BOSTON - As the days of our lives slip by, like grains of sand through a cracked hourglass, we’re running out of sports to help occupy our time for the rest of this disastrous Year of 2020. We’ve had our fair share of sports this past summer. Let us count the ways:
Belmont Stakes 🏇🏽 ✅
Premier Lacrosse 🥍 - ✅
Major League Lacrosse 🥍 - ✅
MLS is Back Tourney ⚽️ - ✅
PGA Tour FedExCup ⛳️ - ✅
US Open tennis 🎾 - ✅
Kentucky Derby 🏇🏽 ✅
NHL Stanley Cup 🏒 - ✅
The Preakness 🏇🏽 - ✅
WNBA Finals 🏀 - ✅
French Open tennis 🎾 - ✅
NBA Finals 🏀 - ✅
As the leaves fall in New England, we can still look forward to a few more entertaining sports, namely:
NFL Regular Season 🏈
College Football 🏈
NASCAR 🏁
MLB World Series ⚾️
Breeders’ Cup 🏇🏽
The Masters ⛳️
NFL Super Bowl 🏈
Then, there’s the looming possibility of facing the sporting abyss. The unknown?
Maybe, just maybe, we’ll have the re-start of College Basketball 🏀 and the NBA and NHL again. And, all the others might fall in line. But under-taking those sports (without fans in the stands to pay the freight and without an extra $180 million to stage the bubbles), is not a feasible sports business model.
Just where will that leave us as we begin to combat the so-called “Second Wave” of the Coronavirus? By any reasonable count, it seems more like the 55th Wave, rather than the second, doesn't it?
The obstacles facing the sports entities in the future will not mirror the pressure experienced this past March and April.
Once we got past the despair of zero live sports, NBA H-O-R-S-E and the ESPN Korean Baseball debacle, for each of those double-nickel days or nights in May or June, there was some live sports programming to look forward to on our calendars. Remember the Yankees’ live batting practice on YES Network back in late June. Since then, we could consult the daily sports listings and find, at least, one live contest to look forward to, especially when the PGA Tour re-started and provided its PGA Live coverage each Thursday and Friday mornings.
For five glorious weekends, the Last Dance was awaiting us on Sunday nights. Now, that seems like 1998 ago. But is was a great start.
Then, from lacrosse to soccer and from tennis to basketball to ice hockey, the various sports came up with plans and marched through the challenges as best they could. It gave us some decent competition and hope for better days ahead.
Maybe we can look to February 16/17 when Pitchers & Catchers are scheduled to report to Spring Training 2021?
Or to the 2021 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo?
Maybe not.