Nobody in the general public really knows.

You’d gone through so much to win this title. The long string of wrenching playoff losses. The two defeats in the World Series, including the 2017 loss to the Houston Astros, a team Major League Baseball later found had cheated.

Add in the pandemic with its pressures, tensions and pain.

Perhaps you succumbed to what psychologists call Covid Fatigue, which can lead to poor and sometimes dangerous decision making as we seek ways to taste some semblance of normalcy.

You knew the risks. You had a reputation as an enforcer of health protocols.

“I feel no symptoms at all,” you wrote in your tweet after the game. But you surely understood that feeling fine doesn’t absolve responsibility. You can feel fine but spread the virus to someone else who also feels fine, and that person can spread it to someone who ends up hospitalized.

You could not have been blind to the havoc the virus has wreaked globally. More than 229,000 people have died so far in the United States. Hopefully we will find out that you’re still feeling well and that you never have any Covid-19 symptoms.

There are potential long-term effects for those who get sick and survive. Kenley Jansen, your team’s star reliever, had undergone surgeries to correct an irregular heartbeat in years past and contracted the virus before this odd season began. Even when he was cleared to begin playing, Jansen did not feel right for weeks.

Your actions were a slap in the face to all who have died. All who have lost loved ones. All who have caught the disease and struggled. To the doctors and nurses, the grocery clerks and the postal workers. To the kids stuck at home, attending school over laptops.

You should make amends to your fans, to the fans of baseball, to everyone watching, and all who see you as a role model.

Source: New York Times

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