DHL Dan CXXXII - Lingering Pandemic

This fucking guy simply will not let up on Covid-19:

The pandemic still lingers, but it finally feels like a normal Hall of Fame weekend in Cooperstown, and other thoughts

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Picked-up pieces while waiting for David Ortiz to join Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, and Jim Rice in the Hall of Fame . . .

▪ Baseball’s Hall is an institution hit particularly hard by the death and disruption of our global pandemic. Ten Hall of Famers have died since the family of baseball last gathered here for a traditional induction weekend. It’s unclear how many of the Hall of Famers (if any) succumbed because of COVID, but the pandemic canceled the 2020 event and produced a makeshift, shrunken ceremony for Derek Jeter and fellow inductees last September.

At the risk of sounding like a cold-hearted bastard, it seems like the natural course of nature and human life expectancy for older men to pass away from one cause or another. That, however, doesn't stop Shank from suggesting a possible connection between their deaths and Covid-19, AKA the Wuhan Virus.

The Jeter induction had been expected to rival the record 82,000 gathering for Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn in 2007, but only 20,000 fans made the trek and COVID still lurked as Johnny Bench — who’d been scheduled to attend — had to narrate his video tribute from home because he’d tested positive.

The pandemic still lingers, but it finally feels like a normal Hall of Fame weekend as Cooperstown welcomes Big Papi, Jim Kaat, Tony Oliva, and deceased inductees Gil Hodges, Buck O’Neal, Minnie Miñoso, and Bud Fowler. The Parade of Legends is back on Saturday, and Sunday’s ceremony figures to generate a big-time turnout at the Clark Sports Center.

Fifty-four Hall of Famers have pledged to attend and many haven’t had a chance to see one another since the exclusive club lost members Al Kaline, Lou Brock, Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson, Whitey Ford, Joe Morgan, Phil Niekro, Tommy Lasorda, Don Sutton, and Hank Aaron.

So we have at least one survivor of Covid-19 and Shank insinuating / speculating its involvement in an unknown number of deaths amongst living Hall of Fame members. I just think it's a tad gouhlish, and part of the reason it still 'lingers' is media types like Shank who constantly bring it up at nearly every opportunity.

Lockdown Dan

I guess it's not much of a surprise to see that strains of health puritanism would make it to the Boston Globe's sports section, as Shank believes the BC Eagles shouldn't play football this fall:

The list of bad ideas introduced to Boston sports fans through the years is long and winding. The Red Sox once tried to sell us Jack Clark. Then Bullpen by Committee. Now they’re all about Payroll Flexibility. TD Garden officials thought it would be a swell idea to reconfigure seating in the lower bowl of the arena last year. Oh, and remember the campaign to bring the 2024 Olympics to Boston?

Now we have the crazy notion that the Boston College Eagles are planning to play their ACC football schedule this fall while our region tries to get back on its feet in the middle of a global pandemic.

For the record, the Wuhan coronavirus is now considered an epidemic, which is a disease less prevalent in a population than it is in a pandemic. I'm certain the CDC downgraded the virus to this epidemic status a month ago, but they don't seem very willing to advertise it explicitly (and easily findable) on their website. In any event, one of the tricks I don't appreciate the media playing is this exact sort of bullshit. By continuing to call it a pandemic they keep doing the media's Prime Directive, which is scaring the shit out of people.

What in the name of Buddy Garrity is going on around here? Who do we think we are — Clemson, S.C.? Odessa, Texas? Tuscaloosa, Ala.?

Seriously. I understand folks who live in football hotbeds going for this. But Boston, a place where absolutely nobody knows your name if you are associated with college football? Boston, a hub of science, medicine, high-tech, and deep thinking? We are going to have big-time college football here on autumn Saturdays in 2020?

So, if it's not popular we shouldn't do it? Like me not reading your newspaper?

We knew Harvard and Yale weren’t going to play this year. Same with the Patriot League, the NESCAC, and all the quaint little schools that play small-time college football. Those were easy calls. Even Division 1 pretenders UMass and UConn had the good sense to pack away the shoulder pads for the fall. Massachusetts high school football is also closed for the season.

But BC is planning to play North Carolina, Pitt, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, and Louisville in an empty Alumni Stadium. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that BC is going forward to protect its share of ACC TV money. The Eagles’ slice of the ACC pie is in the neighborhood of $30 million annually.

So, you overlooked that league affiliation thingy back there, didn't 'cha?

I won't bore you with the rest of it but he repeats the notion a few times - we're in Massachusetts, not Georgia or Florida and thus they shouldn't be playing. How dumb of an argument is that? By the way, that's the primary argument and health concerns are of a secondary importance. Just look at this bullshit conclusion:

We are Boston. We are about science and knowledge.

