The proof of Brandon Bailey’s big-league career can be found inside his parents’ house in the Denver suburbs. The jersey worn in his debut with the Houston Astros on July 26, 2020, hangs on a wall. The baseballs thrown for two of his four strikeouts reside in a safe. He did not collect many other keepsakes from his five appearances in Major League Baseball, all of them played inside empty ballparks with artificial crowd noise in between daily testing for COVID-19. “If I could do it all over,” Bailey said, “I would have asked almost every last one of my teammates to sign something.”

Three years after that strange, anxious summer, Bailey called home. His arm had just betrayed him again. His joy for baseball was tapped. He broke down as he spoke.

“That was the one thing that was probably the hardest part for me when I decided to retire,” Bailey said one afternoon this spring, a couple weeks before the fifth anniversary of MLB shutting down spring training as the virus spread across the country. “Telling my parents I’m just so sorry that I couldn’t get back, to give them that experience to watch me play. I think that’s why I kept hanging on and I kept fighting. My parents never got to see me play in a major-league stadium.”

Can you live out your dream if there’s no one there to see it? In the summer of 2020, amid a pandemic that eventually resulted in more than a million deaths in the United States, MLB played a season condensed and distorted by the virus. The regular season lasted 60 games. There were no crowds. Players were punished for postgame carousing. The days formed a blur of surgical masks, nasal swabs and social distancing.

The year tested the patience and the discipline of the veterans while presenting a funhouse mirror of big-league life to newcomers. There were 212 rookies who debuted in 2020. For some, the shortened year offered a prelude to future greatness. Tarik Skubal made his first start. Garrett Crochet notched his first strikeout. Jazz Chisholm Jr. hit his first home run.

For others, though, the Covid season represented the entirety of their big-league time. A group of 24 players only appeared in 2020. Many, like Bailey, have stopped playing, undone by the accumulation of injuries and ineffectiveness. He has wondered about reaching out to some of his brethren, the precious few big leaguers who never really experienced the big leagues.

“There can’t be many of us, right” said Rob Kaminsky, a veteran of five appearances for the 2020 St. Louis Cardinals.

“It’s kind of like a forgotten season,” said Ben Braymer, who pitched in three games for the Washington Nationals.

“It’s almost like a season that has an asterisk next to it,” Bailey said. “It happened. But not the way it was supposed to.”

The 2020-only club could grow smaller this season. A handful remain in search of another moment in the sun, this one with a proper setting and soundtrack. The best chance belongs to Kyle Hart, a member of the 2020 Boston Red Sox, who signed a big-league deal with San Diego after a standout 2024 campaign in the Korean Baseball Organization. “I feel like it will be almost a second debut for me, so to speak,” Hart said.

Hart’s actual debut occurred on Aug. 13, 2020. He struggled to produce adrenaline in the vacated confines of Fenway Park. He felt like he was going through the motions during a spring training game — except he was facing elite competition with a scant margin for error. “The actual game felt like we were practicing,” Hart said. “With no one there, it felt like a scrimmage game or something.”

Braymer and the Nationals visited Boston a couple of weeks after Hart’s arrival. Braymer felt his heart hammering as he jogged in from the bullpen. The abnormality of the scene still stuck with him. “I’m running into the game and there’s probably 200 cardboard cutouts in the stands,” Braymer said. “‘Sweet Caroline’ is still on the speakers, but instead of there being fans, it’s like pumped-in fake crowd noise. So that was funny, and also just, like, ‘Wow. I can’t believe that’s the reality of it.’”

During his time in Washington’s minor-league system, Braymer had anticipated the chance to enjoy the trappings of the major-league life. He looked forward to hanging with the veterans in the clubhouse, playing cards on the team plane, joining the other rookies for the traditional pregame coffee run at Wrigley Field. None of that was permitted in 2020. Players have said they mostly just sat in their rooms playing video games.

