Silenced summer

I wrote this today for my old employer, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.  Please subscribe, on account of local journalism is a vital public service and has never been more so than now.

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So now we know, finally, and here is another hole in our Plague Summer.

There will be no baseball this year at the corner of Ewing and Jefferson. Game called on account of respiration.

Respiration is how COVID-19 spreads and it’s what it affects, and so minor-league baseball, which dawdled until the shadow of July hoping it would abate, finally pulled the plug Tuesday. The minors are shuttering the season, and that means the TinCaps are shuttering the season, and that means the lights are not going to come up in Parkview Field this summer.

This is more than just a shame. This is a financial hit that will resonate far beyond 2020.

Part of that is because the minors do not have the chunky TV deals that clubs could use to sustain themselves if protocols dictate they must keep their ballparks empty or half-empty. And part of it is because Major League Baseball, which never saw a dime on a sidewalk it wouldn’t stoop to pick up, figures it hasn’t yet shaken enough coin out of the Fort Waynes and Lansings and South Bends.

And so last fall, MLB decided to put the squeeze on. It rolled out a plan to kick 40 or so minor-league teams -- and their communities, of course -- out of the affiliate club. That’s almost a quarter of all minor-league affiliates.

In other words, MLB didn’t want to just prune the minor-league tree. It wanted to cut the damn thing down and chop it up for firewood.

Then came the plague, of course.

And now a lost summer.

And now the likelihood MLB will use the resulting financial distress to strong-arm a better deal out of the minors.

Lovely. Just lovely.

And in the meantime?

In the meantime, our summer evenings are full of tumbleweeds.

There will be no lights, no camera, no action. No one will be dropping into JK O’Donnell’s or Rudy’s or O’Reilly’s or the Sidecar for a postgame drink. Jake the Diamond Dog will not be eliciting “awww’s” from his legion of admirers; the Zooperstars will not be bobbling around the place; the Bad Apple Dancers will perhaps take a crack at ballet.

Worst of all, there will be no September 14.

There will not be the late-summer dark coming down and the joint  rocking and Robert Lara coming to the plate in the bottom of the 10^th, the score tied and the season teetering. There will not be a pitch, a swing, a tiny white dot sailing into the black night.

Coming down, finally, in the lawn seating beyond the center-field wall, out there among the dads and the moms and the kids on their spread blankets.

Game over. TinCaps win the Midwest League semifinals, three games to two. Eleven years ago.

It was the first summer in Parkview Field and the best summer, full of magic and wonder and a championship, and a downtown stirring from its long slumber. And that September 14 was the best of the best, with the baseball growing smaller against the night and the place erupting and Lara screaming for joy after he crossed the plate.

A photo of that moment hangs in the hallway outside The Journal Gazette newsroom. I used to pass it every morning as I came upstairs.  Every time I did, it made me smile.

I’m smiling now, just thinking about it.

 

And then I’m not.

The conscience of the coin

So Mississippi will excise the wink to white supremacy in its state flag, and here is more Erasing Of History or Political Correctness or whatever fiction those who wink themselves choose to advance.

Truth is, this is not so much about erasing history as it is restoring it. The ones who did the erasing went to their reward a hundred and more years ago, comforted by the assumption they would rest for eternity in the shade of Lee and Jackson and other monuments to neo-Confederate revisionism.

That came to be after the Klan and other Confederate dead-enders violently killed Reconstruction and birthed Jim Crow, which was just slavery with its shoes on. And with it came this odd notion that the War was about states' rights and federal overreach and the tyranny of a government hell-bent on telling everyone how to live.

Which, for the states of the Confederacy, included the proposition that human beings of color were not human beings at all, but property. And that whites were the superior race, and we'll mount Lee and Jackson in the town square and put the Stars and Bars on our state flags to remind y'all of that.

Corrective measures had to wait a good long time, but at last they're coming. And as usual in America, it's straight cash that's greasing the wheel.

Don't be fooled. When Mississippi lawmakers voted Sunday to remove the Stars and Bars from the corner of their state flag, it wasn't because they had a blinding revelation or a sudden attack of conscience. It was, at least partly, because of something a gentleman named Greg Sankey said a week ago.

Sankey, you see, is the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference. And what he said was the SEC would no longer bring any championship events to Mississippi until the state got rid of that vile little wink in its flag. And with those events, of course, would go the revenue they generate.

One day later, the NCAA joined in, expanding its Confederate flag policy to prohibit its own championship events from states continuing to cling to white supremacy's standard of choice.

And there went some more potential dollars flapping out the window.

And a week later, the Mississippi lege decides, by golly, maybe after 155 years it's time we let go the symbol of a dead quasi-nation built on oppression and murder.

Funny how that works.

Inevitable providence

You know what happens next, of course. Come on, now. This one's easy.

