Your downer post for today

Look, I want it all back just like everyone does. I want baseball and football and basketball and all those other assorted Sportsballs.

And so like everyone I cheered the news there will be a Major League Baseball season after all, even if it's a sawed-off 60-game season. The NBA is still moving ahead with its Weird Thrown-Together Thing in Orlando. NASCAR is back, sort of, and IndyCar, sort of, and, across the pond, Premier League soccer, sort of.

Good news all around. Except ...

Except I see a massive separation from reality here, from a White House that abandoned it some time ago down to all the mask-less folks cramming into bars elbow-to-elbow because the Bastard Plague is, like, over, man.

But it is not over. In fact, it's raging hotter, in a bunch of states, than it was a couple of months ago.

States that disdained prolonged lockdowns, and even sought to prohibit local regulations regarding mask-wearing and such, are seeing record numbers of cases. Arizona's hospitals are at capacity. The nation as a whole is again approaching its all-time high for daily new cases, and the body count is at 124,000 and inexorably rising. By October it could be closing in on 200,000.

It's gotten so bad in Texas, one of the hotspots, that even the state's right-wing governor is telling people to for God's sake stay home if at all possible. In Texas, he's saying this.

And yet we go blithely on. And therefore the Blob has a prediction no one wants to hear right now:

In the coming Sportsball vs. Bastard Plague tilt, the Bastard Plague is going to win.

I will be shocked if baseball makes it through 60 games and an asterisked World Series without having to shut down again, given that multiple players are already showing red for COVID-19 and some states are restricting travel from viral hotspots like Texas (home of the Rangers and Astros), Arizona (home of the Diamondbacks) and Florida (home to the Rays and Marlins.) And who knows when Canada will re-open the borders currently closed to those traveling from the U.S., thereby isolating the poor Blue Jays.

And basketball?

Both the NBA and WNBA are setting up their 'bubbles" in Florida, for God's sake. A number of WNBA players have therefore already said they're sitting out the planned 22-game season. And the NBA, like baseball, has already had players test positive -- among them Malcolm Brogdon of the Pacers.

College football? The NFL?

Starting to think those are pipe dreams, too.

At Texas and Kansas State  and elsewhere, preseason camps had to be shut down before they'd barely begun when multiple players tested positive. That only figures to get worse when the students come back, as multiple universities are unaccountably deciding it's safe to do.

NFL, same deal. High school football, same deal.

There's a bill in Congress now, for instance, that would bully school districts into putting your kids back in the classrooms by threatening to cut off their federal funding. Your tax dollars at work.

Look. I hope I'm wrong about all of this. I hope the Bastard Plague doesn't continue to feed on our mindlessness. I hope it burns itself out by fall, or just goes away the way Our Only Available Impeached President seems to think it will.

But given the circumstances, I think the chances of that happening are zero.

And the chances Sportsball World will live long and prosper in 2020?

Well, not zero. But not much more than that.