‘When You Hear the Heart, You Know It’s Your Motor’

Eduardo Rodgriguez is the only major leaguer known to have developed myocarditis from Covid-19. The Boston Red Sox starter wants to keep it that way.

The bullpen session was supposed to last 30 pitches. Even after a nasty two-week bout of Covid-19, Eduardo Rodriguez thought he could make it through this ordinary baseball task last July. But by the fifth pitch, the top starting pitcher for the Boston Red Sox was so drained he said he was seeing stars. “I felt like I was going to faint,” he said recently in Spanish during a video call. “By the 10th pitch, I said, ‘That’s it.’” Rodriguez and an athletic trainer assumed that his body was still shaking off the rust from the illness. So three days after the failed attempt, having squeezed in some cardiovascular exercises despite lingering lethargy, Rodriguez again climbed a mound at Fenway Park for a bullpen session. Exhaustion again took over by his 10th pitch.