Philadelphia Phillies

Joe Girardi Sends Phillies Fans a Message, Shares How He's Passing the Time

We're all passing the time in different ways. Some of us are enjoying the re-airs of old games, some of us are trying to recover from binge-watching "Tiger King," and we're all already going a little stir crazy.

Thursday of this week would have been opening day. There would have been eight straight days of Phillies baseball from March 26 through April 2.

Instead, we all sit around and wait a while. Hey, there could be worse ways to fight this battle than by being told to just chill. 

What's Joe Girardi up to 11 days after the Phillies' last exhibition game?

"I know you're sad, I'm sad too," Girardi said in a video message tweeted by the Phillies. "I miss this great game of baseball. But this is a time that we can pull together, that we can protect our families, that we can love our families, we can do things together. One of the things we love to do is play cards. We play this game Garbage. I play against my daughter Lena, I play against my wife Kim.

"We do a lot of shooting basketballs in the backyard. My daughter has a broken ankle right now and is in a boot but I love to rebound for her. We're playing catch in the streets.

"You know, we're getting back to some of the old-school values where we actually have to make up games to pass the time. Again, I know this is extremely disappointing, but we're going to get through this. And we're going to be stronger as a country, we're going to be stronger as a Phillie fan base."

That is the hope. That the valuable lessons gleaned during this rough time recalibrate our daily interactions and decisions moving forward.

Back before the world changed, the Phillies went 14-5 in spring training, best in the bigs. It's mostly meaningless, of course, but they had a little fun with it.

There will almost certainly be a second, shortened spring training period before the regular season eventually begins, and we'll see key dates like the trade deadline and All-Star Game pushed back.

"The guys were really working hard. I really liked how we were playing the game and adjustments players had made," Girardi said. "They were strong as a unit and we need to stay strong as a country. We need to stay strong as a Phillie fan base. We need to reach out and help each other. We have to remember social distancing but we have to protect our families at a very difficult time in our country."

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