I Was Going to Write About Opening Day

The Ballpark is Self-Quarantining

Jacob DeGrom was supposed to throw the first pitch to the champion Washington Nationals, a few miles west of me, on a sunny, cool day.
Instead, I was going to write something about the absence of baseball. 
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Then I read about a valued colleague who passed the other day, from the virus, and that delivered another reality check.

We have enough reminders that life is not normal – and when will it be again?

I go out in our town just enough to run a few errands.
The other day we ordered takeout from one of our favorite places in our town. It was gut-wrenching to join a small line indoors, six feet of separation, picking up packages.
It was mid-day. The place should have been packed with moms and their squeaky little kids, with rambunctious teen-agers from the high school, with working people on a break. Instead, chairs were upturned on tables and
a few workers were packing up pizza and regular meals for the customers.

A lady in the drive-in window at the bank smiled at me from behind the glass.

From my car, I nodded at the crossing guard near the post office.

The Town Dock was blocked off. Normally, dozens of people would be parking at mid-day, to sniff the salty bay and maybe take a walk.

I don’t need to discuss the ominous details about the virus in the NYT. Did you see those amazing charts – online and in “the paper?”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/22/world/coronavirus-spread.html

We get the paper delivered every morning in blue bags, straight from my friends at the plant in Queens. They cannot work from home. Be safe, all of you.

Our family sounds okay – six other adults working at their homes, three younger ones doing schoolwork online, two others also safe, last we heard.

My wife was on this early, urging me not to ride the subway, see old friends for lunch. We are getting by. Blessed. But there is the anxiety – expressed by doctors and nurses who go on TV, talking of shortages, displaying what soldiers in combat call The Thousand-Yard Stare.

They are on the front line, sent in without the right equipment, in a nation nominally in charge of a business failure who was already a dangerous fool when people voted for him.

Now the combat is raging. Leaders like Andrew Cuomo try to pull things together, shaming “the government” into getting a clue.

Friend of mine is self-quarantined in his apartment. His doctor thinks he might have the virus, but cannot help him get a test.
“Opening Day,” I texted.  “Robin Roberts vs. Don Newcombe.” That is our generation. The Brooklyn Dodgers were our team.
 
Sometimes, for a few minutes, baseball will get you through. My man Mike From Northern Queens sent me a link about picking the best catchers in the history of every major-league franchise. Yogi and Campy. And some, from newer franchises out west, I hardly recognized the names of the choices.
That is the beauty of baseball – the history, the meaningful statistics at all positions, never mind the new analytics. The arguments. Carter or Piazza? 
https://www.mlb.com/news/best-all-time-catcher-for-every-mlb-team
 
Opening Day. Baseball fans believe there is nothing like it. So much tradition. My colleague Bill Lucey in Cleveland sent me a piece he wrote a few years ago about the history of presidents at Opening Day.
https://www.wplucey.com/2011/03/comparing-us-presidents-love-of-baseball.html
 
I remember in the early 80s, when the Mets’ opening day was snowed out, and I squawked, how nature could do this to us?
 
Sports don’t cut it right now.  I don’t care if the Olympics were postponed, or even the European soccer tournament.
 
I wish I could concentrate on the Mets, fret about whether the Mets will finally give a steady position to Jeff McNeil, let him swing at the first pitch and get something going.
I wish I could worry about the starting rotation, now that Noah Syndergaard is getting Tommy John surgery today. (Apparently this is considered essential surgery.)
Yankee fans, other fans, bless their hearts, may have their own preoccupations.
 
However baseball is not essential at the moment. What is essential is convincing our “leader” that instead of sending people back to work with a nasty virus on the loose – to save “his” economy – we need to stay in place, including baseball players and baseball fans and people who work at the ballpark. 
No Game Today.
Of course.