Cubs’ Tommy Hottovy: ‘Scary Part’ of COVID-19 Is How Fast Deadly Virus Spreads

Cubs pitching coach Tommy Hottovy is home in Kansas City for a couple rare days during the baseball season. His mom wants to meet him for lunch, and his sister, a grade-school teacher in town, just had a baby that he hasn't had a chance to see yet.

"How much would I love to go get to see her and my new nephew?" Hottovy said. "Can't do it. Just can't."

Not this time. Not with what's at stake. Not when possible threats to health and professional purpose lurk in every unfamiliar hallway, byway and unmasked face while the Cubs navigate their first multi-city road trip of the season.

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Don't believe the risk of spread and large-scale COVID-19 team outbreaks are that sensitive, extreme and potentially swift? Just ask the Marlins and Cardinals, whose outbreaks in the first week of play put their seasons on hold and threatened the status of the league's season.

"I'm not leaving the hotel. I told my family and friends and everybody [in Kansas City]," Hottovy said. "We all signed up for this, to make sure that for this to work we all have to make those kinds of sacrifices. I love my family to death and would love to get to see them, but right now this is our home."

The Cubs second trip, which started with a 6-1 victory Wednesday in Kansas City and continues to St. Louis before finishing in Cleveland next week, coincides with stepped-up COVID-19 protocols from Major League Baseball following the Marlins and Cardinals outbreaks.

The Cubs already had protocols in place that exceeded MLB's original mandates and that are in compliance with the new mandates. And a month into the league's restart they remained the only team without a player having tested positive for the virus.

In fact, Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant decided on his own to start wearing a protective mask on the bases when the Cubs played last week in Cincinnati, where three Reds players were sidelined either by positive tests or self-reported symptoms as that series opened. And first baseman Anthony Rizzo told ESPN-1000 on Tuesday that he plans to keep a mask in his pocket while in the field in St. Louis and will consider wearing it when somebody reaches base.

"No matter what measures you put in place, when you're trying to pull off a season that requires travel in the middle of a global pandemic, it ultimately does come down to personal responsibility," Cubs president Theo Epstein said. "And everyone is at the mercy of the least responsible person because of the nature of the spread of this disease."

Nobody knows that more than Hottovy and many of the Cubs who watched their pitching coach deteriorate in real time during daily Zoom sessions in May and June until the worst symptoms of his frightening monthlong bout with the virus forced him to hand off his job duties.

Whether Hottovy's experience led directly to the Cubs' more extreme safety policies or the individual players' apparent hyper diligence, MLB's recent coronavirus outbreaks and other cases at least raise questions about whether some teams and players - or even the league - respect the potential severity of a virus that has killed more than 158,000 Americans in five months.

"I don't think people underestimate that aspect of it; I think they underestimated how easy it was to spread," Hottovy said of the outbreaks - including a Cardinals outbreak that reportedly was traced to one asymptomatic, outside individual familiar with the team.

Hottovy called the highly contagious nature of the virus "the scary part of this," both in terms of the potential to quickly render an organization unable to field a team as well as the subsequent, inherent risk that poses to family members and others who might, in turn, be among those who then become severely impacted by the virus.

And the hardest part, he said, is not letting down your guard within the team bubble when it's easy to trust that when it's only teammates in the room that it's OK to disregard masks, distancing and other safety measures.

"That's when it gets dangerous," said Hottovy, whose team talks often about assuming everyone - including each other - has the virus.

So just like in Cincinnati, neither he nor anyone else in the Cubs' traveling party plans to go anywhere but to and from hotels and ballparks during their trip.

"Listen, you don't have to search too far for a reason to take it serious," Cubs second baseman Jason Kipnis said.

"I have three of my close friends who got it, that are over it. But the symptoms are as real as it gets from the sounds of it. And I think you have guys who are risking stuff coming and playing this season, whether it's Craig [Kimbrel] and his daughter [heart condition] or Anthony [Rizzo] and Jon [Lester] with their [cancer] history.

"You're paying respect to them and doing your teammate justice by not being the one to kind of go out," Kipnis added. "It's one of those years where, hey, you've got to buckle down and stay the course. I think everybody's going through it, so you don't want to be the one that kind of screws this one up.

The Cubs' 10-2 start to a 60-game season seems to further incentivize that discipline - some players in recent days even suggesting the discipline in following the protocols has carried into the professionalism on the field.

It's impossible to know if any of it will be enough for the Cubs to keep their moving bubble secure, much less whether the two outbreaks that MLB seems to have withstood will provide the significant enough wakeup call that MLB and team officials have suggested.

"The vast, vast majority of everyone involved in this enterprise, the players and staff, are doing a solid job so far in making a lot of sacrifices," Epstein said. "And we just have to get everybody on board. And hopefully these two outbreaks are enough to get everyone to the point where we have essentially perfect execution going forward, because that's largely what it will take."