Phil Nevin details bout with COVID, staph infection that led to loss of 22 pounds

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Yankees third base coach Phil Nevin, after more than a week of quarantining due to a positive COVID-19 test, missed the outdoors and wanted to go for a walk.

So he called pitching coach Matt Blake, also quarantining after numerous Yankee coaches and one player (Gleyber Torres) tested positive, to see if he would join him.

He had no idea it was a call that may have played a part in preserving his long-term health.

“I told Matt Blake ‘hey, there’s no security down there watching us, it was nice to get outside, why don’t we go down for a little walk?’” Nevin said Friday, his first time speaking with reporters since contracting the virus nearly a month ago. “We went down for probably 15 minutes or so, and I got pretty tired. I didn’t feel great.”

Nevin had been feeling better the night before, when he went to the hospital for his persistent fevers and received a treatment doctors said had been successful for treating COVID. But a simple stroll with Blake was enough for Nevin to realize that he wasn’t nearly back to his old self yet, while Blake was convinced it was something that required more attention than a hospital visit the night before.

“Unbeknownst to me, Blake made a call to our trainer,” Nevin said. “He said ‘I’ve only known Nev for a short time, but there’s something else wrong. It just doesn’t seem right that this would take him down like this.’”

Nevin took more blood tests the next morning, and shortly after getting the results, Nevin was hurried back to the hospital. He had developed a staph infection in his bloodstream.

“Hearing that news, I knew what it meant,” Nevin said. “Your body can turn septic and things like that. That was the first thing I asked the doctor.”

The doctors told Nevin that the infection was detected early enough, thanks to Blake’s phone call, and they would be able to treat it. But still, paired with his symptoms from COVID-19, it was a physical grind. Nevin lost 22 pounds, and had a line put in his arm to receive regular treatment, something he still has to do. He hopes that will no longer be necessary by Monday, and hopes to be in the dugout for the Yankees’ series opener against the Red Sox on Friday night. He won’t be cleared to be on the field again until the line in his arm is taken out, but after nearly a month away, the baseball lifer can surround himself with the game once again.

“It feels really good to be back,” Nevin said. “That was the hardest part, to be honest. I’m used to FaceTiming home to the girls and watching my boys play on the computer, where they’re at, but this is my family.”

Still, there are moments that passed during Nevin’s quarantine that won’t be able to be relived. Since Nevin has been a coach with the Yanks, he has had agreement with Brian Cashman that whenever his son Tyler made his big-league debut, he would be able to be there for it. That day came on May 29, which also included Tyler’s first major league hit. Nevin watched on TV from afar, and while it didn’t feel the same, it was likely a better outcome than had Blake never made that phone call.

“I had a great seat. I was on the couch,” Nevin laughed, just before fighting back tears. “We had talked about that day for a long time. To not be there for that, that probably hurt the most…not to be able to see him right after the game, that gets you a little bit, because you talked about it for so long.”

It was a moment Nevin never imagined he would miss in person, especially after being fully vaccinated for COVID-19 back in March. While Nevin was one of the only members of the Yankees’ traveling party that displayed symptoms as a “breakthrough case,” doctors made it clear that the vaccine, along with Blake’s phone call, helped keep the symptoms much more manageable for Nevin, who is asthmatic.

“Doctors were convinced the vaccine kept the COVID out of my lungs,” Nevin said. “If that had been compromised and tacked on to what I had before I contracted it, I was told it probably wouldn’t have been a very good outcome in terms of the healing process… I wasn’t and anti-[vaccine] guy, I just wasn’t sure if I would have gotten it if I wasn’t in baseball…getting it and learning through these last few weeks what it did for me, I would certainly encourage anybody that asked me to certainly get it.”

Nevin is still feeling some lingering effects, and still carries a physical reminder of his fight in the form of the line in his arm, but a return to the dugout this weekend will bring about a much-needed sense of normalcy after a four-week span that was anything but typical, or easy.

“I feel good, comparatively to where I’ve been,” Nevin said. Just getting my strength back and energy, that’s the main thing.

“That phone call probably saved a lot of things. It could have been a lot worse.”

Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1

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