Sports must stop pretending games might resume soon
There seems to be a continuing disconnect between sports and reality. Between leagues hoping to resume their games as soon as possible — perhaps with no fans allowed — and a global pandemic crisis that experts say will get much worse before it begins to ebb.
The Florida Derby horse race ran as scheduled Saturday at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, but with no spectators. It was more than eerie, this ghost race. It was offensive. Broward County and city officials preferred it be canceled or postponed, but there was revenue to be had from television and off-track betting.
The optics are bad, if nothing else. Thoroughbreds racing to the finish line, business as usual, amid a coronavirus/COVID-19 crisis that is killing more and more thousands and threatening millions — the biggest public health crisis since the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic — as underequipped doctors and nurses work valiantly, under siege, in a relentless
emergency.
Even President Donald Trump, who just recently said he thought the country might “open back up” as soon as April 12 and that he envisioned packed churches on Easter Sunday — words that sounded fancifully unlikely even as they left his mouth — has now faced reality and begun hearing what his medical experts are saying.
The response coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Deborah Birx, on NBC’s Today show, estimated 100,000 to 200,000 eventual U.S. deaths, “if we do things almost perfectly,” she said, adding. “We’re very worried about every city in the United States.”
And we’re still talking about resuming games?
The NBA and NHL still
have not conceded the enormous gravity of what we are facing by announcing their seasons will not resume. The NBA is still pondering resuming play with an abbreviated tournament-style playoffs leading to an NBA Finals, all sans spectators. Ridiculous. It’s an affront to reality. Both leagues should respectfully abort their seasons now.
I believe baseball, which stopped in the midst of spring training, and soccer, which had just begun its regular season, both should either not play their 2020 seasons at all — or at best play abbreviated seasons, and no time soon.
Even the mighty NFL and college football should think twice about playing their upcoming seasons, although
I can envision those sports, starting in September, at least still having a chance to go on.
I know, I know. We need our sports. They will help us heal. The return of our beloved teams and games will be our portal back to a sense of normalcy.
But the games can wait. The Olympics had it right last week by not just delaying their scheduled late July start by several weeks but by postponing the Summer Games an entire year, until, 2021.
American sports, yes, even football, should consider doing the same, at least if this crisis continues through the summer as the death toll mounts.
NFL training camps are set to open around the same time the Olympics were to begin. The Olympics knew that would be too soon to start. I believe football will come to the same realization.
This is a national crisis such as most of us have never experienced in our lifetimes.
The optics of sports going on, even without spectators, in the midst of a pandemic or in the immediate aftermath of tens of thousands dying, would be a horrible look.
Leagues would try to justify that they are doing their part to help heal the nation. But should we trust revenueminded league commissioners and TV network executives to make such decisions? Sports played without fans are not sports. They are just a bunch of millionaires playing games in empty arenas and stadiums. Sports are soulless without cheering fans.
If up to 200,000 U.S. deaths is a best-case estimate “if we do most things almost perfectly,” one fears the eventual toll could be even greater, perhaps surpassing the 405,000 U.S. casualties in World War II.
White House advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci estimated potential U.S. coronavirus deaths in the 1.6 million to 2.2. million range if we did not take seriously all of this social distancing and selfquarantining, or if we ended those practices prematurely. The American Civil War killed an estimated 700,000 in the 1860s.
Experts also advise that social distancing could continue for weeks or even months after the pandemic has reached its peak, in order to keep it in check and not allow it to reoccur.
Amid the high anxiety of this new war we fight, we find so many examples of the American spirit.
On Sunday in my neighborhood a girl several houses down the street from us had a birthday, maybe her 12th or so? There would be no party as we all stay at home and avoid crowds. But it didn’t mean her birthday would not be celebrated.
Early in the afternoon a caravan of 10 or 15 cars paraded slowly down our street, all decorated with banners and homemade signs and balloons. Her friends leaned out car windows to the extent their moms would let them. The cars drove around the cul-de-sac and stopped to drop off presents on a sidewalk in front of her home, her friends cheering and singing “Happy Birthday.” Then the caravan slowly drove away.
This is America in the spring of 2020.
The country will heal in time. We will fight this first, and then mourn our great national loss, and then begin to heal.
Sports will be a huge part of that, but sports can wait.
It is strange, what this life-changing pandemic has done to the great pastime so many of us love so much.
Sports have never seemed more important, in their absence, as we miss them, as we miss that great symbol of normalcy and routine.
But sports also have never seemed less important as we send our doctors and nurses to fight this monumental war.