TAMPA — The locker is its own ghost town, which seems entirely fitting. You walk into the home-team clubhouse at Steinbrenner Field, walk maybe 20 steps, turn right, and there it is: Jacoby Ellsbury’s stall, standing between Clint Frazier’s to the left and an unoccupied one to the right.
Inside the other lockers — even the unclaimed ones — are all manner of evidence of the vibrancy of spring training, with gear and equipment spilling out, with batches of mail stuck in corners, baseballs and bats and batting gloves everywhere.
Here, there are five unopened boxes of Nike spikes, and two plain cardboard boxes.