Sports Biblio Digest, 3.15.20: Sports in the Age of Social Distancing
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
Also In This Issue: The Stranded Stars of Wuhan FC; Hockey, Politics and “Treason;” Boxing and Race During the Cold War; Christoph Daum; Fantasy Baseball’s Lasting Legacy; The Man Who Made Babe Ruth
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My apologies for the delay getting this newsletter to you, and for it not being everything I’d like for it to be this week.
This most extraordinary few days across the world is unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed, even after September 11.
The crisis over the spread of the Coronavirus has caused not only the sports world to come to a halt, but virtually every part of daily life, for the foreseeable future.
I’ve spent these last few days updating my community news site with the latest; in my state of Georgia, my county is at the epicenter of the outbreak, and we’re only just beginning.
When I had some time, I went grocery shopping, only for there to be no produce, very few dairy products, and nothing in the way of paper towels, soap, bathroom tissue, etc.
I can get through the next week or so not needing anything else, but the run on supplies is unprecedented, at least in my experience. People are panic-buying because others are panic-buying, worried about the supply chain, and how long they’re going to be encouraged to hibernate.
When I asked a worker at my supermarket about their daily shipments, she noted that “there’s only so much at the warehouse.”
It could be like this for weeks, or longer. If there are any major sports taking place anywhere before June, I’ll be shocked.
As I’m writing to you now, “Selection Sunday” was to have taken place at this time in the United States, when the NCAA college basketball tournament brackets were to be unveiled.
That’s been called off, and it was another sporting entity, the National Basketball Association, that may have triggered the widespread reaction to the pandemic in the U.S. that might have taken place sooner.
When Utah Jazz player Rudy Gobert tested positive for Coronavirus, the league immediately suspended operations. The next day, the NCAA, which had said it would continue with its men’s and women’s basketball tournament without fans, pulled the plug altogether.
Following suit were the National Hockey League, Major League Soccer, English Premier League, The Masters, Boston Marathon, Major League Baseball, etc.
So here we are, with time on our hands, being urged to wash our hands all the time, practicing “social distancing” but without any sports to consume.
As the cancellations unfolded, a few pieces came along offering some historical context to the flu epidemic of 1918, and they’re instructive to pass along here.
While we’re all wondering about the plight of our favorite sports, consider what the National Hockey League, then only a couple years old, endured in cancelling the 1919 Stanley Cup finals between the Montreal Canadiens and Seattle Metropolitans.
An NHL player in that era later died, as did George Kennedy, the general manager of the Canadiens.
As the flu roared and American troops were helping to end World War I in France, the pandemic prompted the early ending of the Major League Baseball season. The 1918 World Series was subdued, known more for being the last title for the Boston Red Sox for 86 years, due to sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees.
Troops arriving in Boston to shove off for Europe helped spread the flu, and the ensuing chaotic government response has some echoes to what’s been unfolding in recent days.
The game of baseball’s history of response to outbreaks of illnesses hasn’t been very proactive, at least until now.
The reaction within the college football world, tied as it was to the military, during the 1918 flu pandemic changed the sport forever.
The surreal experiences of our own time may seem magnified, given the saturation of sports media, and especially the 24/7 nature of social media.
Some fans I know aren’t going to know what to do with themselves until the games are back on. Catch up on some sports book reading, I tell them.
For many sports-lovers today, their sports experiences are televised or virtual, conducted online and with others who rarely go to ball parks or arenas, congregating in living rooms and spare bedrooms and balconies with strong Wi-Fi. (I'm especially guilty of the latter.)
But sports are a communal ritual best experienced in the flesh, among the throngs of like-minded souls, with the noise and the rapture that only they together can produce.
Contesting sports without fans wouldn’t have made sense, even before the health experts said to shut it down altogether.
Likewise, many churches and faith communities worshipped online this weekend. My church service was streamed live on Facebook and we got PDFs of the bulletin e-mailed ahead of time.
The liturgy was majestic, as usual, and the hymns helped fill the soul. But without that crowd of congregants to share the spirit and joy of our faith, it felt a bit hollow.
You can’t properly say the peace and not be able to hug or shake hands.
All this will take some getting used to, and even after following the precautions, shutting down much of our daily interactions and with the good work of health experts, we may be months away from any return to any semblance of normal.
That’s because the reality of a new normal is just now sinking in, and we still can’t imagine what that may fully come to be.
A Few Good Reads
The soccer team from Wuhan, China, where the Coronavirus started, has been locked outside its native land since late January. As they continue their exile in Spain, where they had gone for preseason training, Wuhan players aren't sick, but they are tired of not being able to return home;
Nigel Pearson, manager of Watford FC, which is battling to stay in the English Premier League, doesn’t know if his team’s season can be salvaged, or what that might mean for its relegation fight. But he thinks delaying games to at least April 3 was the right thing to do;
Author Eric Nusbaum is optimistic about the community bonds that are strengthened by sports, and couldn’t have imagined games continuing without fans. “Spectator sports demand spectators . . . Sports are personal. And the absence of sports is personal;”
Seniors in college athletics experienced an abrupt end to their careers with the cancellation of NCAA sports for the rest of the school year, including a swimmer whose sportswriter father agonized with him;
Sid Hartman of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune is nearing 100 years old, and writes that while sports have stopped before, they’ve always been part of how communities and countries come together during difficult times;
Former New Books in Sports podcast host Bruce Berglund, author of a forthcoming book about hockey and globalization, discusses how several players on the 1950 Czech national hockey team were convicted of treason and did hard labor after their complaints about Soviet crackdowns that were beginning in earnest across the Iron Curtain;
From the U.S. Sport History blog, a look at intraracial rivalries, soft power and prize fighting during the Cold War;
From These Football Times, a look at the coaching career of Christoph Daum, who won a Bundesliga title with Stuttgart but whose life and career collapsed due to a cocaine addiction, and cost him a chance at leading the German national team;
Recently published, by McFarland Books, “The Man Who Made Babe Ruth” author Brian Martin’s biography of Brother Matthias, a Baltimore Catholic school teacher and coach who worked with the boy from a troubled family and showed him how to hit and pitch baseball, among other things;
It’s been 40 years since the launch of Rotisserie baseball by author Daniel Okrent, and his is a legacy that spawned the likes of Bill James and sabermetrics and many encyclopedic books breaking down numbers like never before.
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The Sports Biblio Digest is an e-mail newsletter delivered on Sunday. You can subscribe here and search the archives. This is Digest issue No. 197, published March 15, 2020.
I’d love to hear what you think about the Digest, and Sports Biblio. Send feedback, suggestions, book recommendations, review copies, newsletter items and interview requests to Wendy Parker at sportsbiblio@gmail.com.