Mets' Sean Manaea building camaraderie, creating competition through chess in locker room

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Pitchers and catchers have just reported to Mets spring training and Sean Manaea has an audience.

An hour before workouts are set to begin, he’s sitting near a small table in the Clover Park home clubhouse. Prospects Carson Benge and Ryan Clifford sit across from him. Christian Scott stands a distance away, scrutinizing the scene.

This, Manaea indicates, is a bishop. He picks up the chess piece and mimes its diagonal movement as Benge and Clifford nod solemnly.

As the days roll by, the little table becomes a hub of action. One morning, it’s Manaea and Jonah Tong. Tong’s king is flanked and Manaea deadpans that there’s a means of escape, if only Tong can find it.

Tong’s brow furrows. “Really?” he asks.

“No,” Manaea says, grinning.

Then there are days when the big lefthander is absent from the table and his students take over. Benge, Clifford, Tong, Jacob Reimer and Jack Wenninger all make appearances. Sometimes the instructions are out, but mostly they try to learn by doing.

“There’s been this dream to have a little chess club,” Manaea said Saturday. “It’s all the young’uns and they’re all super into it, which is pretty cool. . . . Chess is such a cool, cool thing.”

Spring training days can be long, and though chess provides a respite, it serves a function. It encourages mental elasticity and healthy competition and, in this case, has further encouraged camaraderie among a slew of young players and Manaea, who is about 10 years their senior.

It’s also gradually creeping into baseball clubhouses, if maybe not expansively. The Guardians’ Steven Kwan started a club with his team and turned it into a tournament.

“They had people from chess.com come out,” Manaea said, his tone containing the same tinge of excitement fans get when they talk about . . . well, professional baseball players.

“Hopefully one day it’s a league-wide thing, to have a little chess club. That would be the ultimate goal.”

Manaea has a long-standing love for the game. He was part of the chess club for one year, in fourth grade, before other interests took over. But in 2023, when he was with the Giants, a coach said he wished he knew how to play, and the rest is history.

Manaea taught him and started playing again online and on his phone when he commuted to the park by train. He would pop into Washington Square or Bryant Park to watch urban chess masters dominate unsuspecting tourists (he really wants to try to play them someday).

Then there’s Tong, who was taught by a few of his friends a while back. And you can’t forget about Scott, who, in a Mets social media post featuring “First Day of School” chalkboards, wrote “chess” under the “hobby” section.

“When I got [Tommy John] surgery, I was trying to find some new, fun things to do,” Scott said. “My friend who I was living with in the offseason was really into chess, so he’s like, ‘Do you want to play chess? Do you want to play chess?’ We were playing chess all the time on our phones.”

In the clubhouse, though, his interest was still covert. For the first few weeks, Scott has preferred to observe because “Sean is a little bit above me,” he said. “He’s really good. Jonah is, too.”

Then, as if he’s convincing himself, Scott says: “I’m going to challenge him tomorrow.” (He does not.)

Tong is a little less tentative about taking on the Mets’ chess master. The two began playing at the end of last season. “I’ve been waiting and practicing,” Tong said. “I’m trying to think two moves ahead, because that’s what he does.”

The result? He’s beaten Manaea exactly one time, “and I vowed to never let it happen again,” Manaea joked. “He’s got a lot to learn, but we play all the time.”

Tong, whose locker is next door, first notes that a single victory “doesn’t mean a whole lot . . . He’s better than me.” Then his brain seems to click into place, the competitive wiring activated. Maybe, just maybe, he was just being considerate.

“You’ve got to give him some confidence here and there,” Tong said. “You raise the ceiling so we both raise each other up.”

Though he’s not going to force it, Manaea wouldn’t mind keeping this going when the season actually starts. It hasn’t always been easy to find opponents within the league — “I sent a note to guys on other teams when we play them, but only Steven Kwan was taking me up on the offer” — but that certainly hasn’t been the case this spring training.

“It’s just grown,” Manaea said.

And hey, maybe someone else eventually will try his hand.

“Scott?” Manaea replies, surprised. “I’ve seen him sit there and watch. Some guys watch but they don’t get over to the board.”

He’s intrigued. Looks as if the chess club is about to get another member.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.