Craving a sports ‘jolt’ to escape virus mayhem

This week, our fearless editors have asked us to write about sports in the time of the coronavirus.

“How are you supposed to write about sports in the time of the coronavirus, when there are no sports in the time of the coronavirus?” my husband, Ian, asked. My point exactly. Typically, spring is a sports fiesta: We’ve got March Madness, World Cup, basketball and ice hockey playoffs, the start of baseball, all ramping up to the mad dash of summer — with its Olympics, tennis tournaments, golf championships, and a very chic, if somewhat grueling, bike ride through France ... in upsetting outfits.

This year: nada.

If you have children in these parts, your spring often looks like the following: dinner in the car, sweaty socks everywhere, lacrosse outfits (minus one elbow patch), baseball gear, mouth guards in every conceivable shape and size — made bespoke, of course, by boiling plastic before shoving a mold in some little person’s face — who has just announced they “hate” lacrosse (this, right after you purchased $500 worth of gear that you have no idea how to put on).

“You have lacrosse issues,” my friend told me.

And then there’s ice hockey. Because nothing says July like a trip to the ice rink with 200 pounds of padded gear for a 5-yearold. If you think I have lacrosse issues, don’t even get me started on ice hockey. So, sports this year? Nada de nada. But somehow, we are still blessed with those dirty socks everywhere.

It’s all very eerie. Almost June, and we still have ski gear in the car, which we never use, so our car is like a time capsule from circa March 11, 2020, 5 p.m. EST. I’m not generally into sports, but the whole thing has me freaked out, and I’ve been trying to figure out why.

In an April 4 article in The New Yorker, “Watching ESPN during the coronavirus lockdown,” Louisa Thomas breaks it down:

“A few years ago, ESPN made a bet that viewers want the NFL, and all sports, to be an escape from politics. The past few weeks have tested that idea. There is no way around it: Everything is connected; we are all conduits for money, culture, politics, viruses. There is not really a sports ‘angle’ to COVID-19, because there is no angle into anything that is all-encompassing. There is no escape into sports, because there are no sports. But, then, sports were never an alternative to the real world. They were always a reflection of it.”

So if sports are a reflection of the world we live in, why are we not playing some twisted version of “The Hunger Games” where human survival is at the whim of some universal force?

Oh, wait — we are!

So what are we left with? Tom Brady splitting his pants while playing golf. That sure makes everyone feel better.

As debates rage hot on the 2020 Olympics and the NFL’s decision to expand the playoffs, this spring has brought forth two basic responses to the Great Sports Vacuum of the 2020 Pandemic: You can watch sports stars play video games and do weird things while playing golf; OR you can watch replays of sporting events that have already happened — after which, you can watch everyone argue about it.

I have never been a sports person, but my dad was the kind of guy who came home, made five peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and watched four hours of the Giants without blinking. He had the kind of personal relationship with individual players that made things colorful whenever a ref called a foul on any one of them. The whole thing freaked me out, until one day, when I found myself trying to describe to him what happened to me when I got depressed. “It's like my mind is stuck in loops that I can’t, like, ‘jolt’ myself out of,” I explained.

My father said he could relate, and then proceeded to offer me his solution: sports. The only thing that “jolted” him out of his mental loops and perseverated thinking was sports. “Because what happens in sports happens in real time, you can’t predict it,” he explained, “and it ‘jolts’ you into the present moment like nothing else can.”

And suddenly, I got it.

We don’t have that gift right now. There are no spontaneous sports moments to “jolt” us out of the horror in which we find ourselves. That horror is jolt enough.

But here’s the thing: Years after my father died, with kids of my own (and an entirely new set of mental loops to “jolt” myself out of), I find myself looking for the Giants from time to time. I sit there, with a pile of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the fond memory of a guy I loved, and I look for that jolt.

My eldest son has coordination issues that have always made playing sports hard. Couple that with the sucker punch of his dyslexia, and Louie was a true mess on the soccer field. Every other kid would shout hysterically while Louie repeatedly took to running toward the opposite side of the field, completely confused as to which goal was his. But there was one time I will never forget, as I stood with the other mothers on the sidelines, praying to the soccer deity that Louie wouldn’t score a goal for the opposing team. Louie ran up to me — a sweaty mess with both shoes untied and glasses aslant — and shouted, “I have no idea what’s going on here, mom — but I love it!” And suddenly, I got it.

I know we all want to win, that we all need that jolt — and that having sports taken away from us, on top of everything else these days, is hard.

But whenever you feel the pain, I encourage you to stop and consider what’s truly behind any game that you just can’t keep from watching, even for a second. It’s all about that gift of suddenly — unexpectedly — feeling completely present and alive.

Please remember that, when it all comes back.

CLAIRE TISNE HAFT The Mother Lode