‘Pure equality’: Guards, students square off in Chess Club

This story was excerpted from Tim Stebbins’ Guardians Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

CLEVELAND -- Guardians players sit inside Progressive Field, analyzing and strategizing how to beat their opponent. Typically, that means studying those in the opposite dugout during a high-intensity baseball game.

But throughout the season, rather than four-seamers, changeups and curveballs, Cleveland players’ in-game studies also include queens, rooks, bishops, knights and pawns.

The Guardians’ Chess Club returned for its fourth season this year. Once per month, players hang out at the ballpark with students from local high schools, bonding and reveling in the competition of a chess match.

“Just being able to be part of the community [is great],” outfielder Steven Kwan said. “I learn a bunch through them. I think it's just really cool that you get to be on the level playing field. … When you play a chess game, it's a completely even playing field. It's pure equality, and they can kind of be comfortable in what they do too.

“They know how to play chess much better than we do. So you can hear their kind of smack talking. They make their jokes and everything, and we're kind of just spectators in their world. It's really special.”

MLB Players’ Weekend is an opportunity to spotlight the interests and causes important to players off the field. For the Guardians, chess lands in each of those categories. Players bond over it in the clubhouse, in their downtime before first pitch, and with kids in the Cleveland community in an up-close and personal way.

Kwan helped start the Guardians’ Chess Club. During Spring Training 2021, he and then-teammate and pal Will Benson looked for something to do during downtime in camp. Benson and Kwan both knew how to play chess, so they played a couple of games. The competitive juices started flowing, and they got “super into it.”

Kwan reached the big leagues in 2022, and after chess became a fixture in Cleveland’s clubhouse, he and the Guardians brought his two passions together with the chess club. The Guardians learned about John Marshall High School’s chess team (which placed top 20 at the 2022 U.S. Chess Federation National High School Championship) and invited the students to the ballpark to play against Guardians players.

That John Marshall team was made up of players who immigrated to the United States as kids and became friends while bonding over chess.

“They came to America, and they all had a really good relationship with each other through chess and had gone through a bunch of hardships,” Kwan said. “It's crazy now that they're all in college. I met them when they were all sophomores, juniors in high school.

“But [the chess club] was just a way for them to kind of be kids again. Have some normal competition. I just got to meet them at the field, and they were great kids.”

Kwan and Austin Hedges were among the original Guardians players in the chess club, which now includes players such as Bo Naylor, Tanner Bibee, Kyle Manzardo, Nolan Jones and Slade Cecconi.

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Kwan keeps in touch with many of the original chess club students, and the program has continued to blossom over the past three years. It now includes students from John Hay High School and the Cleveland School of the Arts.

“It's super fulfilling being able to bond with these guys in that way and be able to just take a moment away from baseball,” Naylor said. “Obviously, that's our lives, and that's usually what's kind of at the forefront of our minds. But it’s nice to take some time to just kind of be a kid, in a way, have fun with a good group of people and compete at the end of the day as well.

“It’s really cool. They’re incredible chess players, so a lot of times they’re teaching us stuff, which is another cool thing.”

Guardians players enjoy the interactions they share with the students and the spirited competition of their matches.

“Those kids definitely have the upper hand on us most of the time. Their personality kind of comes out, and they're kind of talking trash to you as well,” Bibee said, with a chuckle. “It's pretty funny. It's a great time. You get to meet these kids and see who they are.”

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The chess club even inspired a Naylor home run celebration this season. One of the students, Owen (John Hay High’s chess club president), would tap his wrist when looking to get folks’ attention in his role.

Naylor hit a three-run homer in the seventh inning of the Guardians’ 4-2 win over the Twins on April 30. As he rounded third base, he looked to Cleveland’s dugout and tapped his wrist.

“It’s like, ‘It's my time,’” Naylor said. “That's what the whole chess club had agreed on, just to have a celebration for all of us in special moments like that, to be able to kind of send a shout-out to the chess club, all of its members. [It shows] that we're thinking of them, and they're a part of this journey with us.”

The Guardians take lessons from chess that can be applied on the baseball field. Hedges noted the parallels between the two games, in how you are always learning and working to improve.

And like the game of baseball, the Guardians have rallied around chess and built camaraderie through it.

“It's like a bunch of friends hanging out,” Hedges said. “It's pretty cool.”