Yeah, coronavirus is having quite the comeback, in the context of professional sports.
All in the same Friday ...
Major League Baseball headlines were finally stolen by a foe more formidable than a labor lawyer, with the Phillies' facility in Clearwater, Fla., seeing five players diagnosed, and the Blue Jays, right up the road in Dunedin, having one of their own. By day's end, serious talks were underway to close all spring complexes in both Florida and Arizona, two of the states being hit hardest.
The NHL saw its biggest name yet become public, with the Toronto Sun reporting that the Maple Leafs' Auston Matthews came down with a case while training in his native Arizona.
The Clemson University football team topped everyone with 23 players testing positive, or one more than what's officially required to lose a big home game to Pitt. That's in South Carolina, also being hit hard.
The NBA's building a single-city bubble in Orlando, the heart of Florida, which like Arizona had been seen as a potential haven for sports just a few weeks ago.
Even the NFL, which has pushed through like no other league, is starting to tiptoe. In the past week, the league and the players' union were put in the uncomfortable position of pushing back against Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's preeminent epidemiologist who'd suggested football would need its own bubble. And Cam Heyward, of all people, sent out his own waves by speculating that the Steelers and Cowboys would need to cancel their preseason Hall of Fame Game out of safety concerns.
“Having asthma and being a bigger guy, but I understand the risk, and I'm going to take all the precautions," Cam told us Thursday. “We’ll have to see in writing whether everybody else is taking the precautions, whether it be the staff or the bus drivers. It’s a lot of moving parts that have to go along with it. It can’t be something that’s rushed. I know the NFL and NFLPA have been working on this for a while. But there are so many things that have to be cleared before me and my family feel it’s acceptable for me to be playing.”
Eloquently worded as ever.
And nothing more powerful than this: It can't be something that's rushed.
I'm no epidemiologist. Heck, I can't get halfway through the word without the help of spellcheck. But I'll express these three things with confidence:
1. Coronavirus hadn't disappeared.
2. People were going to be stupid.
3. Athletes were going to be tested.
The first two should be obvious. Unlike in Pittsburgh, where we've all but eradicated the thing -- only 26 confirmed new cases in the past full week, zero deaths in nine days -- spikes were inevitable where people weren't taking an ongoing pandemic seriously. But once they do, and there already appear to be steps being taken, these spikes will settle. Just as they have everywhere else when addressed.
The third point, for some reason, doesn't seem as obvious. And I'm not sure why.
From the outset of this crisis, I've predicted that sports would be normalized once testing became normalized. It's always been about testing, testing, testing.
See that fresh photo atop this column of Matt Murray making a save yesterday at the Penguins' practice in Cranberry?
Know what Murray did not long before making that save?
Right. He had an 8-inch Q-tip rammed up his nose and halfway back into his brain. Just like everyone else who's participating in those skating sessions. And just like everyone will be before every practice, before every game the Penguins and Canadiens play at the chosen NHL hub city, or if/when the Pirates report to at PNC Park or when the Steelers report to Heinz Field.
Nothing that happened yesterday is news. Or remotely surprising.
Maybe the most common misperception throughout this crisis, and I'm speaking about the world and not just sports, is that a rise in cases is a singular cause for alarm. It isn't. Not by itself. Not without knowing if tests also increased. For example, when some folks in Western Pennsylvania were alarmed a few weeks back at reports of increased cases in our region, they actually should've been applauding, because that was big-time offset by an enormous increase in testing.
I mean ... the more you test, the more cases there are. Stands to reason.
How many of those 23 Clemson players would one imagine had been tested before returning to campus two weeks ago?
The university didn't release that, but here's betting it's close to zero. The administration did say it's conducted 315 total tests in that time and that 28 total individuals had coronavirus. And all that represents, for anyone who's paying attention, is pretty much the same ratio we've seen everywhere there's aggressive testing.
Oh, and there was this, too: The university acknowledged that the majority of those testing positive were asymptomatic, and that not a single one has thus far required hospitalization.
And yet, when you're blasted with the initial report, it sounds so awful, so foreboding toward a return to normal life.
My friends, this is normal life now.
Roughly half of all coronavirus carriers are asymptomatic. They're never aware they have it. It comes and goes, and they had not a clue. Go into the younger and/or healthier bracket, and that figure can rise as high as 80 or 90 percent. That doesn't mean their carrying isn't a threat to others, particular those older and less healthier, so I'm not diminishing it. Rather, I'm underscoring that the tests at Clemson were reflective of nothing other than the new normal.
I'll say the same for the Phillies and Matthews and the stuff at the pro level, and all for the same reason: Not one major league in North America has congregated yet in any formal setting. The closest anyone's come has been the NHL and NBA with these loose sessions and, because those have involved testing, there hasn't been a single issue with either. Matthews, I'll repeat, wasn't with the Leafs but was training on his own out in the desert.
Get everyone into controlled environments, and watch how this changes.
Picture this with me ...
Let's say you're Jack Johnson, if only because my scenario would never let you have more fun than that. You're with the Penguins in Columbus on the morning of Game 1 vs. Montreal. You wake up in a team hotel that's allowing no outside guests, you eat a breakfast that's prepared by chefs who are being equally quarantined, you and a handful of teammates arrive at Nationwide Arena on multiple buses managed by quarantined drivers ... and on your way into the building, you're still tested again.
That's real. It might not be the big Q-tip by then -- there are hopes for a quicker, easier saliva test -- but that's how it'll play out.
When you pass that test and enter that door, you are literally stepping into the single safest place on the planet.
We'll have sports. We'll get there.
To continue reading, log into your account:
