Former Oakland A’s manager Art Howe in ICU with coronavirus

Former Oakland A’s manager Art Howe is in the hospital due to coronavirus, reports Tulsi Kamath of Houston TV station KPRC 2.

The 73-year-old Howe first felt symptoms on May 3. His subsequent test for coronavirus came back positive and he went into isolation in his Houston home, but as his symptoms worsened he ultimately took an ambulance to the hospital on Tuesday. As of Thursday, he’s still in intensive care.

Among the symptoms that Howe described to KPRC were chills that made him shake “like a leaf,” extreme fatigue, and a loss of his sense of taste.

“You don’t want to have this; you don’t want to know what it’s like,” Howe said, via John Hickey of Sports Illustrated. “I’m hoping I’m on the other side of this. You get tired, you can’t eat. When you try to eat, everything tastes like goo. You have no energy and diarrhea. At least they’ve been able to give me something for this.”

This isn’t the first time the A’s family has felt a brush with the effects of coronavirus. In March, minor league manager Webster Garrison was diagnosed and had to go on a ventilator to help him breathe. Garrison, 54, was able to get off the ventilator in mid-April after three weeks of intubation, but his fiancee continues to post daily prayers for him on Twitter. Meanwhile, at the end of April, former A’s minor league player Miguel Marte died at the age of 30 from complications with the virus.

As for Howe, he reports to KPRC that he’s slowly getting better but needs to be free of fever for 24 hours in order to be released. Hickey notes that the fever has been consistently over 100 degrees lately.

Howe became the A’s manager in 1996, replacing Hall of Fame skipper Tony La Russa. In seven seasons in Oakland he won 600 games at a .530 clip, including two campaigns with over 100 wins apiece, and he took the A’s to the playoffs for three straight years in 2000-02. The last of those seasons was immortalized in the book Moneyball and later its film adaptation, though in the movie he was fictionalized as a villain for dramatic purposes (portrayed by the brilliant late actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman).

Before his time in Oakland, Howe enjoyed an 11-season MLB playing career. He played mostly with the Astros, and graded out positively on both sides of the ball while racking up just under 14 WAR. After retiring in 1985, he became Houston’s manager for five seasons starting in 1989, then moved to Oakland, and finally wrapped up his managerial career with two summers leading the Mets. He took a few more coaching jobs, including bench coach for the Rangers under his former A’s third-base coach Ron Washington, before finally hanging up his spikes after 2008.

Athletics Nation wishes the best to Howe and his family as he continues his recovery.