Broken Hearts & Lost Games – How The Coronavirus Affected Me

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Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Jon Aiken, Oregon Sports News

I’m locked down at home in Tacoma with my family, trying like countless others across the northwest and the world to prevent anyone in my care from getting sick or spreading germs we may already possess to anyone else. These are truly unprecedented moments in our modern times.

And the thing is, I wasn’t even supposed to be home this week.

Months ago, while eating Thanksgiving turkey, my brother and I formalized plans to fly south and attend Seattle Mariners spring training games in person for the first time. It had been a bucket-list item for both of us for years and the time had finally come to mark it complete. We wanted to get an up-close view of the building blocks that compose the in-progress Mariners rebuild.

But then Coronavirus hit the Pacific Northwest, the west coast, and then the entire country, and it changed literally everything. In just the last few weeks, we’ve seen concerns escalate dramatically, cancelling events of all scales and scopes for an unknown length of time.

Among this myriad of cancellations, which included monolithic events like SXSW and the in-progress NBA season, Major League Baseball joined the swell of public health concerns and postponed its season. While I fully support and agree with the decision, I can’t help but mourn the week that almost was…

Sitting on the grassy berm in the outfield, soaking up the blue skies and 80° sunshine, and watching hours of meaningless baseball games with a few thousand fellow fans. It was going to be perfect.

You want to know how perfect?

We weren’t going to fly into Phoenix—oh no. We were going to fly into Palm Springs. Why? So that we could rent a convertible (Mustang or equivalent!), pick up our father, and drive out to the desert together at 85 mph. That’s a glorious image.

But it’s all gone now. The dream vacation, the spring training games, the start of the regular season… gone. Everyone’s normal, day-to-day routines like work, school, and social groups… also gone. But will it come back any time soon? Nobody knows for sure, but we’re all certainly hoping it does.

The Coronavirus pandemic has changed almost every aspect of regular life, and unfortunately, I fear this is just the beginning of the changes coming our way.

Unless the social-distancing and self-quarantining practices we’re all supposed to be adopting are sufficiently upheld, we’re in for far greater levels of lifestyle cancellations. So, if you or someone you know is still going out to clubs and parties, STOP! Your moronic selfishness is going to cost lives.

Will we see baseball in 2020? Yeah, probably.

Will they play a full 162-game season? Um, maybe not.

Will the Astros still be cheating scumbags regardless of how many games are played? Absolutely, yes.

As the Coronavirus plays out around the world generally, and across the sporting world specifically, one thing is beyond a shadow of a doubt, crystal clear to me … My spring training dream will have to wait until 2021. Hopefully, the Mariners product on the field should be even better by then.

Go Mariners!

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