As published in The County Times (countytimes.somd.com) March 2020
By Ronald N. Guy Jr.
It has been just over three weeks – three very slow
weeks - since the NBA cancelled a game between the Utah Jazz and Houston
Rockets, a decision that triggered the rapid shuddering of the sports world.
Baseball’s opening day was scheduled for March 26; it
was to be the first since 1925 with the Washington D.C. team as the reigning
World Series champions.
April 4 was the Capitals’ scheduled regular season
finale. Was another Stanley Cup possible had the season not been put
on…errr…ice?
The Final Four for the men’s and women’s basketball
tournaments would have been played this weekend. Would both Terrapins teams have been
participants?
Questions that will forever lack answers.
Instead of March Madness buzzer-beaters, welcoming
back baseball and preparing for the Stanley Cup playoffs, sports fans have been
left with various retro-programming and riveting social media posts of athletes
doing golf trick shots, hitting merciless backyard home runs off their kids
using Little Tikes gear and claiming to be staying in shape – yeah…aren’t we
all - with questionable workout videos.
It’s cute. Funny at times. And yet so inadequate.
The NFL is oddly continuing to operate largely as if
COVID-19 is, in fact, a hoax or something a miracle will sweep away at any
moment, as some have suggested. The football
news is welcomed but the optic of multi-million dollar free agent contracts
being handed out while millions file for unemployment and worry about complete
economic upheaval is…interesting. It
gets weirder. Commissioner Roger Goodell
recently affirmed that the April 23-25 NFL Draft, a time when the difficult
realities of COVID-19 spread will almost certainly be far worse than today,
will proceed (in some alternate form) as scheduled. Goodell followed up with teams – many of whom had
expressed their displeasure to the league office – by issuing a memo that
warned them to refrain from discussing (read: criticizing) the decision or risk
disciplinary action. I’ll stop there,
lest Goodell extend his tyranny to neighborhood sportswriters.
Needless to say, these are unprecedented times. Many things are missed. Many things will be experienced with far greater
gratitude when this ends - whenever we arrive in that seemingly far off
realm. For the foreseeable future, life
will march on without athletic competition.
That makes me want to direct very vulgar language that my mom would be
ashamed of at this damn virus. What I
wouldn’t give to resume watching Alexander Ovechkin’s assault on the NHL’s goals
scored list. Or to stand and applaud – and probably cry…again – as our World
Series champion Nats took to the diamond.
Or to lament my busted March Madness bracket and await the crowning of the
2020 champs. Or to wonder if Tiger Woods
could make magic again at The Masters.
Or…
I can almost develop a bit of a victim complex. But then I watch the news or follow Twitter
or just reset my brain and sit in quiet reflection like Pooh Bear in his
thoughtful – or thotful, per his sign - spot with a jar full of honey. Oh the thinks you can think when you think
about Seuss…and the real victims and the real tragedy and the enormity of this
shared crisis.
Those more thoughtful thinks go immediately to those
around the world who have lost their lives to this sinister virus and those
fighting it – both the ill and the heroic medical professionals who bravely
stare down this enemy daily, often without adequate equipment for biological
war. After that, my thinks go to those
whose jobs have been lost or whose livelihoods are threatened. Then my thinks consider those in high risk
categories and the anxiety sowed by the consequences of contracting an
invisible threat that could hide anywhere.
Somewhere way down the list of thinks, I eventually
get to sports and lament the absence of the games we love. But it hardly matters at that point, not with
a raw, sobering social perspective. I
just want to turn on the television and see a game again, not because I miss
sports, but because it will mean we have started to heal and life is returning to
something near normal.
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