Top KU doc has a few things he’d like to tell unvaccinated Kansas City Royals players
Ten Kansas City Royals players this week can’t play against the Blue Jays in Toronto, barred from entering Canada because they are not vaccinated for COVID-19.
Dr. Steve Stites would like a word with them.
“I wish everybody would get vaccinated. So my reaction to these players is no different than it is for any other person who has chosen not to get vaccinated,” said Stites, chief medical officer for The University of Kansas Health System, the official health care provider for the Royals since 2011.
Stites and the KU health system have spent more than two years leading Kansas City through the pandemic, strongly urging COVID-19 vaccination since it became available.
On Friday, Stites told The Star he’d like to sit down with the 10 unvaccinated Royals players “and understand the reasons why and try to talk to you about it. I would say to the players the same thing I’ve said to everybody in America: You are much better off getting vaccinated. The vaccines are clearly safe.”
The 10 players not in Canada are All-Star left fielder Andrew Benintendi, relief pitcher Dylan Coleman, first baseman/outfielder Hunter Dozier, backup catcher Cam Gallagher, outfielder Kyle Isbel, starting pitcher Brad Keller, rookie catcher MJ Melendez, two-time All-Star second baseman Whit Merrifield, starting pitcher Brady Singer and Gold Glove-winning center fielder Michael A.Taylor.
The fact that they haven’t been vaccinated “is only news to you all and the rest of the world,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said earlier this week. “This isn’t news to our guys. This is old news. We’ve known this is coming. So those conversations have all happened on an individual and group basis.
“As far as how individuals are handling all this, they’ve all had a chance to have their conversations.”
Fans and baseball pundits were quick to criticize the players, calling them “selfish” and “ridiculous.”
But Stites was careful not to hold the players to the role model standard he sets for himself and colleagues.
“I’m a medical guy so I feel like I ought to follow medical facts,” he said. “These are young kids playing baseball. So I don’t know it’s right for me to project my personal set of beliefs on them to be a role model.
“For me and my colleagues here at the health center, you bet, because this is what we do. We are in health care, so our lane is health care. The Royals play baseball. I’m not sure I would project on them and say now you have to go act like you’re in health care.”
The team’s relationship with a health system that has spent endless hours promoting public safety during the pandemic was not lost on people on social media. It also gave rise to speculation of a possible rift between the team and the health system, which Stites called “categorically, 100% completely untrue.”
“This is not some dagger in the heart,” he said. “In the grand scheme of things we’re dealing with in health care, this is a nothing burger.”
He pointed out that KU has relationships with many community organizations, “and whether they choose to get vaccinated or not is probably not going to embarrass us,” he said.
“I wish they’d get vaccinated. I wish they were playing. … I’m a baseball fan and I love the Royals. I wish they were up there in Toronto right now, though it was kind of fun watching the kids play yesterday,” he said, referring to younger players brought up from the minor league who helped the Royals win the first game of the series in Toronto on Thursday.
“I feel bad for the players. I feel bad for the organization. I feel bad for folks. But we’re not embarrassed.
“If I get embarrassed by the Royals, I’ve got to say some of my patients aren’t vaccinated, and I’m their doctor. I can’t project that on a bunch of baseball players.”
Stites said the unvaccinated 10 players represent “a microcosm of America.”
“If you think about America and you look at the distribution of people who are and aren’t vaccinated, there are a lot of early 20-somethings that aren’t vaccinated,” he said. “The Royals are no different than the rest of the United States of America.”
He said baseball players are going to come in contact with COVID-19 as they travel, and if they get it, they risk suffering the longer-lasting effects of long COVID.
“So I think for health reasons they’d want to be vaccinated,” he said. “But at the end of the day, they’re acting just like the rest of America. They are no different. And that’s just what we’re up against.”
In February before spring training, during one of KU’s regular COVID briefings, head team physician Dr. Vincent Key from the KU health system said players were not required to be vaccinated, but they were “strongly encouraged” to do so.
Key is also president this year of the Major League Baseball Team Physicians Association.
“I know we have a pretty high vaccination rate, from our kids in the Dominican all the way up to our major league guys,” Key said. “But there’s obviously different things that unvaccinated guys are going to have to be subjugated to that the vaccinated guys are not.
“The testing will be a little bit more, and so, I think, for the most part, we’ve given the information that we’ve given to all of our players. They have to make the decision.”
Includes reporting by The Star’s Lynn Worthy.
This story was originally published July 15, 2022 at 5:13 PM.
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