What happens is Cam Newton goes to New England with a one-year deal hung with incentives like ornaments on a Christmas tree, and becomes 2015 Cam again. His bum foot will come around and he'll play like 21 instead of 31 and for the love of God, will someone please make this stop?

Sure, sure. He hasn't played a full season since 2017 and the conventional wisdom is he's been mediocre at best since his 2015 MVP season, but that's not entirely true. In 2018 he threw for 3,395 yards and 24 touchdowns in 14 games and completed 67.9 percent of his passes, and ran for 488 more yards with four more TDs, averaging 7.2 yards per carry.

So if the foot comes around and he doesn't get hurt again, the Patriots could once again luck into a pretty sweet deal. And of course they will, because they're the Patriots. So Cam will probably throw for a gazillion yards and run for a gazillion more and score a pile of touchdowns and, I don't know, leap tall buildings in a single bound or something.

You thought the Patriots were done when Tom Brady walked out the door?

That rumbling you hear is Belichick chuckling.

Dammit.

Proceeding skeptically

Roger Penske was as right as ham-on-rye, when he said what he did last month. The Indianapolis 500 without the usual Sea O' Humanity is not the Indianapolis 500 at all.

The fans are an integral part of the whole Greatest Spectacle in Racing, because it's not a Spectacle without them. They are wedded to the event unlike any other sporting event in the world. Run the race without them, and it's just a pile of shrieking exotic machines going really fast in a circle for three hours.

So Penske announced there would be no 500 without the fans. And he was right.

I'm not so sure about what he announced yesterday.

Which is, the race will go off on August 23 as scheduled, and, yes, there will be fans in the stands. As a concession to the Bastard Plague and public safety, however, the Speedway will only allow its storied grounds to be filled to 50 percent capacity.

The obvious mean thing to say here is "Oh, so it'll basically be the NASCAR race, then."

Which isn't exactly true, mind you. What it actually will be is the NASCAR race times about two.

But put aside for now the Brickyard 400, which was social distancing before social distancing was cool. This is about the 500. This is about as many as 175,000 humans occupying the same place on August 23, and the advisability of that.

Because here's the thing, see: The Bastard Plague isn't going anywhere.

Yes, we're two months out from August 23, and, yes, a lot can happen between now and then. But no rational person can look at what's happening in the country right now and think the Bastard Plague is going to be anything but an even more widespread pandemic than it already is.

The Speedway's announcement, after all, played out in a nation that seems largely to have decided the Plague is over and so it's back to doing whatever you want, whenever you want, because "Freedom!" It is bulwarked in this by an administration that has largely decided the Plague is over, too. Its complete divorce from reality, and that of a good bit of the nation's, seems irrevocable.

Our leaders, such as they are, insist the Plague is under control and the nation is on the rebound, even as the number of cases mushroom again and rock-ribbed conservative governors shut down their states once more. But, hey, no worries!

And don't tell me I have to wear some damn mask, because God and Bill Gates and 5G and Fake Media and sex traffickers and the Democrats.

Meanwhile, the European Union, not noticeably afflicted with our madness, is contemplating severe travel restrictions on those crazy Americans. And the 500 will go on, if not like always then something resembling it.

What the Speedway has going for it in this venture is its very size, which so massive and sprawling 175,000 possibly infected souls will not be like 175,000 souls anywhere else. Social distancing should not be a problem when it takes you a good 20 minutes to hike from the hinterlands out in turn three to Gasoline Alley. And the Speedway will hand out masks and sanitizer to everyone who enters the grounds.

But use of the masks will only be recommended, which means most of them likely won't get used. Social distancing might be observed, but it's hard to see -- again, given how sprawling the place is -- how the Speedway will be able to keep people from congregating. And, well ...

And, well, the Blob is compelled to be Debbie Downer again.

I don't think August 23 is going to happen. I don't think the Plague will have abated enough, if at all, for it to be feasible for 175,000 to gather in one place, albeit a really, really big place.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope the country regains its sanity before then. But I'm not holding my breath.

Though that's probably a good idea right now.

A picture is worth ...

Well, well, well. So a storyline that got knocked into a cocked hat now gets knocked into another cocked hat.

Possible reactions to the photo of the noose in Bubba Wallace's garage from the Grassy Knoll/Those Black Folk Are Always Making Everything About Racism contingent:

"Pffft. NASCAR totally photoshopped that."

"That doesn't even look like a pull rope. Totally fake."

"You can tell that ain't Talladega."

"That's not a noose. A noose looks like this (displays photo of something that looks exactly like the noose in Wallace's garage)"

And of course:

"BUBBA WALLACE DID IT HIMSELF."

