FredNats team owner: ‘We will all get through this together’

Fredericksburg Nationals team owner Art Silber penned a letter to Fredericksburg residents on Thursday, lamenting the delay of the start of the 2020 Minor League Baseball season.

The latter follows our exclusive interview with team manager Nick Hall.

To our Fredericksburg community,

Tonight, April 9th, was supposed to mark a historic night for Fredericksburg. Your hometown Fredericksburg Nationals were scheduled to take the field for the first time for an away game. The team would have worn their road gray uniforms with “Fredericksburg” proudly displayed in red across the chests of your players.

As we all know, this day and holding a game at your new stadium in Fredericksburg will have to wait. We all well recognize that the health and safety of our community is our first priority, and baseball will come when it is safe for us all to enjoy it together.

We did want to mark this occasion by thanking Fredericksburg for welcoming our family, our staff, and our team to your community. The strength of this community has always been apparent, but never more apparent as we all work together to defeat this virus and move towards reuniting in public as a community. We want to thank everyone who has put their health at stake to protect us all – health care workers, grocery store employees, restaurant employees, and everyone else that keeps us safe and keeps us going.

We especially want to thank the great public servants of the City of Fredericksburg, who have acted to protect us all. It starts at the top with the City’s great Mayor Mary Katherine Greenlaw. She was the driving force that lead to our decision to move our team to your City. It was her great vision that made this dream come true while at the same time wisely making sure that our arrangement with the City made sense for the City and its citizens. Together with her colleagues on the City Council — and in particular Matt Kelly, and key City officials including Tim Baroody, Bill Freehling, and Kathleen Dooley — their wisdom, guidance, and support, made our dream of bringing baseball to the ‘Burg come true.

These City officials are obviously facing an incredible challenge today in protecting the City from this virus. We can’t express enough how much we appreciate their hard work, guidance, and compassion to help us all through this very difficult situation.

We will all get through this together, and at the appropriate time enjoy baseball together under a beautiful blue sky in your new ballpark. Thank you again for welcoming us into your community.

Sincerely,

The Silber Family and the FredNats Staff