Goodbye to an Escape from Reality
Over the past month, most professional sports leagues across the globe have shut down operations due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Football is gone. Basketball is gone. Baseball is gone. Any sport you like, they've departed from our stadiums, our arenas, our screens; gone until further notice. Even more troubling, on March 24th, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were officially postponed until 2021. Just a week prior, the 2020 European Soccer Championships were also postponed to the following year. In short, sports are not coming back for a while.
Something we take for granted has now vanished for the time being. To many of us, sports served as an escape from reality. No one could have ever imagined that one day, we would all wake up and not have any sporting events to look forward to throughout the day.
Thinking about the past, this is truly a first. Our games have never been shut down due to natural disasters or wars; they served as a distraction from the gloom these events brought. For example, the 1989 World Series was briefly interrupted by a major earthquake, but the series was finished. Mass shootings, especially in recent times, have never deterred fans from congregating at arenas and stadiums.
Yet, this pandemic has come to show how easily things can be taken away from us, and how much we take them for granted. In the late 19th century, the industrial, working-class English originally used football as a weekend getaway from long hours with poor pay in destitute conditions. Look how far that game has come, and how far professional sports have come as a whole. Sports are great because they are the last remnant of true reality TV; completely unscripted, mockeries of the game at their worst, and brilliant entertainment at their best.
Most times, these games are must-see TV, but what is there to see when playing surfaces and arenas are empty?
What are sports to us? Some say that sports are just another way to waste your time, but are they really just a waste of time? Now that they are gone for the time being, are we truly being more productive than we were before? Are sports a distraction from the other things we do, or something that allow us to work harder when we have to?
Thus, when they do come back (and they will), you might find it best to ask yourself whether sports should be witnessed the same way. You never know when another event of this magnitude is lurking around the corner.