic conference for the schools in the City University of New York system. The championship games usually take place at the end of the season in May, and the title is something CCNY has not won since the only time they claimed it in 1994. 

Due to the Coronavirus pandemic and the fact that spring teams only got to play a fraction of their scheduled regular-season games, the players received a year of eligibility back, meaning that they can play for one more season should they choose to attend the same or a different accredited university as a full-time student. This direction is a difficult one to move forward to, as not all players are looking to attend graduate school. 

Some players, like Peters, are, “Exploring professional opportunities to try and continue playing, such as independent leagues and overseas leagues.” Others are hoping to move forward with their career plans but hope to keep the sport close to them by coaching in the future.

Though the loss of a final season can be devastating, especially without the chance to say goodbye to the sport they have played since childhood, the teammates they have spent countless hours at practice with, and the adrenaline rush that comes with competing, the graduating members of the team are tough and know that there is no crying in baseball.