When will you be comfortable going to a game again?
This is just not real. It’s a different world we now live in, one we never could have dreamed about. It’s a life we might have thought would be lived decades or centuries after we’ve long shuffled off this mortal coil.
Instead, it’s our life. We are living it. We may think we can go to sleep and wake up the next morning and everything will be back to normal. It won’t, though, at least not now. We’ll still wake up and hear that dreaded word over and over all day.
Coronavirus. You would think it’s got four letters in it.
For us sports fans, it’s a double hell we’re now living. We’re all afraid, and if you’re not you better be, of getting this damn virus. And then, the thing we usually have in our back pocket to let us escape from our daily doldrums of life is not even there.
Sports is on hold. The pause button has been pushed. We can only watch old games on television, search for other old games on YouTube and wait.
Impatiently. We can only wait.
There are no games, no lineups, no trades, no close plays, no highlight shows. The routine of getting home from work and sitting down to unwind and watch a ballgame has been cruelly interrupted. We’re creatures of habit, and our habits have been rudely broken.
The great debate going on a few weeks ago of who will play third base for the Braves seems unimportant now. How will the manager handle the crowded outfield? What will the rotation look like? Well, it just doesn’t matter right now.
This is what hell must be like, at least for sports fans. It’s like we’ve done something wrong to deserve this, to be without. And yet, we can’t complain too much, knowing there are others who are going through much more than just not having a ballgame to watch.
And our hearts go out to those people. Not only the people who are getting sick and God forbid dying, but for the ones trying to take care of them. Those are the heroes, those are the profiles in courage that we can only respect and marvel at from afar, at least hopefully from far, far away.
There is time, however, for sports to figure things out. All sports leagues must simply prepare their options for how to play and when. The when is an unanswerable question to ponder, as we just don’t know how long it’ll be before there is a nationwide all-clear signal.
But even when (not if, when) we get that, how are we going to feel about being comfortable in a large crowd? The biggest question all sports must worry about is the fans. When will they feel good about leaving the comforts of their protected, uninfected home and going to a stadium with thousands of people where social distancing is impossible?
Truthfully, I don’t even feel comfortable going to the grocery store right now. We all must go, but others aren’t exactly obeying the six-foot safety zone we’ve been asked to respect. Give me my mask and gloves. I need my food, but I don’t want this virus.
So, if in late-March I’m uneasy about going to get groceries, how long will it take for me to feel okay going to Truist Park to watch the Braves? And I’m in a cushy press box, but there are 40,000 in a packed stadium. What will it take for me to feel good about everyone else there?
Let’s think ahead five months. Georgia opens its 2020 schedule September 7 against Virginia in Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. It holds 71,000 people. Ask yourself, as much as you’d love to see Jamie Newman’s debut in red and black, are you going to feel comfortable about going into that environment?
Certainly, I’d love to go to Tuscaloosa on September 19 or to Jacksonville on Halloween. Or do I really want to? And the thought of not even wanting to go into Sanford Stadium almost physically hurts.
I asked a friend what it would take for him to go to a game in a stadium with 92,000 or so people, at least knowing what we know right now.
“A vaccine,” he quickly replied. “I’m not going unless they nip this in the bud.”
And we can only hope and pray that happens. There is a lot of talk about games being played without fans, and maybe it’ll come to that. That’s why this question must be discussed. What will it take for the fans to feel comfortable to go into a packed stadium? That could determine how and when the games we miss resume more than anything.
Maybe they won’t care about fans being there. Maybe it’ll be more important to just give the fans, who are obviously going to be without their sports fix for a while, something to watch that won’t be from the 1990s or from last season. There is no doubt the games can help repair the damage done to our country. It’s been done before, and sports can help heal our broken, sick nation.
It just might have to happen with all of us sitting at home.
Listen to The Bill Shanks Show weekdays at 3:00 p.m. ET on Middle Georgia’s ESPN. You can listen online at TheSuperStations.com. Follow Bill on Twitter at @billshanks and you can email him at thebillshanksshow@yahoo.com.