Just don’t play.
Stop this madness. Stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole when it comes to public safety. Make the decision to suspend school sports until such time as it’s safe to play them unencumbered by the fear that every body check, every tackle, every bit of incidental contact will result in the transmission of a deadly virus.
Have you seen a Major League baseball game since the season opened? Empty ballparks? Umpires with masks? Absurd.
No, the idea of them wearing masks isn’t absurd. But making something so important that they’re running around with masks on is more than a little silly. Just forget it. On all levels.
Most schools in Massachusetts are opening in the fall at the very least with a hybrid schedule. Students will spend as much time in school as out of school. Some won’t be going at all.
Well, if it’s too dangerous to go to school, then it’s too dangerous to play sports. Period. End of paragraph. End of story. Otherwise, about the best you could say about the situation is that it’s a historic case of misplaced priorities. It’s probably more accurate to say it’s historic hypocrisy.
This probably sounds odd coming from the guy who was sports editor of this paper for 18 years, and who counts his No. 1 life bucket list item as being at Fenway Park to see the Red Sox win a World Series. But as much fun as that was, and as much as it meant to me, I’m more interested in seeing us get through this pandemic in one piece.
This virus reminds me of the old commercial, “I told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on. And so on. And so on.” Once it gets going, it spreads like wildfire. What business do any of us have in exposing our young people to the horrors of getting this sickness?
Not only that, it’s not just football players who would suffer. What about kids who lean toward drama, or music, or math, or robotics clubs? Last I checked, a) they’re students too; and b) it’s tough to do some of these things remotely. You need the person-to-person collaboration in many of these cases.
I think all of these activities should be treated equally, meaning that if you can’t build a robot via Zoom, then you can’t play football either. Fair is fair.
It’s also true that some kids need sports to get into college. Potential athletes become blips on college and university radar screens early on in the process, and any interruption can be costly in terms of financial aid or even acceptance itself.
But who says there are going to be college sports? It doesn’t look as if that’s going to happen either.
You’d have to have a pretty hard heart for it not to bleed for these kids. This pandemic, and the way its ramifications have spiraled, has been terrible, and I know there isn’t a person among us who doesn’t wish we could wave the magic wand and make it go away.
But it’s not going away. It’s coming back, judging from the headlines from the past week. We all have our theories for that, and I don’t want to be mean, but two of the biggest reasons for that are sheer selfishness and stupidity. People either won’t follow simple public health directives or don’t believe the problem is as serious as “they” would have us think.
Well I don’t know about any of you, but I’m not about to gamble. I’ll take Dr. Fauci’s knowledge of infectious diseases over my own, and over the latest crackpot internet pronouncement. I’m pretty secure in my belief that Gov. Charlie Baker has more qualified people at his fingertips than I do.
It now looks like the next wave of this COVID-19 spike is arriving ahead of schedule. So please, shut it down. To the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which is tasked in the next couple of weeks with sorting all this out, don’t bother. Face reality.
Live your life, but don’t take stupid risks that may end up keeping this virus in our midst even longer. It’s just not worth it.
Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].