MIAMI — Don Mattingly emerged from the home team dugout at loanDepot park on Friday with a smile on his face.
“It feels good to be back,” the Miami Marlins’ manager said as his players began batting practice before starting a three-game series with the Chicago Cubs.
A positive COVID-19 test on July 31 after experiencing mild symptoms kept Mattingly away from the team for 12 games, confined to watching games at home while he recovered.
Watching the team from a distance was different, especially after being in the dugout for every game with this team for the last six seasons. After the first couple days, when the symptoms began to subside, he was antsy to get back to the ballpark.
But Mattingly also kept his distance even though he was updated daily on how things were going. James Rowson handled day-to-day managerial responsibilities as the Marlins’ acting manger in Mattingly’s absence. This was in addition to his duties as bench coach.
Mattingly said he noticed a seamless transition to Rowson handling acting manager duties.
“James obviously knows what he’s doing and is good with all that,” Mattingly said. “So, after like a day I remember just texting James and just like ‘Hey just make the lineup. You know what you want to do.’ He pretty much makes it every day anyway. He’s the guy that’s really working through the lineup every day and then we just check on it. So he was trying to keep me in the loop, but he didn’t need to.”
Mattingly said he woke up on July 31 and “felt a little funny” and ran a fever. A positive COVID-19 test followed later in the day. Mattingly said based on the symptoms and the fact that he hadn’t had a fever at any point over the past two years, he wasn’t necessarily surprised by the positive test although he was thankful that both he and his wife Lori were vaccinated.
Mattingly was at home with both Lori and son Louis while away from the team.
“Seeing so many people have so much trouble,” Mattingly said, “you don’t want to be flippant about this thing and just think ‘oh it’s not a big deal’ because there’s lots of people that have had trouble and obviously lost their lives and things like that. But I was glad I was vaccinated from the standpoint of I had a couple days of mild symptoms and I felt good. And I didn’t pass it on to like my kid or my wife. Tried to do the right thing but definitely glad I was vaccinated. I know it’s a choice for a lot of people and for different reasons. People have different reasons for not and some of them are health related. How they make their decision is really seems like a personal thing.”
