White Sox’ Eloy Jimenez brings joy to baseball during trying times

Leave it to Jimenez to bring the holiday cheer. The Sox’ effervescent left fielder opened his Zoom call Saturday on the Fourth of July with a ‘‘Wow! What a mustache!’’ salute to NBC Sports Chicago’s Vinnie Duber and closed it with a two-handed goodbye wave to all.

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Eloy Jimenez takes batting practice as manager Rick Renteria (left) watches during the first season workout at Guaranteed Rate Field on Friday. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

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Leave it to Eloy Jimenez to bring the holiday cheer.

The White Sox’ effervescent 23-year-old left fielder opened his Zoom call with media Saturday on the Fourth of July with a ‘‘Wow! What a mustache!’’ salute to NBC Sports Chicago’s Vinnie Duber and closed it with a two-handed goodbye wave to all.

‘‘Bye, guys! Have a great afternoon!’’ he said.

It was a typically colorful hello and goodbye from Jimenez, whose happy moods are a constant in the clubhouse, in the dugout and on the field. No frustrating stoppage of play late in spring training and no coronavirus pandemic are going to sour Jimenez’s mood.

‘‘It feels great,’’ Jimenez said after his second day of workouts at Sox summer camp at Guaranteed Rate Field in preparation for the abbreviated 60-game season. ‘‘I’m happy to be back in Chicago, and I’m happy to be back with my boys. And I feel like what happened with all this, the pandemic, we are still happy, you know? Go out, work out, smile and just work out hard.’’

Jimenez, who clanked a bunch of batting-practice home runs into the aluminum outfield bleachers, batted .340/.383/.710 with nine homers and 25 RBI in September last season to finish with 31 homers, 79 RBI and 240 total bases in 122 games.

Jimenez entered last season with great expectations after crushing minor-league pitching, but he needed time to adjust to big-league pitching. But he said the big thing was playing more relaxed.

‘‘I feel really good, much better this year,’’ Jimenez said. ‘‘This is my second year, and I got experience last year. I think it’s going to be better this year.

‘‘I can say at the beginning [of last season], I was just worrying about [how] I needed to do this and I needed to do that. But at the end, I just said: ‘I’m going to play hard, and if it’s happening, it’s happening; if it’s not, another day. I think that helped me a lot. That got me out of the pressure and [allowed me to] just go and have fun. For me, that was the key at the end of the season.’’

Only two days into the restart of camp, manager Rick Renteria hasn’t seen enough to know where his players are at physically. And until they begin playing intrasquad games Wednesday, he won’t know where they’re at timing-wise.

There is rust to shake off after a three-month break, but players have been working out and hitting where they can. Jimenez, who has been with the morning group, looks good so far.

‘‘His mindset is right,’’ Renteria said. ‘‘You see him out there, he’s moving around good. We’re very optimistic that he’s going to continue what he’s been doing in the past. He’s working out there.’’

As players navigate their way through distancing restrictions, a big challenge is resisting the urge to high-five and be close. The Sox’ pregame handshake routine was one of the more creative in the majors, but now they’ll have to figure something else out. Jimenez and right-hander Dylan Cease, who came over with him from the Cubs in the trade for left-hander Jose Quintana in July 2017, were photographed Friday doing a social-distance ‘‘hug.’’

‘‘It’s going to be a little bit hard when the season starts,’’ Jimenez said. ‘‘I think this . . . six feet distance, you know, it’s going to be just for now. It’s going to be better.’’

Word Saturday that four Braves, including first baseman Freddie Freeman, tested positive for the coronavirus was a grim reminder that things aren’t better. Jimenez said there are ‘‘too many rules. But we need to get used to it until this pandemic slows down a little bit.

‘‘It’s really hard because, you know, as a baseball player like me, I’m joking around a lot. Now we need to keep distance.’’

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