Stopping play may be the right call, but the reality is harsh
After the towers fell in Manhattan on one of the worst days of our lives, we were told to fight our fears. Live our lives. Because if we didn’t, if we holed up in our homes instead, the terrorists would win. We embraced the fighting sentiment because it was right, and because, for better or worse, it’s our nature.
Lately we find ourselves confronted by a different kind of global crisis. Only this time we’re being told to alter our lifestyles. Suspend activities. Stay home. Quit, even.
The images and stories from 9/11 will haunt me the rest of my days, but what we were asked to do in response to that crisis was relatively easy, because it was natural.
This time, it’s harder. Every other email or tweet or alert brings news of a postponement or cancellation of some event because of COVID-19. Even as you’re reading this, somebody somewhere is thinking about following suit. The rest of us are forced to wait to see who or what’s next.
As shocking as it was to learn that the NBA had suspended play, it could be worse. As Mark Cuban noted, once he’d lifted his jaw off the floor, they’ve got all summer to make up these games. At least the NBA and NHL have covered the better parts of their seasons.
On Thursday, MLB cancelled the rest of spring training and delayed the season’s start by two weeks. If it goes any longer than that, it’ll be hard to make up those games. Playing at temperature-controlled Globe Life Field in November is one thing; baseball in Boston at Thanksgiving, quite another.
Even so, baseball has survived shortened seasons. A disastrous strike led to a 144-game season in 1995. Prospects of a similar schedule reduction in response to COVID-19 seem possible, if not likely.
Whatever happens, pro sports will resume eventually. The world may be duller in the meantime. Fans will have to figure out what to do with all their time spent on fantasy teams. Maybe you’ll even get a little work done.
Every time the phone lights up now, I peek at it with a little trepidation to see if we’re next. Even as I was writing this, an email arrived from Millsaps College, another Southern Athletic Association member, as well as the Jackson, Miss. school where Jake played football and golf: After this weekend’s baseball and softball games, all athletic events are suspended until at least April 3.
Which might as well be forever for those seniors.
Look, I get it: This is a pandemic we’re talking about. Even if these athletes aren’t at grave risk, they could spread the disease to someone who is. Ford’s 82-year-old grandfather has COPD. I’d like to keep him around, which might come as a surprise to one of us.
If it takes wiping these games and events off the map and staying home to make sure COVID-19 comes under control, so be it. But fighting this way makes it no less difficult to stomach. Simply not how we’re built. In fact, our manner of rising to challenges in general explained the folly of Jimmy Carter’s boycott of the 1980 Olympics after the Soviets’ invasion of Afghanistan. Carter simply picked the wrong method of retaliation. Julian Roosevelt, a former gold medallist who represented the U.S. on the International Olympic Committee, voiced his objections appropriately.
“I’m as patriotic as the next guy,” he said, “but the patriotic thing to do is for us to send a team over there and whip their (expletive).”