NASCAR put 20,000 fans inside Bristol Motor Speedway last night, and maybe they'll get away with it. Maybe whole wads of people won't get sick or wind up on their stomachs breathing through ventilators, or accidentally send their frail grannies to a rendezvous with a pine box.
To be sure, NASCAR was responsible about it. They required fans to wear masks to gain entry, and they could take them off only when they were seated. And social distancing was in place and easily achievable, since 20,000 left the stands more than 80 percent unoccupied.
So we shall see. In the meantime, it's revealing what people were saying about it all, which is it was an important step toward getting America out from under the shadow of the Bastard Plague.
That's a theme we're hearing a lot these days, as baseball and basketball and hockey start up again in kinda-sorta fashion, twisted as they are into bizarre Dali-esque shapes. We're hearing our games are a vital component in getting America back on the road to normality. We're hearing we need our games the way we need food or shelter or any other necessity for a stable and happy life.
I suppose that could be true. I also suppose "need" is not necessarily the word I'd choose for something whose primary reason for existence is to give us something to watch while we're lying on the couch on Sunday afternoons.
I know. That's a hell of a thing for an old sportswriter to say.
I also know sports is Big Business, from professional baseball and football and basketball right on down to college football and basketball, which are Big Business themselves and thus operate by the same prerogatives. So in that sense they do play a part in getting the economy moving again.
On the other hand, they are still just games. They are still just a diversion in a nation that has come to think of its diversions as necessities.
Which brings us to this observation by Thomas Laforgia of Deadspin.
It's an excellent point he's making. Plunked down in a state where incoherent leadership has allowed the Bastard Plague to run rampant, it seems vaguely obscene that a whole ecosystem has been constructed to protect a bunch of basketball players. And not just basketball players, but basketball players who are getting tested everyday, and getting the results inside of two days.
Meanwhile, as Laforgia points out, regular Floridians out in the world are waiting up to two weeks for results. And there aren't enough tests to begin with. And this in a state where the Bastard Plague already has killed more than 4,500 and infected north of 300,000.
And, sure, your dad or uncle or aforementioned frail granny is not going to move product the way LeBron does. They are not a multibillion-dollar engine of commerce like the NBA. And they do not stand to lose those billions if they aren't protected and tested and allowed to proceed.
And so the push to get going again in our world of games. And so the narrative that this needs to happen because the games are crucial to our national interest, when in fact it all boils down to a dirty little secret: We've learned to get along without them.
And, yes, that's also a hell of a thing for an old sportswriter.
But I was with a group of other sportswriting and sportscasting colleagues the other day, and while we agreed we all missed sports, we didn't miss them as much as we thought we would. And the longer we went without them, the less at least a couple of us missed them.
That conversation would likely have scared the bejeezus out of the poobahs of our games. Because if sports journalists were saying that, imagine what large swatches of the general public are saying.
Most of whom were live-streaming "Hamilton" on Disney+ over the recent holiday weekend, of course.
Lin-Manuel Miranda over LeBron and K.D. and Luka Doncic and them?
Shudder.
No comments:
Post a Comment