photograph by Media Whalestock | Dreamstime
Five years ago, I took up 5k road races as a midlife health booster. I did this largely to support my wife, a better and faster runner than I’ll ever be, and someone I decided long ago is worth chasing (by various measures). Sharon has since completed two marathons, but I’ve stuck with 3.1 miles per race, my “comfort” length, though I find nothing comfortable about the last kilometer of a 5K. For me, it’s all about the finish line. Upon taking my first stride, I know that line awaits, precisely five kilometers — and roughly 27 minutes for me — later.
I’ve come to recognize that a pandemic is no road race, and this is a distinctive kind of mental anguish that we sports-minded folks are battling on a daily basis. Read all you might and tune in to your channel of choice for updates, but you will find no “finish line” for this epic battle we humans have now been waging for the better part of a year. Even if you like marathons as a metaphor, unless you can stretch the concept of 26.2 miles further than I can, we are well beyond any measurable beginning-middle-end “course” for gaining control over covid-19.
What’s the only thing worse than no baseball during a pandemic? Baseball during a pandemic but your favorite team is not allowed to play.
In normal times, sports are utterly structured. There is a beginning and end to each season. For many, summer means baseball, fall football, and winter basketball. There are standings to track (at least weekly), scores to check (daily), and familiar, beloved events to pleasantly interrupt the team-sport tides.
The Masters golf tournament is as much about April as it is azaleas. The pandemic, though, will have us watch the finest players in the world compete at Augusta in November. With nary a fan elbowing his way closer to the 18th green.
The Kentucky Derby is as much about May as it is roses. The pandemic will have us watch the most famous two minutes in sports this month, in September. With nary an oversized hat or mint julep in the stands at Churchill Downs.
I suffer a very specific type of obsessive-compulsive disorder, one that I love more than Linus does his blanket: St. Louis Cardinals baseball. Since long before I could shave, Cardinal baseball meant the end of winter and the beginning of the happiest seven months of my year. However “the real world” might interfere — homework, girls, jobs, kids — there was a Cardinal score to check, the famed franchise’s history growing, day by day, season by season, year by year. Until 2020.
What’s the only thing worse than no baseball during a pandemic? Baseball during a pandemic but your favorite team is not allowed to play. The Cardinals were hit by the coronavirus in late July despite ostensibly practicing the same “bubble” approach to living and training that the other 29 major-league teams adopted. At one point in mid-August, 18 players and staff had tested positive for the virus. (Thankfully, none suffered severe symptoms as of late August.) Suddenly, an existential question wormed itself into my gray matter: Do the National League Central standings matter if St. Louis is not part of them? Structure crumbles.
My answer to the loss in sports convention — NBA playoffs in September?! — has been to chart my own “season” of exercise. As of mid-August, I had exercised more than 130 days in a row, a streak that began on April 1st (when baseball season normally begins, a couple of weeks before the Masters, a month before the Derby). It’s not a 5K, my daily sessions on an elliptical machine. Thirty minutes of tennis with my wife doesn’t include a finish line. But it’s a check on the calendar, one mark closer to deliverance — we must hope — for the mental well-being we all crave during this most uncertain of years.
The Cardinals returned to the field on August 15th in Chicago, against the White Sox. They played a doubleheader (two seven-inning games) against an American League opponent with no fans in the stands. In any other year, such a sight would be more than a little disorienting. In the mad world of 2020 and the coronavirus, those 14 innings were manna from heaven. At least for one fan who has discovered his need for sports — and life minus a killer contagion — has much more to do with the race course (and its finish line) than any results or ribbons.
