The first thing Shawn Routten noticed was the jerseys.
This time of year, Routten, the general manager of the historic Fenway Hotel in Dunedin, Florida, was used to seeing baseball fans wearing their teams’ colors during spring training. Here in Dunedin, those colors usually were the royal blue, red, and white of the Toronto Blue Jays, who have made this small Gulf Coast town their spring home since 1977, their expansion season. But you also were likely to see fans of other teams, maybe Phillies fans from Clearwater or Yankees fans from Tampa, making the 15-minute walk from TD Ballpark following afternoon games for drinks, dinner, and banter about the upcoming season.
Then came the coronavirus. On March 12, Major League Baseball shut down spring training. Other sports leagues suspended their seasons.
“All of the bars and restaurants usually are decorated with different jerseys,” Routten said. “The first thing you noticed [after the shutdown] is there are no baseball uniforms anymore. Then, obviously, the next thing you see is the revenue loss, not just with rooms but also at food and beverage outlets throughout the city.”
In the days after the shutdown, Routten said, “We definitely saw a 25 to 35% loss at our hotel. People save up their whole year for this trip. This is their thing. Some stuck with their plans and enjoyed the town, and others went home.”
Downtown Dunedin is a charming Gulf Coast village. A Scottish friend describes it as “twee,” or quaint. (I suppose “twee” suits me because I recently made Dunedin my new home.) The streets of downtown Dunedin are lined exclusively with local shops, galleries, restaurants, ice cream parlors, seven microbreweries, and one distillery. Along Main Street and Douglas Avenue, golf carts share space with cars — though both yield to cyclists zipping through town on the Fred Marquis Pinellas Trail. On the three-quarter-mile walk down Main Street from Clear Sky Draught Haus to the Olde Bay Cafe on the marina, visitors often are accompanied by a steady procession of live musical acts — covers of Bob Dylan at Pisces Sushi, ’80s classics at Blur, and Jimmy Buffett at Rosie’s Tavern.
Because of the Jays’ presence, it’s not uncommon to hear snowbirds speaking French at the stadium or around town. Toronto is the only Major League franchise that has never moved its spring training camp, and Dunedin hopes to keep it that way. A recent $102 million renovation and expansion of TD Ballpark and the team’s training facilities are expected to keep the Jays in town for another 25 years.
“There was definitely a lot of noise about this new stadium,” Routten said. “It was a time for celebration for the city of Dunedin, for us as a hotel, and for fans of Major League Baseball.”
The Jays’ final spring game at TD Ballpark was an exhibition against the Canadian Junior National Team on March 12. Then came the shutdown, and the effect was immediately apparent in ways large and small. The Rusty Lyon’s rooftop bar on Broadway, normally packed to capacity after games, drew only a modest Friday night crowd. At Caledonia Brewing on Main Street, a bartender was spritzing disinfectant almost as often as he was pouring pints.
“Let me wipe that,” he told a visitor. “New orders.”
Two days later, on a sun-kissed Sunday afternoon, the Jays were gone, as were most of the shoppers. Light crowds gathered at local staples such as Dunedin Smokehouse and The Living Room.
“I was on par to have, if not my best month of the year, one of my two or three best months,” Boe Rushing, owner of Back in the Day Books on Main Street, said on St. Patrick’s Day morning. “So this is going to be a huge loss for me no matter what happens — especially because most of my money is put back into inventory for my customers who normally are here but now are not here.”
On any other St. Patrick’s Day, Main Street would be closed off for a parade and daylong festivities. It’s one of the biggest days on Dunedin’s calendar. But the festival was canceled. As Rushing spoke, only a few green-clad stragglers wandered past his storefront. A block away at Flanagan’s Irish Pub, a small, perhaps foolhardy group of revelers gathered for prelunch lubrication.
Having lost the spring training bump, the next couple of months promise to be a long hangover for Dunedin’s businesses.
“There’s so much uncertainty,” Rushing said, “that you just have to take things day by day and hope for the best.”
Martin Kaufmann has covered sports for more than two decades, including 16 years as senior editor at Golfweek.
