Nicole Sherry was among the handful of people who are not players, umpires, media, coaches and managers to witness a ballgame in person last season as 30 teams tried to navigate their way through a 60-game season filled with numerous protocols as part of an attempt to play through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sherry needed to be among the handful of people allowed to witness the sport in person because of her role as the head groundskeeper for the Baltimore Orioles and her best to way to describe her 14th season overseeing the field at Camden Yards as high anxiety but also a sense of relief for getting through what anyone hopes is a one-time only situation.

It was definitely an experience, not one that I ever want to see again but definitely a different experience, Sherry said last week from her office in the right field corner as another groundskeeper performed field maintenance in the distance.

Getting through the 2020 season was the latest chapter in a career that has seen Sherry join Heather Nabozny of the Detroit Tigers as the only female head groundskeepers in Major League Baseball. Since joining the Orioles in 2001 and then returning following a three-year stint with the Trenton Thunder, Sherry has seen things like the end of Cal Ripken Jrs career, Manny Machados debut and the resurgence of the Orioles under Buck Showalter.

Those situations played out in the public eye, but by March 2020, there was the new reality of coming in a few days a week into the silence of downtown Baltimore to make sure the field was maintained. It was surreal for Sherry, who months earlier was named to the Board of Directors for the Sports Turf Management Association.

We still had to do our duty of maybe deploying a tarp in a game situation, Sherry said. There you were masked up and you should still be six feet apart. Its just trusting that your employees are as safe as possible. It was high anxiety. It was very overwhelming.

And then came the ramp up to the actual season, a two-plus month 60-game sprint that also featured spring training in the middle of a hot summer with 60 players using one field instead of multiple fields in Florida and also finding creative ways to get their necessary work in.

Sherry had a front row seat to it all well at least as close as you can get in the age of social distancing that has existed for a little over a year.

We had an idea that the spring training could occur or pick back up at our home ballpark, Sherry said. In my mind I always plan for the worst, so Im thinking we could try to get these guys daily workouts in but hopefully I can have a discussion with the manager and the coaches about where to do these workouts on the field because theyre going from five to six fields that they use in Sarasota to one field to do all this work with an exponential amount of people too.

We had to get creative, we had to utilize the concourse for some drills, the bullpen more often than not and spacing everybody out so they could get their workout in and we could also be able to maintain the field at a level the regular season was going to occur.

The site of major leaguers limbering up in a second round of spring training occurred after Sherry and her two assistants alternated days where they would be the only ones maintaining the grass in an eerily silent ballpark.

Maintaining the grass was something that Sherry and her two assistants did for nearly four months before players began trickling in around early July. In a time when people were encouraged to stay home as often as possible, Sherry ensured it was done because of how the grass might have appeared after several months of inactivity.

It grows like so fast so on a daily basis it would have been like three, four inches and 30 inches by the time we could have gotten back into the field, Sherry said. Its such a big investment, a lot of people probably dont realize that the field itself probably is one of the bigger components of playing the game so if you dont maintain that its a critical part of the game. If its not maintained to this optimum major league standard then its going to be downfall from that.

Eventually the games began and the concerns of the grounds crew pivoted to monitoring the weather and maintaining constant communication with umpires about any possible inclement weather that could result in a delay.

It turns out weather was not much of an issue, at least not factoring the warm weather.

In their 30 home games, the Orioles experienced three rain delays totaling four hours, 29 minutes and no postponements. It was much better than 2019 when the Orioles had two home postponements and eight weather delays that lasted a combined 11 hours, 21 minutes.

However, for being less on edge about rain or the possibility of it, there was the time one week into the season when the Marlins appeared in Baltimore less than a week after their COVID-19 outbreak in Philadelphia. And when the Marlins appeared for four games there was the specter of a hurricane.

Were not totally side by side with the athletes at a lot of times, so we just made sure that if we were touching anything we had batting gloves on or sanitizing as soon as possible, Sherry said. But the caveat to that was we had a hurricane that day (downgraded to a tropical storm). I was like great, all this high tension of these athletes who may be possible, who knows, if somebodys going to get it.

Then you throw a hurricane into the mix, then we have to be on site to get that tarp down, are we going to play or not. It was just a lot of craziness that happened in that short series with the Marlins and of course everybody was on high alert and tried to stay as safe as possible.

Ultimately weather did not delay the visit from the Marlins and with little delays, Sherry and her staff could watch the games from the empty first base seats when not adjusting the bases of fixing up the dirt and grass.

And when she was not listening to the piped in crowd noise that became a standard for all ballparks, she could hear some of the nuances of the game, bringing her back to her days at University of Delaware where a trip to Camden Yards inspired her path to being one of 30 head groundskeepers in baseball.

It was really fun for me to able to out there under the circumstances, Sherry said. It was really entertaining for me to be able to hear what is happening on the field despite the fan noise loop. Theyre talking to each other; theyre calling where the guy hit it last and that brings back what we grew up with.

Sherrys first game of 2021 for her approximately 30-person staff will be April 8 against the Boston Red Sox and the attendance will be at 25 percent capacity with the possibility of less restrictions if the situation improves.

While hearing some of the chatter was a nice change of pace, Sherry and her staff are looking forward to getting back to the days when crowds are watching everything that goes into making the game unfold, including the significant role a grounds crew plays.

People realize, but in my mind nobody fully understands what moving parts it takes for this game to be played from a groundskeeper perspective, Sherry said.