Tag Archives: COVID19

It Was Just A Distraction

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© The Baseball Bloggess

The Dodgers won the 2020 World Series last night. The World Series that, back in July, I was pretty sure we would never get to.

And, now we have. And, now it’s over. And, now we rest.

I didn’t believe Major League Baseball could pull it off.

As with many things, I was wrong.

(Or, maybe I was right … since Justin Turner of the Dodgers was pulled in the 8th inning last night after testing positive for covid … and then returned to the field for the celebration. What kind of quarantine is that, MLB?)

I haven’t written much on here … this pandemic has squeezed the words right out of me. But, I refuse to let October close without saying something.

Baseball was a sorely needed distraction this season. Maybe not for you. But, it was for me.

It never rose above that, though. It was always just a distraction.

It was like watching a small-town parade … it passed by and it was nice, sure … each game was the high school marching band or the float pulled on a flat-bed trailer by the local bank or the team of 10-year-olds twirling batons and marching down Main Street.

That’s all it was … each game a tissue-paper float in a small-town parade.

But, baseball has always been more than that for me.

More than just a parade.

A parade disappears. No one remembers a parade after the last town car, carrying the Parade Princess and her Court, turns the corner and slips out of sight.

This season baseball was just a forgettable distraction. Nice, sure. To be able to turn away for just a few minutes from the news, the covid, the politics, the protests, was a relief. Not to ignore the bad things, but simply to take a breath and think of something else – anything else – for a couple of minutes.

Maybe the beloved movie Animal House can explain this better than me.

I am Flounder. John Belushi’s Bluto is baseball.

 

“My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.”

(I could continue the Animal House analogy – the state of the world today is Flounder’s brother’s car. And, we shouldn’t have trusted our car with … well, anyway … back to distractions.) Continue reading →

The Bubble Bloggess

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Baseball’s annual All-Star break would begin tomorrow … if this were a normal, pandemic-free world. Which it’s not.

It is …

… a cheese on apple pie, Wile E. Coyote catches the Roadrunner, messed up, all wrong, pandemic-full world.

It is a cat’s hairball atop a dead cactus atop that moldy slimy thing in the back of the fridge atop the mouse that died under the couch that we didn’t know about until … that smell … world.

It is horrible.

It is a world where Mike Trout’s mother tweets a photo of Mike Trout wearing a mask while playing because she wants to encourage people to wear masks because a lot of people seem to not understand the concept of how masks work to mitigate the spread of disease.

And, “Wear a mask so you won’t die or make other people sick” is, apparently, not encouragement enough for some people.

Sorry. Wandered off. Continue reading →

Life In The Time Of Pandemic

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A historian at one of the nearby universities wrote an article this week suggesting that we all keep diaries of this unprecedented time.

Write it all down.

Life In The Time Of Pandemic, I guess.

Where has he been? Pandemic 2020 is going to be the most documented event in the history of mankind. (Peoplekind.)

Where were you when the wash-your-hands edict came? When the don’t-touch-your-face came? When the toilet-paper-hysteria came? When the ban on gatherings of 1,000 … 500 … 50 … 10 came? When today came? I know. Twitter and Facebook and Instagram told me.

There seems to be an ever-increasing number of cat photos on my feeds. Just to break up the latest round of bad news, I guess. So, doing my part, here’s Zuzu …

(I am not gloating because extroverts are freaking out about this stay-at-home thing. But, I admit, there is a smug-but-not-gloating satisfaction. Now you know how it is for an introvert like me when I’m feeling pressured to go to one of your big parties. Different thing. Same gnawing discomfort.) Continue reading →

This Is Not My “Happy Place”

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I shut everything down.

When things shut down around me in the past few days, I knew that mitigating a fast-spreading virus like COVID-19 would mean more than just shuttering all sports, museums, concerts, and big things.

It meant even little businesses like mine should shut down, too.

So, I closed my Yoga studio, cancelled my massage clients. And, here I sit.

Because, isn’t this what it means to “do your part”?

But, if the bars and restaurants and movie theaters are still open and people are still going, am I just wasting my time?

As I said to some of my clients, “I don’t want to see you on Monday and then have to call you on Wednesday and say, ‘Hey! Guess what I just tested positive for?’”

If closing is the right thing to do, why do I feel so terrible about this?

OK, that helped to say all that.

Now that you’ve kindly read through my “stress dump,” we, of course, need to get to the nut of things …

This virus has taken away baseball. It has taken away sports. It has taken away my “Happy Place.” Maybe your “Happy Place,” too.

I have no back-up “Happy Place.”

On Tuesday afternoon – playing hooky – I sat in the stands at the University of Virginia’s Davenport Field in our luxurious new season seats that look straight through home plate and right down the third-base line.

©The Baseball Bloggess

Freshman Max Cotier, on third and thinking about maybe, just maybe, stealing home. He didn’t steal, but he did score. (See, I told you … great seats!)

Virginia beat UMass-Lowell on Tuesday afternoon 24-5.

When it seemed clear that the game would be a major blow-out … and, you know, blow-outs and batting around in multiple innings can take some time (ultimately, three hours and 32 minutes) … we thought about leaving. It was getting late. Continue reading →