At times that summer, even going outside felt unsafe. About a month after he debuted in August for the Seattle Mariners, Joey Gerber looked outside his hotel room in San Francisco and saw an orange sky, the result of wildfires plaguing the Pacific Northwest. The smoke followed the club home. “We had a game in Seattle where it was like the worst air quality in the world that game, and it was like, ‘Yeah, we’re still going to play,’” Gerber said. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh — what’s the equivalent of cigarettes I just smoked?’”

Gerber has stayed upbeat about his two months with the Mariners. “It was still Major League Baseball,” said Gerber, who was in big-league camp this spring on a minor-league contract with Tampa Bay. “It’s not what you expect, in terms of the fans, or traveling to cities. But you’re still staying in the Ritz. You’re still getting good food.”

Bailey, a sixth-round pick in 2016, did not expect to reach the majors in 2020. He was an undersized right-handed pitcher who lacked the explosive stuff displayed by minor-league teammates like Bryan Abreu and Cristian Javier. The Astros left him exposed in the Rule 5 draft after 2019. Baltimore selected Bailey only to return him to Houston on March 6. Bailey was still processing the frustration when Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19 on March 11. A day later, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred suspended spring training and postponed the season.

Bailey hunkered down in Tucson, Ariz., during the shutdown. He kept his arm strong by throwing with a local high school kid who was recommended by Astros pitching Brent Strom. When teams reconvened in June, Bailey impressed with his command. A series of injuries opened a spot for him on the Opening Day roster. He spent three weeks with the club. He logged two innings in a victory over Seattle on Aug. 14. After he fanned catcher Joseph Odom with a changeup, Bailey walked into the dugout unaware that he would never return to a big-league mound.

“To realize I threw my last meaningful pitch in that 2020 season and it ended in a strikeout, it’s kind of romantic — but also extremely sad, at the same time,” he said.

The Astros sent Bailey to the minor-league alternate site in Houston. He lingered there for the rest of the season. In November, Cincinnati acquired him. A month later, he felt a strain in his right elbow, which had already required Tommy John surgery in high school. He underwent a second elbow reconstruction that February. A cycle of rehabilitation and re-injury began, one that did not end until that teary phone call to his parents in 2023. “That was one of the hardest conversations I’ve ever had in my entire life,” Bailey said.

For those healthy enough to still play, the allure of the game remains. Hart needed the KBO to rejuvenate his stock. Kaminsky took a minor-league deal with St. Louis this spring. “I’m pretty passionate about wanting to get back in,” he said. “If I didn’t think I could, I would hang them up, for sure.” In 2024, Braymer showcased himself in Mexico, Taiwan, Venezuela and the Atlantic League, all in the hopes of getting back into affiliated ball. When no offers were forthcoming, he re-upped with the Tijuana Toros.

“There’s a sense of peace I have about it all, knowing I can only do so much,” Braymer said. “Look, I can’t send myself a contract. If I could, I would.”

Bailey had prepared for the end of his playing days while they were still ongoing. In the minors, he took an offseason internship at the Driveline pitching laboratory. He earned a master’s degree in sports coaching from the University of Northern Colorado. The resume helped him land a job in 2024 as a minor-league pitching coach in Baltimore’s system.

The transition was not easy, Bailey said. He still identified as a player — and others still identified him as one. He crossed paths with former teammates John Means and Bruce Zimmerman. “They were like, ‘I didn’t know you were coaching,’” Bailey said. “They wanted me to play catch, and they’re telling me, ‘Man, it’s coming out good.’ And I’m like, ‘Man, I don’t want to really hear that.’”

The only comparison Bailey could draw was losing a family member. There are good days and bad days. After the Dodgers hired him this winter as the pitching coach at Class-A Rancho Cucamonga, he bumped into more old teammates in the big-league clubhouse. At 30, he was reconciling the smash cut of one journey with the emergence of another.

These days Bailey has a new dream. In it, he has returned to the major leagues as a coach. He will look out across a ballpark thrumming with the energy that was tucked away for all of his time in 2020. He will understand that he made it back. He will savor the moment.

“Nobody in the crowd might know that that’s my debut,” Bailey said. “No one will know that, except for me. But it will be just as special.”

— The Athletic’s Sam Blum contributed to this report.