McCann, Cishek ready to play baseball, but question if May return possible

To keep his swing sharp, White Sox catcher James McCann is leaning on ex-Cub Ben Zobrist.

"I'm home with my family, just south of Nashville in Franklin, Tennessee, and we've been pretty much quarantining at home," McCann said on a conference call Friday. "I've been able to hit and throw and work out to a certain degree, thankfully. Here in Tennessee, facilities are shut down and all nonessential businesses are shut down completely.

"But thankfully Ben Zobrist, who lives in town, has a barn with a cage. I've been able to pretty much go there by myself and hit off a tee, a machine and stay in as best shape as possible."

Sox relief pitcher Steve Cishek, who spent the last two seasons piling up innings out of the Cubs' bullpen, is keeping his arm loose at his offseason home in Jupiter, Fla.

"I've been training under our back patio out here," Cishek said Friday. "I've got everything I need to keep myself in shape. Right now, I'm currently waiting on a bullpen mound that should get here within the next couple of hours, I hope, so I can start throwing bullpens in the backyard."

McCann and Cishek can't wait to get back to playing baseball.

"There's no one that wants to play more than myself," said McCann, an all-star for the White Sox in 2019. "I've talked with a lot of players and we're all in the same boat - we want to play and we are up for anything on the table that allows us to be able to play."

Said Cishek: "Obviously, we're all itching to play. I want to play just as much as anyone else."

With Major League Baseball floating the possibility of getting back on the field in May and playing all games in the Phoenix area, or possibly splitting the 30 teams between Arizona and Florida, there is no shortage of concern and confusion in the player ranks.

"When I saw that come out, first of all I realized it was just early talk, it probably shouldn't have been leaked that early," Cishek said.

Earlier this week, when an ESPN story reported MLB might open the season with all games in Arizona, the speculation about players being separated from their families did not go over well.

"My concern with that situation is there are a lot of details that have to be hammered out for that to even become a possibility," McCann said. "Being married and having two young kids, I'm not a huge fan of leaving them for, potentially, five months. If there was something on the table as far as, the first few weeks you're going to be on your own in isolation, but we have a plan in place for the entire country where things will open up, we can isolate for spring training, and then families will be able to join, that's a different story.

"But telling guys they have to leave their families indefinitely to then go isolate themselves, I don't know that that's the right answer. As much as you try to isolate players, you also have hotel staff of where you're isolating guys, and you have chefs and different people who are preparing food. There are just a lot of details where I have a hard time seeing how that comes to fruition."

Cishek's mother is a former nurse and current assistant X-ray technician. His cousin is also a nurse.

Keeping the players healthy if they return is an obvious concern for Cishek, as is the question of testing.

"For me, I definitely want there to be more absolutes to where we can either get testing or would it affect the rest of the country where we wouldn't be taking tests away from anyone that would really need it?" Cishek said. "And if there is some sort of vaccine that they come out with, that they know would be helpful or work, to me those two things would be the most ideal to being able to play or start a season.

"If we don't have those two things and one person gets sick, then the rest of us are going to get sick. There's just no hiding that. And then you ask about the health care workers. Obviously, they're our biggest heroes right now and the last thing we want to do is make more work for them and put them at more risk."