Play Ball!
“I believe in the Church of Baseball”
-Annie Savoy, Bull Durham
With plans to reopen America feverishly under way, damned the human consequences, the major sports leagues are implementing their own returns to their diamonds, arenas and soccer pitches to provide sports fans what they have been craving for: real live action. No more Friends or Mad Men reruns. No more debates on whether MJ was a good or bad guy. No more Downton Abbey sequels. Please, no more Downton Abbey sequels!
The iterations vary, but they range from an immediate plunge into a Stanley Cup playoff season that excludes practically no teams, to a much delayed opening of the baseball season around the time when they should be having their mid-summer All-Star break, to the English Premier soccer league reopening long enough to crown Liverpool as champions, not to mention some sort of NBA season that is likely to resemble the old Rucker League and a college football season on campuses devoid of the regular students paying tens of thousands for on-line classes. Regardless of the format, all of these games will have one thing in common: they will be played without live spectators.
Some of us have craved mightily for the chance to see our favorite athletes do what they do best. However, some of us, who thought we couldn’t live without a game to watch, have adapted just fine. But now we will experience sports played without an audience, something like watching Congress on C-Span, although that typically does not include live participants either.
This brave new world (assuming another couple of cases of Covid among players don’t close down the whole thing once again) really gets to what exactly is the attraction of sport. We are far from the original Olympic spirit of true amateurs, usually naked, matching up in running, wrestling or weight throwing events, and what we now call “hometown heroes” are more like Hessian mercenaries changing uniforms every few years, more loyal to their shoe brands than to the city in which they choose to temporarily deploy their talents (“I couldn’t have done it without the best fans in the world”).
The fact is there really is no longer any distinction between sport and spectacle, and the country (or more accurately the networks) thinks it is only really worthwhile when a “college” football game is played in front of 104,000 blue and maize clad fans in Ann Arbor or when 76,000 United supporters jam Old Trafford. It will be truly strange to watch the Lakers and Spurs perform without fans in the stands, but will it diminish the performance in our eyes? In other words, are the players enough to call it a game?
The most memorable and significant sporting event that I have personally attended was the 6th game of the 1977 World Series between the Yankees and the Dodgers. Yes, the one where Reggie took three swings and pummeled three balls into the stands, leading the Yanks to their clinching victory. Okay, I admit I’m a homer, but the sight was purely thrilling. Without fans? I am certain the world never would have seen the Reggie Bar. Then again, maybe we really would have been better off.
