SPORTS HIATUS
COVID-19 pandemic deals the sporting world a major offside penalty
I miss, `How are the Leafs doing? How are the Raptors doing?' It used to be TSN, TSN, TSN. Now we're watching a news conference in Saskatchewan every afternoon at 2:30 p.m.
As 2020 comes to a close,
The Leader-post is looking back on some of the stories that had the most impact on us this past year. Today: The year we almost lost sports.
COVID-19 touched all the bases while ravaging the world of sports in 2020.
Consider the unprecedented predicaments faced by proprietors such as Gary Baba, owner/ general manager of Wendel Clark's Classic Grill and Bar in Saskatoon.
“In the restaurant business, everything was going well until March,” the Moose Jaw-born Baba recalls. Then COVID hit.
“The NBA shut down. The NHL shut down. Then the (provincial authorities) shut us all down for two months.
Then they open you back up in June and you're a sports bar, being a sports guy … what do you put on the TVS? We were totally confused on what to show.
You can watch Toronto Blue Jays replays and CFL replays and all that, but you know who won. The Blue Jays were undefeated for a good couple of months — until they had to start the season.”
The 2019-20 NHL and NBA seasons were suspended after play on March 11 — the same day on which the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic.
That evening, it was announced that Rudy Gobert of the NBA'S Utah Jazz had tested positive for COVID-19.
Locally, hockey leagues such as the WHL and SJHL soon paused their seasons, which would eventually be declared over without champions being declared.
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe declared a state of emergency on March 18, at which point public gatherings larger than 50 people were prohibited.
Permissible capacities at restaurants, bars and event venues were greatly reduced. Gyms and fitness centres were ordered to close until further notice.
During the short period in which sports bars remained open to dine-in customers before a spring shutdown, there was the question of what to show on the numerous large screens.
At one point, Regina's 4Seasons Sports Palace was airing Judge Judy, among other non-athletic programming.
“We were watching some reality TV and local newscasts,” 4Seasons owner George Yannitsos recalled in mid-april, when the Stanley Cup playoffs would ordinarily have been in the early stages.
“I miss, `How are the Leafs doing?' `How are the Raptors doing?' It used to be TSN, TSN, TSN. Now we're watching a news conference in Saskatchewan every afternoon at 2:30 p.m. I kind of set my watch by it.”
The daily COVID watch gradually calmed down. Saskatchewan's economy was systematically reopened in the spring.
For sports fans, an end to the nothingness was finally in sight.
The Stanley Cup playoffs, for example, began Aug. 1 — with games being played in hermetically sealed bubbles, located in Edmonton and Toronto. Bigleague hockey continued until Sept. 28, when the Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup.
The NBA season, meanwhile, ran from Aug. 17 to Oct. 11, the capper being a championship-clinching victory by Lebron James and the Los Angeles Lakers. Tinseltown celebrated another title on Oct. 27, when the Los Angeles Dodgers clinched the World Series. Major League Baseball's regular season had been condensed to 60 games per team, down from 162, and did not begin until July 23.
By that point, sports-bar owners had gone from famine to feast, given the sudden array of viewing options — even before the NFL season began on schedule, albeit with subsequent Covid-related adjustments.
“We couldn't show everything,” Baba says. “That was the problem, too.”
“People are going, `Can I watch this baseball game?' I'd say, ` Well, we've got three hockey games on. We've got two basketball games on. There's only so many receivers working. You've got to talk to this table over here and this table over here to make sure you can watch this game.' ”
Notably absent from the summertime sporting schedule: Saskatchewan Roughriders football.
CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie and the nine team governors had hoped to hold a shortened regular season in a Winnipeg-based bubble. Those plans were ash-canned when the federal government rejected the league's plea for $30 million in funding. The clubs opted against absorbing all the costs and the 2020 season was cancelled.
A Grey Cup game was not played for the first time since 1919. This year's CFL final was to have been played at Mosaic Stadium, but the next Regina-based Grey Cup game was postponed until 2022.
The league has released a schedule for 2021, albeit without a firm commitment to play. The slate, as it stands, calls for the Roughriders to begin their regular season June 12 in Edmonton.
If there is adherence to that timetable, the Green and White will have gone 573 days — 1.78 years! — between meaningful games, the most recent of which was a 20-13 loss to the visiting Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the West Division final on Nov. 17, 2019.
That game ended with a thud, literally, when Roughriders quarterback Cody Fajardo looked toward the end zone and spotted teammate Kyran Moore. Fajardo aimed for the speedy slotback, only to see the football hit the crossbar.
Dead ball. Game over. Season over.
Season scrapped.
Referencing a year without football, Fajardo had this to say in a recent exchange with fellow Roughriders quarterback Isaac Harker on their Rouge Report podcast: “It has really been hard for me, especially with the way our season ended. For me, I'm living with this ghost of hitting the goalpost. My whole thing was I wanted to get back to football to get over it and now I have to sit on it for a whole year. It has been really hard for me and has really motivated me in this extended off-season to work as hard as I can.”
The WHL, idle since March, is hoping to resume regular-season play Jan. 8. COVID ultimately calls the shots, however, so nothing is certain.
However, optimism has been derived from the development of vaccines, which foster the hope that 2021 will be more reflective of normalcy than the current year — during which minor sports have also felt the effects of COVID-19.
Along with the vaccine, there is a silver lining in the form of perspective. Our appreciation for sports — even, say, the Carolina Hurricanes vs. Florida Panthers on a Monday night — will be heightened as a result of acute sports deprivation. First things first, though. Several months of winter remain. COVID numbers are still of concern as full-scale inoculations are anticipated in 2021.
But there is the enduring hope that perhaps, once spring arrives, the only people flattening curves will be ineffective relief pitchers.