INDIANAPOLIS
When James Marvel woke up in Des Moines, Iowa, last Friday morning, he got that familiar feeling that he hadn’t felt for a year and a half:
<em>I’m pitching in a game today. And it counts.</em>
"Back to me on my start day, struggling to eat a little bit, trying to get food down, preparing for the game, going over my scouting report and just being really anxious to get out there," Marvel recalled. "Those good nerves that you want. If you don’t have them, at least for me, I think something’s wrong.
"Having that feeling again, it’s just something you can’t simulate. … If it doesn’t count, if it doesn’t go on the baseball card and doesn’t go in the record book, there’s just something different about it."
After a 2020 season that effectively wound up being an extended spring training for those below the major league level, actual minor league baseball returned last week.
Marvel and his Indianapolis Indians teammates, who opened the spring on the road against the Iowa Cubs, return home to Victory Field this evening for their first home game in who knows how long.
Check that. Randy Lewandowski, the president and general manager of the Indians, knows exactly how long it’s been.
"To wait 619 days to do what you have done for a long time as an organization, as a staff," Lewandowski said late last week, "it’s been a long and winding road, it’s probably as hectic as it’s ever been … but we are excited."
The 2021 season will look a bit different than normal; we are, after all, still in the extended throes of a pandemic. But it’s still real baseball again.
The Indians and other teams in the 20-team International League (AAA) will play six-game series all year in an effort to keep travel to a minimum, with Monday as the universal off day. Attendance at Victory Field for this week’s series against Toledo will be capped at 25% of capacity, or about 3,400 tickets; Lewandowski said the team has asked the Marion County Public Health Department to allow an increase to 50% for June and July games.
"It’ll be a slow, gradual lift as we go throughout the year," Lewandowski said hopefully, "and as more people get vaccinated and we get outside in the summer months, all of those things point in a positive direction for us to be able to bring more people into Victory Field."
That atmosphere is something that Marvel, who spent half of the 2019 season in Indy before getting a September call-up to the Indians’ parent club, the Pittsburgh Pirates, is looking forward to experiencing — even with fewer people in the stands.
"It was some of the most fun I’ve had playing baseball," Marvel said of his stint in Indianapolis two years ago. "To have that as a home stadium, and the fans who are not only coming out, but know the game, appreciate the game, know when to get up at the right moments — guys on second and third, one out, crunch time — knowing this is a time to get loud, that’s a difference-maker.
"I know everybody who has played there is excited to get back, and the guys who haven’t, we’ve already talked it up to them that they’ve got something special waiting for them."
Surviving 2020 to get back to this point took some work. The Indians relied heavily on Payroll Protection Plan loans to make up for the revenue that was lost when last season was canceled. Season ticket money had already been pocketed, but all of that was rolled forward to this year, so it couldn’t be used to pay the bills.
The team did what it could to make up some of the difference. Movie nights and ice cream socials, among other events, were held during the summer as allowed — and the stadium was even converted into a nine-hole golf course at one point. But expenses were still kept to a minimum all year long out of necessity.
"It was certainly extremely tough when you lose your core revenues," Lewandowski said.
Victory Field won’t be back to full capacity anytime soon, but the Indians and their fans are glad to have the game back in their lives in whatever fashion possible. Hearing that crack of the bat echoing through downtown Indianapolis evenings once again should give folks hope that a return to normal life as they knew it isn’t too far off.
"To take the ball again (last week), and to be here with the guys competing — and competing for something that matters — that’s what it’s all about, and what I’ve been dying to do for a year and a half," Marvel said.
"Coming home to Indy is going to be awesome."
