Life Without Sports

To say the last few weeks has been an extremely difficult time for most people is a huge understatement to say the least. The coronavirus pandemic has hit the U.S. just as hard, if not worse than any other country in the world at this time. This has been an extremely frustrating, difficult, and hopeless time in America. Many people are losing their jobs, family members, and sanity. This period of time will go down in history as one of the most challenging and overwhelming times anyone living in the world will have ever gone through. Not only, are thousands of people fighting for their lives against this deadly virus, but the whole country has gone on pause as well, and this includes sports.

As a big sports fan, I am missing out on some of my favorite sports and teams that I watch daily. Sports for me is a huge part of my life, not only, do I watch sports like the NBA, MLB, and NFL, but, sports are something for me that keeps my going mentally in times of distress and hopelessness. Watching sports by yourself, with friends or family is a great way to relieve some stress in hard times in life. Yes, sports are just entertainment for some, but for me they comprise of most of my conversations with friends, most of my time spent watching T.V., and most of my free-time surfing the web. Many weekends for me are spent with friends and family awaiting the next big sporting event or game to watch with each other. Not having that part of life anymore is very upsetting to say the least. I turn on ESPN just to see the new coronavirus-caused cancellations or replays of old sports games. The first big loss of March has been madness for sports fans… march madness, this month is usually an extremely fun time for college basketball and sports fans when set up their brackets an anxiously await for the end of every game in the tourney to see if their bracket was correct. Of course it is not only about brackets, many people go to see and support their favorite college team on their path to the trophy. Next, the MLB was supposed to begin their regular season yesterday March 26th, which unfortunately got postponed. When the MLB season starts it gives all baseball fans a release of happiness and joy knowing that they will be able to watch their team play on the daily for months. When the MLB season starts for it means a lot to me considering I have spent a great portion of my life playing baseball myself, and supporting the New York Yankees. Baseball has been an enormous part of my life ever since I started playing at a young age, and this is the first year I am not able to relive that opening-day sensation yet. The cancellation that was the most distressing to witness was the NBA suspending the rest of their season. NBA for me is my go-to sport of choice to watch on TV, youtube, instagram, and twitter. I follow season stats, team records, and award races all year, and this season was just getting very interesting with playoffs approaching. As a huge Lebron James fan, I am truly disappointed to not watch him continue balling on his MVP-playing pace. Along with his teammates performing extremely well, like superstar Anthony Davis; the Lakers were showing up this year despite all of the negativity and criticism from the previous year, leading their team to a potential championship this year, as they were leading the western conference in wins.

Of course missing sports is just one aspect of life for me and many others and does not even begin compare to some of the other losses and especially some of the stresses and anxieties that doctors, politicians, business owners, elderly populations, and in general, most humans living at this time are having to deal with. There is a massive anxiety-provoking uncertainty in the air on when life and sports will come back to normal. No one knows for sure how long this quarantine/self-isolation state will last, and people are becoming restless, bored, fearful, and hopeless. Of course, on the flip side, many people are using this time to learn, write, read, and transform themselves into better humans in general.