This is insanity. And it’s dangerous.

What is insane and dangerous is continued efforts to lock people down and restrict their freedom of association (or movement, at a physical level) and it all that entails in the name of a virus that is slightly more infectious and roughly as non-lethal as many of the others I've lived through. The widespread lockdowns and declaration of sizeable portions of the economy as 'non-essential' and thus forced to close shop is a) unprecedented in my lifetime, b) does have harmful side effects and c) will always be seen by me as a galaxy-class fuckup by those in charge of these measures, most of them fucking Democrats.

But let me instead talk about the players. It's bad enough there will be online courses (they simply aren't the same thing) but for all of them, they are also there to play football and if / when a few of them make it to the NFL or CFL, all the better. My buddy Eddie swears up and down that the experience of hanging in a college locker room getting ready for and playing college sports is like nothing else, and I don't doubt it for a second. Shank's position deprives them of this opportunity. To hell with that - let's get back to our normal lives, the sooner the better.

The Eck Weighs In On The 2020 Season

Shank mails in a column just before the start of the July 4th weekend:

Dennis Eckersley is not sure what to expect in this oddest of baseball seasons

To be fair, I don't think any of us know what to expect, except for empty stadiums that make the game less watchable than it already is.

He’s a Hall of Famer with an MVP and a Cy Young trophy in his den. He pitched 24 big league seasons and has been broadcasting Red Sox games for NESN since 2003. But at this hour, Dennis Eckersley doesn’t know much more about the 2020 Red Sox than anybody else. Eck never made it to Florida for any spring training games (the Sox played 21) and admits he has some catching up to do.

“[Expletive], I haven’t even thought about that team,” Eck said with a chuckle. “Seriously. I really haven’t thought about them. I was just about to join them in Florida when all this happened.”

Eckersley has been in California since the baseball world shut down along with everything else in mid-March. He’s planning to return to Greater Boston this coming week and hopes to be broadcasting all 60 Red Sox games along with Jerry Remy and Dave O’Brien when the season begins later this month.

These guys will be doing the games from NESN's headquarters, just to make the games a bit more awkward. Good luck with all this, Red Sox and Major League Baseball.

Silver Linings?

In a rare departure from normal business, Shank does his best to find some positives from the lockdown panic:

We are 11 weeks into our quarantined, gameless spring of 2020, and it got me to thinking about sports figures who have (inadvertently in most cases) somehow benefited from this scary, horrible pandemic. Truly this is a time with no winners, but we can identify a few teams and sports figures who’ve taken some positives from the daily darkness.

▪ NHL commissioner Gary Bettman Tuesday afternoon revealed his plan for the league getting into playoff mode. It turns out that eight teams that had no business being in the playoffs are going to be skating for the Stanley Cup because of COVID-19. This is no small break for teams like the Chicago Blackhawks and Montreal Canadiens that could advance when they didn’t deserve to be in the postseason.

This could be particularly galling for Bruins fans. We know that hockey is a sport where playoff upsets are the norm, and how’s it going to feel around here if the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Bruins get sent home by a Habs team that didn’t even deserve a playoff spot? Mon dieu!

And on it goes - as passive / aggressive as it gets. Robert Kraft, the Red Sox, the Patriots and David Ortiz get similar treatment.

Assimilated By The Borg

I really like him as a athlete, but this is just pure bullshit:

Gerry Cheevers says forget your ego and wear your mask — and he should know

You know, there just might be different reasons for wearing each type of mask...

More than 50 years ago, he put a mask on his face in the name of safety and he has no regrets. He thinks folks who resist wearing a mask during today’s pandemic are letting their egos get in the way.

Say hello to Gerry Cheevers, the 79-year-old Stanley Cup-winning goalie of Bobby Orr’s Big Bad Bruins in the 1970s.

"People that won’t wear the mask are underestimating the seriousness of this situation,'' says Cheevers, who lives in Boca Raton, Fla. "Put it on. That’s all you can say. Don’t resist it. Don’t let your ego get the best of you.

"It’s not fun having a mask on. But if you won’t do it, I think it’s egomania.''

If you're looking for a reason / justification for healthy people to be effectively quarantined in an unprecedented fashion by the mask measure (and all the other restrictions you're being 'asked' to follow), you won't find it here. And do you think Cheevers is walking around with his a) goalie face mask and / or b) the stupid looking one you need to cover your mouth and nose with? I know it's not the former. It's a weak and unconvincing column in the extreme.