Opinion: The U.S. Sports World Should Remain on Hiatus
America’s commander-in-chief says he is “tired of watching baseball games that are 14 years old,” and wants to bring sports back. Sports are a significant part of American culture and a symbol of normalcy. It breaks my heart that there are no live sports. Even if it’s my favorite NBA finals — the 2010 series in which the Los Angeles Lakers defended their title with an epic victory against the Boston Celtics — I can’t watch it over and over again without getting bored.
Still, the necessity of sports in such a time is overstated. The current discussion about reopening sports caters to President Trump’s political agenda and the business agenda of sports commissioners. Does it reflect the real demand for sports among fellow Americans? What’s the point of creating a false sense of normalcy at a great cost when there’s no normalcy out there in the real world?
China is the first country to experience a full-blown pandemic and had to spend months on flattening the curve with stringent measures, including the shutdown of sports since February. Even now when there is only a limited number of new cases every day, the most populous country in the world is still not letting sports return.
Just like in the U.S., the first half of the year is an important time for major sport leagues in China. The Chinese Basketball Association (CBA), which has a similar playing format with the NBA, originally planned to reopen in April. Former NBA player Jeremy Lin, who plays for the Beijing Ducks in the CBA, returned to China in late March to prepare for the league’s reopen, only to find the plan curbed by the General Administration of Sport of China, the national governing body of sports. It made an announcement on the last day of March that athletic events would not be resumed for another period of time, to reduce mass gatherings.
Collectivism is a huge part of Chinese culture, and many decisions are made based on what is considered the greater good. Reopening sports at an inappropriate time would be a violation of this principle because it’s generally unacceptable to overlook the collective interest — the nationwide efforts to fight COVID-19 in this case.
The clamoring to reopen sports amid a pandemic reminds me of a famous Chinese poem, Mooring on River Qinhuai （《泊秦淮》）In one part “商女不知亡国恨，隔江犹唱后庭花”, sing-song girls (females who made a living by performing music to the rich and the powerful in ancient China) do not perceive the sorrow of a perished empire, and keep singing the song of Yushu Backyard Flowers (a song that represents decadency in Chinese culture). The intention to resume sports amid a pandemic is a bit like the behavior of the sing-song girls and the people who order them to perform. Or, in western culture, it’s Nero fiddling while Rome burned. The entertainment side of sports is in stark contrast to the life-and-death battle against COVID-19 in every hospital where medical workers are risking their lives to save other people.
“The sports world should be honest with fans and be willing to just go on hiatus for as long as necessary as to when there’s either widespread testing or a vaccine,” said Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation.
I might be more optimistic than that, but for now, the sports world should stay put.
An unprecedented pandemic has rampaged through the globe and here in the U.S., more than a million people have had the coronavirus and at least 60,000 have lost their lives. And these staggering numbers are still growing as you read this article.
Obviously, this hasn’t stopped President Trump from summoning sports commissioners, with few representatives from female sports and athletes’ unions, to talk about resuming business, as part of his plan to reopen the country. Nor has it intimidated Major League Baseball, which is discussing a return plan amid the pandemic. But seriously, how realistic is it to bring sports back and how should we do it?
The basic foundations of opening things up are 14 days of a reduction in hospital admissions for COVID-positive patients, and enough medical resources to treat those patients, according to William Schaffner, Professor of Preventive Medicine and Infectious Disease at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. “Things get fairly elaborate with a variety of different phases,” Schaffner said.
In phase one of opening up, he explained, even with the implementation of many of the current guidelines including social distancing, gatherings of more than 10 people are still discouraged, making practice and playing difficult. In phase two, it’s acceptable to have up to 50 people come together, which allows certain games to be played without an audience. And only when we get into phase three will those restrictions be lifted.
Large mass gatherings are a feature of athletic events — people are close together for a long time, and often in a closed and indoor environment. “That’s often the environment in which the virus enjoys transmission that makes it easier for the virus to spread,” said Schaffner, who grew up in West New York, N.J. “It breaks my heart that the Yankees can’t play.” But as a public health expert at the same time, he says that it’s understandable that large gatherings, including sports, concerts and religious services, would be the last things to return.
“We’re long ways from seeing that as a reality — sports as we understood it before the coronavirus,” Zirin said. He thinks that discussions about the return of sport now are very dangerous. “I think what we have to see are the words of Dr. Anthony Fauci who says that the virus creates the timeline, not us individuals,” he said.
But the MLB clearly wants a baseball season just as it does every other year. There have been news reports of the league discussing return plans. First came the “Arizona plan” that would put players in a virus-free “bubble” environment by putting all teams in isolation in Arizona. On Tuesday, USA Today reported that a new plan is gaining support — the MLB will divide 30 teams into three divisions and play at least 100 regular-season games with limited travel, which will not require athletes to be in isolation.
Even if players and the league reach an agreement on such plans, a lot of logistics and extreme cautions still have to go into it — regular temperature taking, frequent testing and social distancing will be required to protect the safety of all personnel. And all congregations, Schaffner explained, should be controlled in a way that the least possible contact takes place. “Desperate times demand desperate measures,” he said.
Frequent testing. And for everyone involved. What every state craves can’t only become a privilege just for the sports world. When the rest of the country is struggling to boost up its capacity of testing, allocating a large number of test kits to athletes and sports personnel will certainly arouse controversy and resentment at the already burning celebrity culture in the time of COVID-19.
“All of their staff and players are getting tested so sports can go on. Meanwhile people who are sick, people who have fevers, they can’t get tested,” said Zirin. “They’re gonna have to be very conscious of the optics of that.”
And the sticky wicket is — how do you explain it to the public? “You can frame all those things in a positive way, as consistent with the national guidelines,” said Schaffner. “But then you had better be meticulous about carrying out all the details.”
Athletes, who will be making sacrifices by going into isolation for months and playing sports at the risk of their own health, will also become vulnerable. “There’s going to have to be an important push by the sports unions to stand up for the health of the athletes. And I think that eventually there is going to be a collision,” Zirin predicted.
Just another reason why the sports world should stay put.
