I just learned something about sports in empty venues: even without the fans roaring, the drama and the skill can be magnificent in front of the tube.
This is worth noting as major American sports prepare for unprecedented short seasons and makeshift playoffs. None of this means any athletes should be playing. Covid-19 is raging, sparked by the cruel and intentional stupidity of Donald Trump. Athletes are probably setting a bad example just from their proximity, no matter the health protocols cobbled together. To be continued. But what I realized Thursday was that great athletes and great sports and great histories and great plots make for great viewing. My little epiphany came during the Premier League match between Chelsea and Manchester City in London. I wasn’t even watching until I started getting pinged by my son-in-law in Deepest Pennsylvania, telling me that homeboy Christian Pulisic from nearby Hershey was starting for Chelsea. The next ping told me Pulisic had scored. So I dropped my household chores and turned on the tube. The replays showed the wunderkind, not yet 22, sharking two Man City defenders, putting pressure on them, forcing them into a dreadful giveaway, and then changing his gears several times as he corkscrewed the hapless Man City keeper into the turf and slipped a goal into the corner – a brilliant bit of opportunism, whether in front of a packed house in Stamford Bridge or an empty one. On TV, it was stunning. The goal was also vital because Man City was one loss or one draw away from yielding its title to Liverpool after two straight championships. Liverpool was so far ahead this season that a title was inevitable, but now it might happen without Liverpool flexing a muscle except of course in front of their own TV sets up north. The great soccer continued: Kevin DeBruyne, the red-headed Belgian with Man City, hooked a free kick into the left corner to draw the game. World level skill. Raheem Sterling, the young Man City star who has been the spokesman for Black Lives Matter in British football, missed twice by inches. Pulisic sharked Man City again but this time Kyle Walker slid on the goal line to stop the ball millimeters from the white line. And then a seasoned City player, Fernandinho, let his left hand dangle to stop a shot in goalmouth, and was called for a red card. (Sour Grapes Dept: the very same act, uncalled, cost the U.S. a goal in the 2002 World Cup quarterfinal against Germany.) Willian scored the penalty for Chelsea in the 78th minute and idle Liverpool would clinch the title – its first in 30 years. Pinging in my phone from father and son in Deepest Pennsylvania followed by the TV views of fans lurching around Anfield Road at dusk, and a raucous Zoom montage around Britain of Red Devil fans in their red jerseys celebrating – the modern mix of Liverpool fans, white and black, young and old, male and female, even the odd dog. Some fans held up signs that said: “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” the inspirational theme song of Liverpool for decades now. One of the broadcasters noted that Liverpool has been revamped in the past decade by John Henry, the very same introverted owner who revamped the Boston Red Sox from a decades-long miasma of its own. People who follow sports carry these legends with them while watching, and debating, even while sitting out off-seasons and [postponements during this frightening plague. On this very same; day, in unusually hot England, close to a million people rushed to the southern shore, packing the beaches, breathing on each other at close range, just as they would be in a packed stadium. Are we humans that eager to infect each other, perhaps mortally, at sports events, the beach, religious services, political rallies for the fragile ego of a dangerous president? Well, it would appear we are. Now we are about to will American sports into close-order competition, with “rules” that seem ludicrous. (One of my favorite new conditions for baseball players on the road for the next three months stipulates that only close relatives will be allowed into players' hotel rooms.) For the moment, a father and son in Deepest Pennsylvania celebrated a championship in England, performed by some of the best players in the world. I watched. It was terrific. Now, heart in mouth, in this dangerous time, I await the Mets.
bruce
6/25/2020 07:41:11 pm
george,
George Vecsey
6/27/2020 06:18:16 pm
Bruce, thanks for calling my attention to Alphonso Davies. GV
bruce
6/27/2020 07:08:04 pm
george,
Michael
6/26/2020 01:38:52 pm
Hi George: I’m really enjoying watching EPL & La Liga more than I thought I might. I’m glad they’re sticking to the original schedule. I prefer no enhanced sound but they do a decent job when I do hear piped in crowd noise. I hope they can keep it safe. Best to you & yours. Michael P.S. Forza Atleti & COYS!! ⚽️⚽️
George
6/27/2020 06:21:13 pm
Michael: soccer crowds are special...a different energy from other team sports, both good and bad. I think the piped-in noise helps for a background -- not sure if any teams have tried to engineer the sound in favor of the home side. 6/27/2020 12:04:26 pm
George-a timely post.
George Vecsey
6/27/2020 06:25:33 pm
Alan, thanks for confirming what I think team athletes experience -- having a crowd for (or against) you. I know what a thrill it was to actually play a match in Met Oval in Ridgewood, Queens....a shrine, with the Manhattan skyline (and afternoon sun) looming behind the west goal. They actually had some locals wander in to see Grover Cleveland HS murder us. And I remember one match at home at Jamaica when the cheerleaders came out to cheer for us. (They were preparing for the upcoming basketball season.) One of my best friends from Jamaica was the captain of the cheerleaders; I remind her of their good deed way back when. GV
bruce
6/27/2020 01:45:43 pm
alan,
George
6/27/2020 06:30:12 pm
Bruce: talk about crowd presence: summer of 54 or 55, neighborhood team played in the NY Mirror softball tournament in Queens. First inning, I hit a 2-run homer over the LF fence (fresh ball, had to last all game.) I paid for it. Local urchins in Kew Gardens Hills tossed pebbles at a yooge target -- my backside, quite large in those days, as I squatted to catch near the chain-link backstop All game -- go into crouch, get pinged by pebbles. (We lost)
bruce
6/27/2020 07:14:11 pm
george, 6/28/2020 03:52:29 pm
George- cheerleaders at a high school soccer game. Wow! At Teaneck HS, the soccer team always had a much better record but the girls went for the football players. 6/28/2020 05:19:10 pm
Bruce—You bring back fond memories of my softball days, which started at about age eight in the PS 187 school yard in Manhattan's Washington Heights. It was located just above 187th Street on Fort Washington Avenue. It was not until many years later that I learned that the school number did not have any relationship to the street number.
bruce
6/28/2020 06:26:07 pm
alan,
Rick Taylor
6/30/2020 08:18:47 pm
George, for several years I've watched my favorite sports (MLB, NHL, NFL) with the sound muted. My daughter, wag that she is, was visiting one day and as I watched the Mets she said, "hey dad, do you know what's more boring than baseball on TV? No sound baseball on TV.". Postscript, in my opinion, all sports in the US should be postponed until 2021.
bruce
6/30/2020 08:36:54 pm
rick, Comments are closed.
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QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html |