The games we don’t play these days

It seems this column will be one that isn’t much about sports. Since, you know…. almost no sports are taking place. But, we’ll try to make the best of it.

• The 2020 Johnny Miles Running Event is on hold. A Pictou County staple every Father’s Day weekend – this would be its 45th year – race director Terry Curley told The News that if things vastly improve by early May, they could still pull it off.

But he’s doubtful, saying it would take “a small miracle” to avoid a halt to the event, which would be a first in its history.

• The Canadian Olympic Committee was on point to withdraw from the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Japan, and request a one-year postponement. The International Olympic Committee IOC) at first seemed unwilling to give up on the Games being staged this summer, and but on March 24 decided to hold the Games in 2021. Smart move, and the only one that could be made.

• A piece of good news for some of us: the NFL draft is still happening late next month, but instead of a large, half-drunken crowd on site to boo the NFL commissioner, it will be done by telephone conference calls or video conference calls or something of that nature. We don’t even care how they do it, we’re just happy that they’re doing it.

Football fans love the college draft, where hope springs eternal for fans of the downtrodden teams (hello, Cleveland!) and fans of perennially successful teams can watch as their teams tweak their roster talent, or make a deal to trade up higher in the draft.

• It’s highly unlikely we’ll see the NHL playoffs in 2020, but if it were to happen, they’d have to get it started within the first week of May (at the latest), and they’d have to wrap it up in five weeks, maximum. Shorten each series from best-of-seven to best-of-five (except maybe the Stanley Cup final), and compact it as much of it as possible.

• A bunch of Northern Selects Midget AAA female hockey players copped major awards earlier this week, a breakdown of which can be found elsewhere in these pages.

That wasn’t a big surprise, because the girls in Pictou County can play the game.

• I’d be curious to know how much the Atlantic Lottery Corp. is losing due to there being no sports, and therefore no Pro-Line betting. • Ummmm, that’s about all I can think of right now. Other Random Thoughts:

• I try not to complain (although not very hard), but some people can really get on my nerves.

Mother called me on Sunday morning from over Colchester County way, worried after seeing on Facebook – there are a lot of basement journalists on Facebook – that Pictou County had a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis, and that the Highland Square Mall was closed.

After confirming that, to anyone’s knowledge, no diagnosis had been made in Pictou County, I called Mother from the mall just after the clock struck 12, told her I was walking the halls, just as the stores were opening up.

I also told her to go back on Facebook (I rarely do the Facebook thing myself) and tell people to stop spreading rumours on social media.

• A couple of times last week, I’d be standing in the checkout line and say, “I haven’t been feeling well since I got back from my trip to Italy”, and then I’d cough. People didn’t think it was funny as much as I did, so had to stop doing it. Reluctantly.

• It’s hard to feel one speck of sympathy for those people who’ve found themselves stranded on cruise ships, unable to get back home. It’s not as if they didn’t know what was happening around the world when they boarded the ships.

And if they didn’t understand the situation, we don’t want them here, anyway: their lack of comprehension is a detriment to society.

But yeah, they just needed that vacation, and never mind everybody else because they don’t matter.