Sports aren’t most important thing now

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/08/2020 (2117 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I have a confession to make — I didn’t stay up late Wednesday night to watch the Jets down the Vancouver Canucks 4-1 in an exhibition game that marked their first action since the NHL went dark in mid-March.

I also did not park myself in front of the big-screen TV in my den on Saturday to look on as the Jets faced off with the Calgary Flames in the first game of a best-of-five series for the right to compete in the 16-team Stanley Cup playoffs that will apparently run into October.

OK, technically, I am writing these words on Friday morning, the day before the game, but the central point I am trying to make is that I don’t plan on watching.

Before you grab pitchforks, fire up your torches and send me angry letters on your “I (heart) the Jets” stationery, allow me to explain.

It’s not that I no longer love our plucky NHL squad; it’s just that — and I can’t believe I’m about to utter these words — there are more important things right now than sports!

I am well aware that sentence will divide regular readers along gender lines as follows:

Typical female reader: “Welcome to the club, big fella.”

Typical male reader: “You. Are. So. Out. Of. The. Club. You. Big. Stupid. Jerk!”

It never occurred to me that a little thing like a global pandemic would come between me and my love of sports, but there you go.

Before COVID-19 arrived, I was a regulation guy of my gender, meaning my life largely revolved around two things: watching professional sports and talking about professional sports.

My wife complained that I was obsessed with sports, but I pointed out that I only watched sports, or sports highlights, on the days they were on TV. So it’s not as if I was an addict.

In those glory days, conversations with my buddies ranged from arguing about the merits of our NHL hockey pool teams to debating whether a particular receiver had both feet in-bounds when he made a catch. So we covered the entire gamut of human experience.

When the pandemic arrived, shutting down sports leagues and everything else in sight, all my friends and I could talk about was how desperate we were for the return of some kind of athletic activity to occupy our eyeballs — even golf and bowling, if you can imagine being that desperate.

But now, as professional sports are slowly, painfully crawling back into some form of action, I find myself frighteningly indifferent to who is playing who in any particular sport in any particular physically distanced arena or stadium or ballpark.

The herky-jerky return of sports amid a global pandemic has been more than a little surreal.

For instance, my colleague Mike McIntyre, one of a handful of writers in North America granted access to watch NHL action in-person, hauntingly described the experience of watching hockey in a rink bereft of shrieking fans: “But if you can tolerate some colourful language, the natural sounds of the game in all their glory were a highlight. From hearing skates squeak with every hard stop, players calling for passes or warning teammates from the bench about an incoming opponent, to your run-of-the-mill lobbying for penalties and complaining to officials, this is the type of stuff normally drowned out by big crowds.”

But, as I said, I wasn’t watching. I’m not entirely sure how to explain my newfound sports apathy. At the moment, I feel like I’m too busy thinking about the health of my family and friends and colleagues. About the future of my newspaper and the entire industry. About the recent uptick in local cases. About whether a friend’s restaurant — and the businesses of so many other people in the community — will come out the other side.

And I’m not sure I’m totally comfortable with the notion of professional athletes, regardless of the size of their salaries, putting their health on the line for the amusement of people who are hunkered down on their couches in the safety of their dens.

The NHL is hoping to keep players safe in two bubble cities, Edmonton and Toronto. The NBA, which returned to play Thursday night, is operating out of a bubble at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., where two players recently had their quarantines extended because — and I totally understand this — they briefly broke out to get their hands on deep-fried chicken wings.

Major League Baseball is the only pro league to have teams playing in home stadiums and travelling for road games instead of playing in a one-location bubble, and recently they’ve seen a headline-grabbing rise in coronavirus infections, causing games to be cancelled or postponed.

Look, I LOVE sports — sorry about activating the caps-lock feature on my keyboard, but I wanted to add a little emphasis — but I am prepared to watch reruns of Star Trek until we reach our “new normal” and it’s safe for everyone to begin whacking each other with hockey sticks.

As someone more famous than I once said: “Sometimes love means letting go when you want to hold on tighter.”

I know that sports and I will get back together in the not-too-distant future, and it will be a steamy reunion. For the moment, however, there are more important things I need to see.

What I’m thinking about here is my daughter, whom I have not laid eyes on since this pandemic began. For more than four months, she’s been isolating in Northwestern Ontario, and doesn’t want to risk bringing a virus home to mom and dad, not to mention the dogs.

So I’m keeping the Jets and the Blue Bombers in my heart, but right now there are more important things occupying my mind.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca