Skip to main content

To be or not to be

By



I'm not sure if this is what the White House had in mind by staging sports events, but I supposed for so-called wrestling fans, WrestleMania in a virtual black box is better than nothing. Given that it is a staged event, Vince McMahon could have always gone with gameplay, which I imagine is what die-hard fans are playing right now.

Same goes for any other sport.  They all have gaming editions.  Madden Football is famous for predicting Super Bowls, although it seems it got a bit carried away here.  Given the high price owners pay for star athletes, it is only a matter of time before computer animation replaces the real thing anyway.

The President had called the commissioners of the various sports, plus Dana White and Vince McMahon, to discuss the matter.  People were a bit curious why Dana and Vince were included, since they are more promoters than they are "commissioners," but Vince had recently launched the XFL, a spring professional football league that had gotten a lot of buzz, but whose season was cut short after five games by coronavirus.

Trump could identify with that, as one of his many failures was convincing other USFL owners to compete head-to-head with the NFL back in the 1980s. He had bought the New Jersey Generals, led by Herschel Walker, and felt he could go up against the big boys.  Fortunately, Herschel would eventually have his day in the NFL.  It appears they kept up with each other over the years.

The NBA season is lost.  Ditto, the NHL.  There might be some hope in saving baseball and football, but with no spring training or practice both leagues would have to cut short their schedules to salvage anything out of this season.  That's also assuming coronavirus doesn't come back with a vengeance this Fall.

None of it really matters though when faced with a killer virus, but Trump seems to feel Americans need their favorite pastimes to serve as a distraction to all the horrendous news surrounding coronavirus.  He's still trying to be America's cheerleader.

The sports world in general has gone into hibernation.  Wimbledon has been officially called off, and I imagine the French Open and US Open will follow suit.  This is bumming out Roger Federer, who was hoping for one more major before calling an end to his long illustrious career.  This was probably Serena's last chance to catch Margaret Court.

Having the Olympics postponed until 2021 allows some of the younger athletes to come to the fore, but closes the window for gymnasts like Simone Biles, who was hoping to add to her Olympic glory.

Most teams and athletes are taking this in stride.  For some teams, it is actually a great opportunity to forget about their miserable seasons, like the Golden State Warriors, who were riddled with so many injuries that they had the worst record in the NBA.

Some enterprising persons actually staged a virtual March Madness, obviously a Kentucky fan here.  ESPN tried to be more even handed.  But, it just isn't the same thing.

This is what Wrestlemania found out.  Without adoring fans, the WWE is nothing.  One can imagine what Trump is going through not being able to soak in all that glory at his rallies.  Maybe someone should suggest a zoom party to him?




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order

By
A quarter of a century, however, is time enough to dispel some of the myths that have accumulated around the crisis of the early Thirties and the emergence of the New Deal. There is, for example, the myth that world conditions rather than domestic errors and extravagances were entirely responsible for the depression. There is the myth that the depression was already over, as a consequence of the ministrations of the Hoover Administration, and that it was the loss of confidence resulting from the election of Roosevelt that gave it new life. There is the myth that the roots of what was good in the New Deal were in the Hoover Administration - that Hoover had actually inaugurated the era of government responsibility for the health of the economy and the society. There is the contrasting myth (for myths do not require inner consistency) that the New Deal was alien in origins and in philosophy; that - as Mr. Hoover put it - its philosophy was "the same philosophy of government which...
170 comments
Read more