Look. You can say all of that. You can assume NASCAR's leadership is comprised entirely of soulless, morally bankrupt individuals who'd actually concoct something this vile themselves so they could exploit it for ratings. You can say they're straight-up, bald-faced lying about checking out all the garages on their circuit and finding only 11 whose pull ropes were fashioned in a loop, and only one done up like a noose -- garage No. 4 at Talladega, which just happened to be assigned to Wallace's team for last weekend's race.

You can say all that.

Or you can wonder how such a thing escaped notice last October, a semi-legit question.

You can wonder that even though it clearly didn't escape notice, because someone obviously told the investigators about it.

You can wonder who fashioned that pull rope into a noose, and if that person was trying to send a message in doing so or was simply making some sort of stupid sick joke. And if no one said anything about it at the time because everyone just assumed it was some sort of stupid sick joke.

You can wonder, finally, if someone maybe did tell NASCAR about it at the time, or if a NASCAR official actually noticed it himself -- which, as someone who's spent a fair amount of time in a NASCAR garage area, is not as likely as you might think it is.

But if NASCAR did know about it?

Well. Then we need to be asking who assigns the garages.

Because it's a little hard for me to buy that Wallace's team just happened to be the team that was assigned to the garage with the noose hanging in it. That's a bit too much of a coincidence for me to swallow.

But then, I have a suspicious nature sometimes, too.

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.

Cynics' carnival

Some days I look at it, this strange curdled place we're in, and I wonder when it happened.

I wonder when, and how, this hardened newsroom cynic got passed by the World At Large.

I don't remember the World At Large coming up on my shoulder, and feeling its straining breath ... and seeing it out of the corner of my eye ... and then the side of my eye ... and then right in front of me, drawing away with every stride.

I had such a big lead, I thought. No one was going to out-sneer me.

But today the happy news comes down that Bubba Wallace apparently was not the victim of a hate crime, that his team just happened to be assigned a Talladega garage stall with a pull rope that someone, last fall perhaps, had fashioned into a loop for convenience sake. Looked like a noose, yes, it did. Apparently wasn't.

Let the cynics' carnival begin.

What obvious shenanigans by NASCAR to gin up its ratings ...

How could anyone have looked at that and NOT known what it was?

Whole thing was a hoax, a farce, another "racism" false flag ...

There goes the Media again, jumping to conclusions ...

All that and worse. Bunch of people howling with far more passion than they ever did when we all thought it was a despicable act of hate directed at Wallace. Almost doing a gleeful little victory dance that it wasn't, because they knew all along this racism stuff was a big put-on.

Talk about cynical. But allow a now second-place cynic to back up the truck a bit on all this.

Here's the situation: You're NASCAR. You've just banned the Confederate flag from your venues, incurring a vicious backlash from the diehards and the rednecks and the heritage-not-hate folks. The guy who pushed you into banning the Stars and Bars, and brought down the backlash, is the only Black driver in your top series. And suddenly someone notices a pull rope fashioned into what surely looks like a noose in that driver's assigned garage.

Why, that couldn't possibly be a "message" aimed at your only Black driver, could it? Especially given the circumstances and the national mood right now?

So, yes, NASCAR's poobahs jumped to a conclusion, but it was an exceedingly short hop. And they released a statement -- which they probably shouldn't have done, but, again, the circumstances and the national mood and what other conclusion could rational minds have drawn?

So they sent out a statement. The media duly reported it, therefore making the same short conclusive hop. Maybe some reporter should have said "Ah, this sounds like BS" and taken 24 or 48 hours to thoroughly check it out -- but given that it looked, again, like a thoroughly credible story, and that every media outlet in the country was climbing over each other to break it, that's not really realistic.

After all, no one said "hold the presses, we've gotta make sure it wasn't just a mistake" when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Media outlets went with it instantly, because in this case a rush to judgment was hardly a rush to judgment.

So the media reported it, and then it reported that there was going to be an investigation, and then it reported what that investigation found. Please explain to me what they were supposed to do that they didn't do.

The irony here is the people shouting loudest about a rush to judgment are rushing to judgment themselves, and worse. Why, they just know it was all a setup by NASCAR. Look at the ratings the race got on Monday! Look at what great pub they got from that little sideshow before the race!

Well. I'm still cynical enough to think some of the folks saying all that might have their own agendas. 

In any case, however it played out, it doesn't diminish an iota the spectacle of every driver and crew member walking Wallace's car to the front of the field, because even if what happened wasn't an act of hate everyone believed it was. That moment was real. Bubba Wallace's tears were real. Eighty-two-year-old Richard Petty showing up to, as he said, "hug his driver," was real.

And if it was all a reaction to something that apparently turned out not to be true?

Irrelevant. Because it remains a clear, eloquent statement about where NASCAR is and where it's going, backlash be damned. 

Cynics, too.