COVID-19 has early lead, but don’t count sports out
This was 10 days after American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the Twin Towers and changed everything in our world. Shea Stadium was all steel girders and resolve, manicured grass and raw emotion.
There would be a major sporting event in New York for the first time since the events of 9/11 left nearly 3,000 of us dead. Everything led us to that Friday night. The bagpipes, 41,235 fans waving American flags and chanting “USA!” Liza Minnelli bringing down the house with “New York, New York.”
There was grief and defiance and heartbreak and ultimately unrestrained joy when Mike Piazza leaned into a Steve Karsay fastball and crushed it 420 feet over the left-centerfield fence for a 3-2 Mets victory. The cheers shook New York. The cheers shook America. They say it’s only a game. They say sports provides a few hours of relief from reality. But on that Friday night, man, it was more than a game. It was a moment that allowed us to rise as one.
Now, nearly two decades later, what do we do? With 13,000 of us dead from COVID-19 in New York City alone, what do we do when sports return?
We need the games. We need LeBron and the NBA. We need Stanley Cup overtimes. We need sweet summer nights of baseball. You won’t have to ask twice if we’ll be ready for some football.
Television will be our entrée. With empty stands at first, broadcasts will need to be innovative and athletes will need to be self-motivated. Still we will embrace their return with the excitement of our youth. Yet if the virus lingers for months and we cannot get to Fenway, Yankee Stadium, or even our kids’ games, we will grow restless.
The Masters, Boston Marathon and Kentucky Derby have been postponed until later dates on the calendar. It is the 2021 Olympics now. If students aren’t in class, will there even be autumn collegiate sports? With many colleges already suffering a budget crisis, COVID-19 figures to hasten the elimination of some sports.
As they open the gates to our events to limited crowds, will six feet of separation cause bottlenecks several blocks long? Will there be temperature checks as well as metal detectors? Hand sanitizer figures to be everywhere. Yet won’t food and drink and the exchange of money be far too dangerous? Will we sit in every other seat and every other row? Will we be required to wear masks?
One poll showed 72 percent of us would not attend a sporting event without a successful coronavirus vaccine. That could take 12-18 months. What will be the damage to the entire industry? The XFL already folded. There have been furloughs. As with 9/11 and terrorism, it will take a few years for attendance to reach previous peaks.
The final score from coronavirus? I have no idea.
I do know I’ve been fortunate to cover everything from Super Bowls and Olympics to high school and Little League. Datelines have read ATHENS, Greece, and ATHENS, Georgia, and everywhere in between. Survived two open-heart surgeries and pined only for another dateline.
Yet unlike 9/11, there figures to be no rush of emotion at one place. Sports and our way of life will rise from the ground more slowly and hopefully, as it flowers again, we will fully appreciate those we have lost in the pandemic and embrace what we’ve regained.
In the meantime, I do have a partial score. COVID-19.
Sports coming to bat.