The San Francisco Giants organization experienced several health complications over the past two weeks, resulting in game setbacks and causing players to leave their baseball mits back on the field.
On Sept. 11 the Giants were ready to take on the San Diego Padres at Petco Park until they were informed player Alex Dickerson tested positive for COVID-19. The Friday night game was then abruptly cancelled just before teams lined up to hear the National Anthem. The team’s second game against the Padre’s on Sept. 12 was also cancelled shortly after.
Upon hearing the news, Dickerson was immediately taken into an isolation room in Petco Park to take a follow-up test, which came back negative. When discovering the player previously received a false positive COVID-19 test, the Major League Baseball (MLB) Joint Committee said, “the presumptive positive did not represent an actual infection or present a risk to other [Giants] personnel.”
Dickerson was extremely distressed from the experience and discussed the situation on the MLB’s official website. “A report from USA Today [claimed he] told several members of the Giants’ traveling party that he believed he was possibly infected by a family member or friend in San Diego” which Dickerson said was “completely false.”
Those false accusations led many to believe Dickerson was irresponsibly meeting with friends when in reality he had only been in contact with the Giants organization and his wife, who is 39 weeks pregnant. Dickerson and his wife were hurt by the many negative comments they received after the report was published as the two have been dedicated to keeping themselves and others safe throughout the pandemic.
The two games the Giants had scheduled with the Padres were played on Sept. 13. The Giants faced a grim loss in both games with the Padres scoring 6-0 in the first game and 3-1 in the second.
Following the team’s COVID-19 scare, they were forced to postpone another game on Sept. 15. After their doubleheader with the Padres, the Giants organization flew into Washington to battle the Seattle Mariners and found themselves in a heap of smokey air blown in from the various West Coast wildfires.
Both teams discussed the severity of the poor air quality and decided it was best to take the game back to San Francisco. “Everybody was reading the reports on the air quality. We all wanted to be safe,” the manager of the Giants, Gabe Kapler, said.
The Giants and Mariners rescheduled their games to be played on Sept. 16 and 17 at Oracle Park. The Giants had a strong victory, finishing with 9-3 in their first game and 6-4 in their second game.