Now that we’ve passed five weekends of altered lives for the fortunate, job losses for the less fortunate and much worse for the stricken, the questions are growing louder.
When will we get through this?
Will we get through this?
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The answer is, of course, yes. The vast majority will survive this and welcome the day when our doors open and our hearts float with the joy of kinship and community. We’ll walk into restaurants and be offered a burger or a beer, or both. We’ll meet new people, in person. Most of us no longer will wonder about the next meal.
When that day comes, our personal stress levels will recede and our emotions will stabilize.
And sports will be there, its availability being perhaps the most sweeping indication of normalcy, allowing millions to again enjoy a pure form of live entertainment.
Every movie that comes and goes is exactly the same on its release date as its fourth week in the theater. Every play or concert repeats the previous performance, generally with minimal if any variation. The same applies to circuses, parades, comedy shows, dance exhibitions, poetry readings and even fireworks displays. They’re all scripted, some completely.
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Sports are the great exception. They are unique, with each game, each team and each individual having a specific identity. Or, as we now say, brand. They grant us that great guttural release that so lifts us. Isn’t that the reason why, along with our respective franchise loyalties and disdains, we are so attracted to them?
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An annual sporting event, the Super Bowl, is the most widely watched TV show in the country, accounting for all but one of the 25 highest-rated shows ever.
We were barely five weeks removed from the most recent Super Bowl (LIV, No. 11 on the all-time list) when the coronavirus intruded with enough force to shut down physical competition around the globe. Basketball courts went silent and lonely, followed by hockey rinks, soccer pitches, baseball fields, boxing rings, tennis courts and any other canvas of confrontation.
The virus has since wreaked havoc on national economies, shoving folks into pay cuts and furloughs and, in America, record unemployment. This disease is mainstream, with toxic results.
Which is why phone calls and text messages keep coming from friends and acquaintances near and far. Some of the increased outreach frequency can be traced to boredom, no doubt, but some of it stems from the need to hear or see (FaceTime) those we can’t touch. Is it an exaggeration to suggest some of us are closer now that we’re further apart?
The conversations are heavy on compassion, conveying the hope and helplessness waging war in our hearts. We miss our routines. We miss what we don’t have, what we can’t have, whether it’s as small as our occasional splurge or as necessary as a meal.
We crave the sports we love, and a closeness to those operating within that sphere. Kids chase autographs and wish for jerseys, as do many adults. Go to a Cowboys game in Dallas or a Yankees game in the Bronx or a Lakers game in Los Angeles and take note of the rolling crowds heavily dotted with team apparel. Only through sports will up to 100,000 folks leave home, as scheduled, headed for the same destination -- hundreds of times each year across the land.
We yearn for the togetherness we find in sports. And we really miss the emotional outlet we get from sports, which was for me was best illustrated in 2002.
That’s when the Lakers defeated the Kings in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals at old Arco Arena. In the final seconds of overtime, the outcome no longer in doubt, I saw a grown man wearing a Kings T-shirt sprint onto the concourse and into the parking lot, sobbing and screaming with every stride. The hated Lakers had, once more, laid heartbreak on greater Sacramento and there was no questioning his wounds.
It is, likewise, evident how much sports mean to our society.
And they will be meaningful again, even as millions process unemployment applications or pull into blocks-long lines seeking a bag from a food bank or praying for an ailing loved one or grieving for those who have perished.
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This virus is stripping away the insulation provided by the comforts of routine. It has destroyed our schedules, tossing us into self-protection measures and, in some cases, the unfamiliar world of teaching school. We are left emotionally and mentally exhausted, aching for an outlet beyond "Tiger King" or "Ozark."
We want the 35-foot 3-pointer. The perfect swing launching a 450-foot rocket into the bleachers. The pirouetting wide receiver escaping a secondary. The goal from 70 feet. The textbook left hook. The jubilant faces of the victors.
We want all of that, and more. We will have them again, though no one knows when. Once we do, we will owe it to ourselves to rejoice like never before.