There really was no other choice

Leagues had to shut down in this climate of fear, even if doing so might make people even more convinced there’s real reason to be afraid

As the sports world rides the panic about coronavirus into what looks like a full shutdown, it’s impossible not to think back to the days after 9/11.

Then, as today, most sports went dark for a while with no time frame for a return. Largely because it was the right thing to do. Also because nobody really wanted to be watching games at that moment.

The beauty of sports is that they are a diversion. You go grind away at work every day and then waiting for you when you get home is something you can feel passionately about that ultimately doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. No different, really, from “The Bachelor” or gardening or dance lessons. Everyone has their thing. For many, that’s the Maple Leafs or the Raptors or the TigerCats or some other team.

Fans care, for sure. Sometimes to a point that from a distance seems a little excessive. But, when real life injects itself in a scary way that can’t be ignored, these icing-onthe-cake-of-life activities are pushed to the back burner. So, when the towers fell, we didn’t care who was supposed to be playing that night and we didn’t debate whether games should be halted. Of course they should. We were frightened and our usual amusements didn’t interest us.

This is where the two otherwise similar stories diverge.

Back in the autumn of 2001, the games remained in mothballs until we started to feel like playing and watching again. We were figuring out when we wanted to go back into the ballparks and arenas to escape from what was happening outside in the real world.

Today, there is again panic and fear. Except this time it’s not of what’s happening outside the arena but inside. Back then, the real world was the danger. Now we’re told the danger is in the game. Or at least, in gathering for the game.

With that being the case, how could teams and leagues not shut down?

We should, of course, be striving to find a balance between full-on panic and maintaining some sense of reason. This isn’t the Bubonic Plague. The flu kills exponentially more people and we seem blissfully unconcerned about that. Other diseases are far more prevalent and vastly worse.

Not everyone will get this. Further, the experts say the percentage of people — especially those under 60 — who will die after catching the virus is exceedingly low. Most will have light or moderate symptoms. Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, for example. So, if you have an arena full of people, you aren’t exactly brewing a death stew.

Still, some could get it. Maybe many. Some who pick it up could pass it to someone outside the arena. Some cases could turn out badly. Care, therefore, must be taken for moral reasons. Pushing forward with a game at the risk of fans’ lives seems questionable at best.

Care must also be taken for legal reasons. If games go on and people attending acquire the virus and could tie it to that event, massive lawsuits would be flying in every direction. Leagues would be sued within an inch of their lives.

Then there’s a third consideration.

There’s no evidence you’re more likely to catch the virus at a sports event than at any other gathering in society. You could theoretically get it at your workplace or your church or the grocery store or a restaurant or anywhere else you’d run into people. Which is when we turn back to that idea of sports being diversions.

We don’t want anyone getting sick, period. We don’t want anyone dying. But somehow that result seems much more senseless when an activity designed for fun and entertainment could be the cause.

It’s possible the move by all these leagues and events to cancel is unnecessary. This might ultimately be an overreaction. A simple case of one league pulling the plug and all others feeling they had to do the same.

Some leagues could have decided instead to swim against the cultural current in an attempt to show widespread fear is unnecessary. Trouble is, for many folks that horse bolted the barn a long time ago. For them, not cancelling would be shown as callous disregard rather than leadership. And if even one person got seriously ill from a disease acquired at a game ...

As long as that’s the case, stepping away from fun and games for a little while makes sense. There really isn’t another reasonable option.

All the while understanding that instead of helping calm the situation and reassure people, a move this bold could have the unfortunate-but-opposite effect of reinforcing some folks’ beliefs that, if even sports are gathering their supplies and heading for the safe room, it really is time to panic.