San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
2020 HAS SLAMMED US
A FEW MOMENTS LIFTED FANS FROM DARK TIMES
The first punch, a haymaker to our collective jaw, came when COVID-19 pulled the plug on the NCAA Tournament and sidelined the stirring national title dreams of the 30-2 Aztecs basketball team.
Hearts sank as circumstances spun wildly out of control at the most inopportune time, even though the team painfully understood. How many seasons like that come along in a lifetime, if ever?
Then we braced for more with the Padres, amid crickets at Petco Park on a fanless opening day. High school sports found themselves flapping in uncertain and troubling winds. The West Coast Conference, which includes USD, benched fall competition. Ditto for Division II Cal State San Marcus and the CCAA. The pandemic dominoes tumbled, seemingly by the day.
We argued over masks and mandates. We turned our backs on frontline health care workers too often, revealing infuriating selfishness. Then a quartet with Padres connections — Dave Roberts, Bud Black, Trevor Hoffman and Manny Machado — quietly fueled food donations directly to hospital hallways, reminding us that glimmers of loving hope remained.
For each moment of promise, we found ourselves tested time and again.
At first it was another country’s problem far, far away. Quickly, it became our problem — everyone’s
problem — as lives and livelihoods were battered. The suffering, despite early shrugs, soon swallowed up all of 2020 and beyond. We learned something else along the way, as well. Sports mattered, more than we wanted to comfortably admit.
The Padres, 60-game wonders, Slam Diego, wadded up 14 years of playoff frustration. A city cheered, even though it happened from couches instead of box seats. San Diego chewed nails to nubs as the stakes rose and exhilarating possibilities gained shape. Wins and losses offered soothing distraction from worlds bruised by virus fears, job loss and bitter infighting.
Though our days were filled with handwringing, our nights became joyful appointment television as Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado and Jake Cronenworth wowed.
It dragged on so long, that Aztecs basketball returned under those same stubborn storm clouds. There was more to bring us to the edge of our seats, even with the loss of singular guard Malachi Flynn and essential cogs Yanni Wetzell and KJ Feagin. Matt Mitchell spin moves, Jordan Schakel jump shots, Nathan Mensah patrolling the paint, a fresh tonic as winter approached.
Suddenly, the Aztecs’ promise of spring felt more delayed than entirely derailed.
We didn’t just want sports. This time, an unprecedented time, our most unsettling time, we needed sports. We treasured something optimistic to puncture dour days.
With so much negativity swirling, Tatis, Wil Myers, Machado and Erik Hosmer hit grand slams on four consecutive days in August to make baseball history. Before dropped jaws could recover, Cronenworth added a fifth in six days. Intoxicating.
The Aztecs started a new season by beating Pac-12 favorite UCLA, though short-handed, by double digits. They hit the road and did the same to projected Pac-12 runner-up Arizona State, a Top 25 team in a place San Diego State last won at in 1978. In between, the Aztecs roared back — down 16 with 16 minutes to play — to stop talented and dangerous Pepperdine and flash their mettle.
As we gained a full accounting of coach Brian Dutcher’s stewardship on the Mesa, confidence grew for this season and beyond.
The fabric of San Diego’s stars reinforced our special riches, even among dark days. Bill Walton, a serial philanthropist, seemingly milked 25-hour days to take on more for health care workers. Jimmie Johnson, one of the best to ever climb into a race car, made pride swell in El Cajon as the sport celebrated his singular career in his final fulltime season with NASCAR.
A place so often brushed aside as Mayberry-by-thesea began to choose action beyond words. Shovels dug into the ground for a new football stadium at San Diego State. Plans firmed for a state-of-the-art arena to replace a half-century-old relic.
Hundreds of jobs, if not into the thousands, were saved at Del Mar racetrack and aboard San Diego’s sportfishing fleet. The positive economic ripple underscored the gritty resilience. The NBA, NFL, MLB and more leveraged platforms to teach us that racial equality is a right, not an uncomfortable inconvenience for those who never could fathom life in other shoes.
Sports, again, offered San Diego something to follow and cherish as we charge into a new year written in pencil rather than pen. Here come the Aztecs … and vaccines. Here come the Padres … and before next season is over, the prospect of normalcy.
The pandemic showed that patience indeed could be rewarded, even in our toughest times, in our living rooms at least. As we prioritized our lives, we kept the TV remote close. As so many bickered, San Diego’s teams provided a reason for us to lock virtual arms, slap virtual high-fives and cluster behind common cause.
Now, we’re thinking about the baseball season to come, no matter what shape it takes. San Diego saw it was possible to chart a path to the postseason, virus and NL West opponents be damned. The cycle, glum and gloomy for so long, providing reinvigorating light at the end of a long, draining tunnel.
Just sports, right? Not in 2020. Not by a long shot.