San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Year in sports had to be weirdest ever
For the first time in his life, Buster Posey considered baseball a secondary matter.
“What are we doing?” he pleaded as the Giants waded through a maze of COVID19 protocols on the second day of their July training camp.
Six days later, Posey was gone. With a wife at home with twin girls they adopted — born prematurely only a week before — he announced he was opting out of the season.
It was a wakeup call, but few alarms had been set. Baseball pressed on with a season rife in positive tests and postponements, and if anyone seemed perfectly sane through it all, it was Posey. Let that be an introduction to this list of 10 Sports Stories That Could Only Have Happened in 2020:
1. How ridiculous did it get? Forced off the field by a coronavirus outbreak in their ranks, the St. Louis Cardinals went 16 days without playing. The Miami Marlins had seven games postponed, and with 17 new players replacing those who had tested positive over that span, manager Don Mattingly said he had no idea what to expect from five of them. He had never seen them play.
2. Pandemic television. With only isolated cases of broadcasters being allowed to work onsite, we watched most of them set up from home, while their analyst partners did the same. Dave Flemming, the Giants’ broadcaster who covers a lot of sports for ESPN, felt he had a pretty good handle on the OregonOregon State football game until a heavy fog blanketed the field. In April, when there were no major sports being played in the U. S., fans turned to broadcasts of the Korea Baseball Organization — generally with a 2 a. m. ( Pacific time) start.
3. Orange Wednesday. On Sept. 9, Bay Area residents awakened to skies disturbingly shrouded in a dark burnt orange. Smoke from countless wildfires created an eerie, unprecedented vista that lasted well past noon. Fires certainly aren’t limited to the Bay
Area in autumn, but 2020 brought hazardous skies throughout the western U. S., including Seattle, where the A’s and Mariners were cleared by Major League Baseball to play a Sept. 14 doubleheader at TMobile Park despite air quality index readings posting up to 290, categorized as very unhealthy. A’s center fielder Ramon Laureano wore a mask during the action, and pitcher Jesús Luzardo said afterward he’d been “gasping for air.”
4. On a Wednesday afternoon early this month, television viewers could indulge themselves in “Court Cam,” “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” live U. S. Senate proceedings — or an NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and a Baltimore Ravens team ravaged by a coronavirus outbreak. Originally scheduled for Thanksgiving, the game was pushed back to Sunday, then Tuesday, and finally became a very awkward midweek affair.
5. They were calling themselves “the Arizona 49ers” after Santa Clara County announced a threeweek ban ( later expanded) on contact sports and a 14day quarantine for those traveling into the area from 150 miles away. Two games scheduled for Levi’s Stadium, against Buffalo and Washington, were moved to State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. The 49ers persevered in their temporary home through Saturday’s game against the Arizona Cardinals, and they remain stranded as we speak, preparing for a Jan. 3 finale against Seattle in the desert.
6. Stanford’s football team also had to scramble in the wake of Santa Clara County’s decision. Forced to abandon a Dec. 5 home game against Washington and relocate to Seattle, the Cardinal spent the week in improvisation mode. After practicing on a high school field, they shifted to a public park in downtown Bellevue, Wash., with a curious public looking on, for a walkthrough session. The Cardinal won their last four games, but the pandemic’s toll was difficult on everyone. They were one of six Pac12 teams, joining USC, Arizona State, UCLA, Washington and Utah, to turn down a bowl game opportunity.
7. The world’s topranked tennis player, Novak Djokovic, was vociferous in his disdain for social distancing, masks and vaccines. To showcase his theories, he staged a June exhibition event in his native Serbia as “an occasion to showcase his immunity,” wrote Sports Illustrated. Fans bunched tightly together in the stands, hugged for any reason, then partied well into the night. Among others, Djokovic and his wife subsequently tested positive.
8. The A’s were a vastly superior team to Houston all season, and they savored that, as the Astros had become a national disgrace over a signstealing scandal. Despite a losing record, the Astros qualified for the expanded playoffs. They knocked the A’s out of the running. And it all happened at Dodger Stadium.
9. On the night the Dodgers defeated Tampa Bay to win the World Series, L. A. third baseman Justin Turner learned during the game that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. He was removed from the lineup, but as the team celebrated on the field, Turner ignored the pleas of common sense inside the clubhouse and exuberantly joined the party, at times not wearing a mask. He drew no punishment from MLB or the Dodgers.
10. On a college football Saturday in November, USC played Arizona State for homecoming in an empty L. A. Coliseum that holds more than 90,000 people at full capacity. Across the country in South Bend, Ind., some 11,000 fans were allowed to watch Notre Dame’s thrilling upset of Clemson — and nearly all of them stormed the field at game’s end, showing not the slightest consideration for social-distancing protocol. The scene resembled a gigantic anthill.