Here's the beauty of sports. There's no script. We start in one place and end in another.
And it can all be so unexpected.
Like 2020, the year the world shut down and the games stopped.
Now, we get a reboot.
Suddenly, almost miraculously, sports are back in the middle of the raging coronavirus pandemic.
And the best way to take it all in maybe to just go with it, see where it all takes us.
The Brewers playing baseball in an empty stadium? Makes sense.
The Bucks going for an NBA championship in a bubble in Orlando, Florida? How very Disney.
And the Packers returning to Lambeau Field and perhaps playing regular season games in front of a few thousand socially-distanced fans? Hey, we can deal with that.
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We don't know how long this will last.
We don't know what it's really going to look like.
And we don't know what it's going to feel like as we get wrapped up in games at a time of national crisis.
But for now, we just accept a return to normality.
Friday night, the Brewers are scheduled to open their truncated season against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. The (so-called) Friendly Confines will be filled with empty seats.
They'll play the National Anthem, pipe in crowd noise and yes, they'll play ball.
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The marathon 162-game baseball season is now by necessity a 60-game sprint.
We're not pining for summer on opening day. We're right in the middle of it.
And in the heat of July, every team can still dream of a World Series.
If they play one.
Rick Schlesinger, Brewers president of business operations, has been around baseball for a few decades.
But even he acknowledges, this will be unlike any other Friday night at Wrigley.
"It certainly will be surreal and different," Schlesinger said. "So much of baseball is the crowds and the socializing and the shared experience and even at Wrigley where you're surrounded by Cubs fans there is a cadence to the crowd, There is good banter between knowledgeable Cubs fans and Brewers fans. I'm not sure what to expect."
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Just getting to opening day was a journey. Owners and players fought bitterly to come to an agreement to get back on the field.
Untold billions of dollars have been lost, even with televised games softening the blow.
But baseball, and the rest of the sports industry, may take years to dig out of a financial hole.
And don't even get started on college sports. A fall without football would bring financial chaos.
But pause to think of the stadium workers who normally toil during the summer at Miller Park. On a game night, there can be up to 2,500 people who serve as parking attendants, ushers, concession workers, cleaning staff, security, box office clerks and retail staff.
It may be a part-time job for many of the stadium workers, but they're missing paychecks, like a lot of others in America.
A pandemic just wasn't on the radar of most sports teams.
"We have to be nimble," Schlesinger said. "We have to be innovative, We have to be experimental. We have to try. I think there is a strong sentiment in our industry that baseball is important and transcends commerce, transcends entertainment."
"Baseball has been there for every crisis in American history since 1900. We've been there during world wars, during 9/11. This is a crisis for the country and I think as an industry we can help with the mood of the country."
A lot has changed in a very short time in America.
Sports came to a halt before the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis.
Leagues, teams and players no longer operate in a vacuum, the games separated from the great social issues.
Like others, they have sought to come to grips with the country's reckoning on race.
Not all fans will be on board. Some want their games to be just that, games. Others may be turned off if a player takes a knee during the National Anthem or expresses a political viewpoint.
The NBA will display a "Black Lives Matter" decal on the sideline of the court at Walt Disney World.
Sports stopped. But life went on.
So, this is where we are. At a new beginning. Unscripted and unforgettable.
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July 24, 2020 at 06:03PM
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2020 is the year the world shut down and the games stopped, but sports offers a reboot of sorts - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"middle" - Google News
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