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Borrego Continues Coaching From Home During Season Delay

Fan-favorite Pensacola manager coaches his players and his daughter from home while awaiting season
Blue Wahoos manager Ramon Borrego poses in the home dugout at Blue Wahoos Stadium before the team's Independence Day celebration in 2019. (Nino Mendez)
April 7, 2020

Time passes slowly these days for Blue Wahoos manager Ramon Borrego. Each day at his Fort Myers home with his family is so much like the previous one. “When you stay home and can’t go anywhere, you start getting a little stir crazy,” Borrego said during a recent phone interview.

Time passes slowly these days for Blue Wahoos manager Ramon Borrego.

Each day at his Fort Myers home with his family is so much like the previous one.

“When you stay home and can’t go anywhere, you start getting a little stir crazy,” Borrego said during a recent phone interview. “It’s like, ‘Oh my God, what am I going to do now?’

“So basically, I go to the garage a lot. I’ve probably cleaned my garage more times than ever. Or I will clean my car. And I spend a lot of time with my daughters, with my wife, talking. I’m drinking coffee, making coffee.

“I was watching a lot of news, but I don’t want to watch much anymore. I will watch a movie. I try and stay away from the news, because there is a lot going on.”

Like everyone else across the nation, across the globe, the novel coronavirus pandemic has turned life upside down.

Less than a month ago, Borrego was spending his days at the Minnesota Twins training complex at the CenturyLink Sports Complex, located just an easy drive from his home. He was in a routine, enjoying his passion for baseball and his job to prepare top prospects in development to becoming Major League Baseball players.

Borrego would have arrived in Pensacola this week alongside a stacked roster of top prospects in preparation for Opening Day, originally scheduled for April 9th, and his second year as manager for the Blue Wahoos.

Now, everything is a great unknown. With a stay-at-home order in place for the State of Florida through the month of April, the Blue Wahoos proactively postponed all games during the month last week. Both Major and Minor League Baseball continue to work on a variety of plans to begin the season, but all remain contingent on public safety and social distancing guidelines.

“We’re waiting to see,” he said. “When they tell us, ‘Hey we are good to play baseball on this date, we will all get ready. The biggest thing is making sure it’s safe for everybody to watch a game. When that happens, we’ll get a date to start and be ready to go.

“I can’t wait. I know my wife and my daughters were looking forward to coming to Pensacola. They loved Pensacola. I know I can’t wait to get there and play baseball.”

In the meantime, Borrego is doing video conferencing with Twins staff, exchanging emails and text messages, and spending plenty of time on his cell phone checking on family and relatives in his native Venezuela and staying in touch with his players.

At the Twins complex by his home, nearly no staff or players remain.

“Mostly everybody else is gone,” Borrego said. “When spring training was cancelled, it was difficult to find flights for everyone. But, even the players from the Dominican (Republic), they were able to all return home."

While he can’t have workouts with players, Borrego has used the time to work with his eldest daughter, Maria, 16, a high school softball player. It has given him the chance to coach and prepare instructional drills.

“I’m teaching her some things,” he said. “We do agility work in the garage, some push-ups, things like that. So that’s been good.”

When the first notice of impact from the coronavirus pandemic occurred in early March, Borrego said he and his family stocked up with two months of supplies. He had a feeling it would a long-term adjustment from normal routine.

At that time, his daughters – Maria and 9-year-old Mya – were on spring break from their schools.

Borrego said he and family rarely venture outside their home area because of the fear of coming in contact with someone who may have the virus.

“It’s been very weird for everybody. You see something like this only in a movie, not real life,” he said. “As a human being you never thought you would be dealing with this kind of situation. You don’t even want to think about it.

“Sometimes, at night when I’m trying to go to sleep, I can’t sleep. Sometimes, I just sit by myself and wonder what is going on.”

During the day, Borrego tries to stay as busy as possible. The one place in his house he avoids, however, is the kitchen.

Why?

“The food,” he said, laughing. “Sometimes I walk in there and say, I don’t know why now I get so hungry. Now I get so hungry and I try to stay away from that.”

He’s grateful for his family and knowing that, eventually, he will return to working in baseball.

“It will be so exciting,” he said.