The Year of Hope

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DOUGHBOYS
Posts: 13088
Joined: Sat Feb 05, 2005 6:00 pm

The Year of Hope

Post by DOUGHBOYS » Wed May 27, 2020 9:13 am

I've had three conversations over the last 24 hours with baseball and fantasy folks who have said this....
"If baseball is not played this year it will be...(insert word here) devastating, horrible, deplorable, catastrophic...all, 10 cent words.
I've disagreed with each soul.

Baseball has already been mostly cancelled from Little League to the Minors.
THAT is devastating.
No growth in baseball in America for a year.
Our sport could hardly afford to be stagnant for a year. It's not exactly this generation's number one game.
But stagnant it will be.
Unfortunately, baseball fans have become elitists and selfish.
As long as the Major League game is played, they feel better.
Even if there is no chance of attending a game!

Even with a possible second coming of a virus.
Even with a shortened schedule.
Even with no fans.
Even with the players and the season in danger of being stopped by a rising thermometer.
We're selfish. We want what we want.

And now, it's worse.
The Blame Game can start.
If the season had been wiped away by a virus keeping us indoors for six months, suddenly, the loss of baseball would not have been devastating or deplorable.
It would have been the "It is, what it is" reaction.
Not now.
Now, we have people to blame.
For some reason, having people to blame gets our fires going.
Since people can "fix" this problem now, dammit, we want this problem fixed.
PLAY BALL! is the only things on our minds.

But, in order to play ball, we the fan, have to depend on....
1. The owners who will make very little money with a return to the field without fans.
2. The players who have enough money to stay home.
3.The lawyers who have their own agendas.
It sounds like we're screwed, right?
But usually, common sense and even humanity wins out.
We have to depend on that common sense coming from one or more of these three groups.
It's certainly not guaranteed.

2020 will go down in history as the year of the virus.
For us living through it, a year of perpetual hope.
Most of that hope pertains to getting back to our normal lives.
We've all lost a lot already.
In a baseball sense, we've already lost baseball from Little League to the Minors.
Few see that as devastating.
Losing baseball at the top will not be devastating either.
It will just be another loss chalked up to this year.
But, this is a year of hope.
Let's hope that something can be done to salvage the season.
On my tombstone-
Wait! I never had the perfect draft!

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