But that's not the same as sports returning in this country, a country that has utterly failed and flopped its response to this virus - where even the good stories are small or like New York where the curve was flattened only after such endless agony. The US is not ready for sports to be back, but the people losing money were more than ready, and ergo: sports are coming back.
They're coming back either in a bubble, ironically picked in a place that was doing OK when it was picked but is now a disaster of New York levels, but with leadership that still turns a blind eye, or with two bubbles like the NHL, which wisely picked to move its game to Canada, or with whatever the hell the MLB is doing. These aren't perfect scenarios. These bubbles will pop, whether its NBA players not able to go three months without groupies (their concerns, not mine), or NHL players needing to play golf. The sport going without a bubble is already failing to test people in time to progress towards their start. It's a mess, but 2020 was always going to be a mess. For us sports fans, we just have to figure out if it is a mess worth investing your time in.
So much can go wrong with these plans. With more and more players testing positive before they head into the bubbles (not a surprise), the date of the first start (MLB on July 24th) seems still so far away. There are still mountains to climb, and then we get tothe fact it seems eminent that after the restart the leagues will have to shutdown at some point. Maybe not the NHL because they were able to shift to Canada, which helps matters, but for the NBA it almost seems a matter of time.
What I do want to say is if (or as some pessimists feel, when) the leagues have to shut down, let's not go too hard on them for attempting this. They tried something people didn't think feasible (play in a bubble) and maybe it doesn't work, but I'll give them credit for trying. I also don't want to hear the idea they shouldn't have tried - yes the attempt was to recoup money, but that puts them in teh same position as any business globally at the moment. The sports leagues shouldn't have not tried this because it is too hard. They've come up with plans that epidimeologists have said was a good attempt, all things considered. That's enough for me.
When MLB does have its opening day, when the NBA does have its first tip-off, and the NHL has its first face-off, it will be so different. I still remember being in Toronto watching the NBA world come to a halt, and within 24 hours so too the NHL, March Madness and basically every other league. It was surreal. It is hopefully something we don;t have to live with again.
Seeing it come backj, it is hard to imagine weather it will feel real. It definitely won't feel right, with no fans in teh stands, with either creaky silence or fake pumped in crowd noise. It will be different, but we'll get over it to get sports back. Life hasn't been complete these last 4 months, and surely not only because sports hasn't been played. The world will never be the same (and it is too soon to talk about this in past tense, so shame on me), but having one part of it returning to semi-normal is a welcome event.
