Snapshots of sports in COVID-19
The Wrigley rooftops. The pro athlete. The college athlete. The beer vendor. The spouse.
When the NBA suspended its season March 11, it created a ripple effect that quickly shut down the rest of the sports world, perhaps the first clear hint in the U.S. that the coronavirus was about to upend nearly every way of life. America never fully grasped control of the pandemic, and six months later it remains unchecked in many parts of the country. Yet sports are nearly back in full swing, offering at once a sense of comfort and familiarity while representing a clear picture of how life has been altered as we knew it.
The stands are empty, athletes are separated from their families in bubbles or traveling around the country in isolation, no beer vendors are needed and the NFL season began without tailgating and some college conferences opened their seasons while most others postponed theirs with safety in mind.
The pro athlete
The quiet is the most jarring. Standing on the mound at Guaranteed Rate Field, under the lights for first pitch at 7:05 p.m. on one of those nights when the weather is most pleasant to watch a baseball game, it perhaps is the biggest adjustment for a player to take the field and get the adrenaline going while the 40,000 seats surrounding home are empty.
“There’s nobody there,” White Sox pitcher Gio Gonzalez said. “Nobody there. Everything is dead silent. All you hear is the players from the other side, you hear the crack of the bat, you hear — it’s almost to the point where you can hear bubble gum pop.
“You have to have fans in this game. Without them it feels like you’re just playing in your backyard with your buddies. But in some pretty badass stadiums.”
This baseball season like no other is winding down into its final weeks, but COVID-19 has threatened to end it prematurely numerous times. Outbreaks among multiple teams at the start of the season forced the schedule to be rewritten, and Major League Baseball even invented some rules — seven-inning doubleheaders — on the fly in order to complete an abbreviated 60-game regular season as smoothly as possible without putting players inside a bubble. It’s an ambitious goal the NFL also it attempting to accomplish.
It has left Gonzalez with the feeling of figuring it all out as he goes along. The 13-year veteran already is adjusting to a new team and a new city while trying to isolate himself as much as possible. On the road that has meant a lot of time in his hotel room watching TV — he’s binge-watching “Community,” and he and his brother got into “Ted Lasso” recently — and staying in almost constant contact with his family. His wife and their two children, ages 3 and 4, are home in South Florida.
“We go back home and we try to quarantine as much as we can, but it’s not like we can tell the world, ‘Hey, you guys need to stop,’ ” Gonzalez said.
“My family has stayed home, and our kids are about to enroll in school, so for me it was like, well, I don’t want to get sick and I don’t want to pass that to my kids. So as much as I can stay home, I’m going to want to do that. And I definitely don’t want to pass it to my team because they’re all depending on me to play it safe and be reliable.”