In pandemic, sports more than a game
Listen.
It is what we hear that is so striking. No cracking bats, no whooshing pitches, no chatter in the infield.
And, perhaps most importantly, no cheers from the stands.
Like most games in America, baseball has been expunged from our sporting calendar.
Like budding flowers and chirping birds, baseball is a dramatic harbinger of spring, and April did not seem like April this year, not without the national pastime.
The novel coronavirus also aborted the NBA season, and as baseball and basketball consider hitting the fields and the courts, sports fans are afraid the pandemic will claim another victim — pro football. NFL officials are proceeding as if the 2020 season, set to launch in early September, will go ahead as scheduled, but many fans are doubtful. “The virus will decide for us,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institutes for Health, said in a recent interview with NBC Sports. Most teams opened their complexes recently, but only to nonfootball staffers, and the starting dates for training camp are still in abeyance. League executives and players have been Zooming for weeks, trying to iron out the logistics of forging ahead with a season in peril.
The league, according to news reports, is considering modifying equipment to enhance the protection in an already dangerous sport, including “high-tech” helmets with thicker protective visors. “There are no bad ideas,” J. C. Tretter — the center for the Cleveland Browns, who is president of the NFL Players Association — told reporters in a recent conference call. “You have to kind of think outside the box.”
The primary concern is safety, both for the players and the fans. One of the options is to hold the games in empty stadiums. That takes care of the fans, but what of the players? Football is a contact sport, and when a contact sport collides with a contact virus, the possibilities are frightening. Players must be tested every day, and if a player is infected, he must be quarantined for two weeks, Fauci said. It would be “malpractice,” he said, to send him back onto the field. And if more players are infected? Shut the team down, for at least two weeks, he said.
If one team is shut down, how will that impact the other teams? Will the season have to be truncated — or even canceled — as a result? These are complex questions the league, in concert with medical experts, must address.
“You can’t expect just to throw football back in and think that the virus is going to kneel down to almighty football,” Tretter said.
Von Miller, the star linebacker for the Denver Broncos, knows. The 31-year-old tested positive in mid-April, going public to show that “anyone” could be afflicted with the virus. He tested negative two weeks later.
“It’s my job to keep my body in tiptop shape,” Miller told ESPN. “If I can get this, anybody can.” Sports are more than entertainment, more than distractions in a time when distractions are crucial to our emotional well-being. They are part of our lives, our fabric. Some of the most important historical figures in this country have been athletes, including Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Megan Rapinoe, Jackie Robinson, Billie Jean King, Wilma Rudolph and Muhammad Ali. We would be diminished without them.
Athletes are important role models. The same goes for the leagues and the teams they represent. The more conscientious they are about safety concerns, the more fans — and the rest of society — will model that behavior.
In community after community, NFL owners, coaches and players have proved to be good role models. They have donated more than $35 million to coronavirus relief efforts, according to the NFL. Among the organizations receiving funds are the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and the CDC Foundation. This noble cause should continue, especially if the season proceeds as scheduled.
The 2020 NFL season, should it play out, will be a golden opportunity for both relief and educational efforts. If the league proceeds with the commitment and empathy it has shown so far, it will be a twofer for the fans. They will get their games and the rich sense of community they represent. things that happen. We adapt — it’s the history of mankind.