There is an empty ballpark and then a quiet ballpark, and if you find yourself at the Yankee Stadium on Saturday afternoon, you witness a painful difference.

When Masahiro Tanaka took the Giancarlo Stanton line drive to the right side of his head, almost half an hour before the spring launch of the Yankees 2.0 spring training, his teammates stopped all other activities and focused their collective views on the mound, where the club’s coaches tended to lateral right hands. Someone has common sense to turn off music that has exploded in the public address system.

Assisted by a trainer on each side, Tanaka walked trembling from the mound to the break room at 3:36, five minutes after he got down, and the news became more joyous as the day progressed. On Saturday night, he was released from New York’s Presbyterian Hospital after passing a “series of tests,” including CT scans, as Aaron Boone did, and Tanaka tweeted that although he still felt some effects from the game, he hoped to return to action before too. long.

At 4:40 a.m. Yankees described the jug as “currently alert, responsive, and running under his own strength.” Shortly after seven, Aaron Boone reported, “concussion-like symptoms” Tanaka disappeared immediately, CT scanning at New York’s Presbyterian Hospital returned negative, and the hospital, following a “series of tests,” was released by Tanaka on Saturday night.

“The first thing when something like that happens is you worry about men’s lives,” Boone said

We no longer need perspective, not after the events of the past few months, right? Shoot, Boone follows his Tanaka update with the revelation that last year’s best Yankees, DJ LeMahieu, and thrower Luis Cessa were not here because they tested positive for the coronavirus. No, Tanaka’s fear made us realize when we were never more aware of the weaknesses of the world.

“This is really terrible,” said Yankees pitcher Jordan Montgomery. “I hope he’s fine. I’m thinking and praying for him now.”

Montgomery, whose turn to play alongside Tanaka, claimed to be “a bit timid” and “squirrel” after seeing a strange accident, and that prompted him to ask for a protective L-screen to be placed in front of him, which some pitchers preferred and some did not. How not, after seeing that?

Although the thoughts spoken by Montgomery were appreciated, the pictures themselves, in the moments after Tanaka fell into the mound, his right foot swung up and down as he held his head, speaking at that moment even more forcefully. The speed stud out of Stanton, after taking fastball Mike Fiers to his head and suffering serious physical damage in 2014, immediately squatted to the ground knowing of suffering. Many players knelt down, their furrowed brows showing concern that their masks were hiding.

Stanton walked to the edge of the mound to examine Tanaka, and when he floated, his worries were clear, Aaron Hicks understood to violate the mandate of social distance and put his arms around his fellow outsiders to cheer him up. Disappointed Judge Harun, meanwhile, urged members of the media not to take Tanaka’s video that got attention and was then taken to Twitter, with Gleyber Torres supporting it, to voice the complaint, even though most of the video came from the Yankees Yankees Network.

After we got more clarity about Tanaka’s status, soon after Sunday, we were able to discuss the consequences of the scary baseball scene, with Luis Severino already out for the rehabilitation season from Tommy John’s operation. And we can refocus on whether all these efforts will succeed or whether COVID-19 will prove to be an overly powerful enemy. Shortly after the Tanaka accident, another famous soccer pitcher, David Price of the Dodgers, opted out of the season due to health problems.

On this important day, such a context is considered critical. When a man takes the drive line to the head, however, the context changes completely irrelevant. It’s terrible if we are in the middle of a pandemic or not, if it happens to a good or bad team, whether it’s July Fourth or a standard workday.

“It was some kind of strange accident that was a one-in-a-million chance to occur,” Montgomery said. “It’s scary especially if it’s a teammate and friend.”

The first day back to work for them. A year for all of us. After seeing this ballpark silenced, suddenly an empty stadium with good vibrations sounded rather interesting.