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March 12th, 2020 – a date that will live in Sports infamy
By John Cardullo, sportswriter
March 12, 2020! Over history few dates have stood the test of time, dates that when you hear them it brings you back to where you were and what you were doing when you heard about the event that happened that day. Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the assassination of JFK or RFK or Martin Luther King Jr. and yes. 9/11.
All these events were tragic days in our history, and they were life altering. Well thanks to the COVID-19 (or known as the Corona virus) March 13th will be another date that many will remember for a very long time because this was the day that the sports world stopped!
The world began to hear about the corona virus back in late December 2019, when a small city in China shut down because a flu strain took over the city. At the time very few of us paid much attention to what was happening. It was a minor mention on the national nightly news and most likely it would fade away in a week or so, or that’s what we thought at the time.
The people of the USA were focused on the holidays and the start of the winter sports teams that were about to kick in full time, high school sports, the Boston professional teams, and the Patriots were about to make another Super Bowl run, so who cares what’s happening in China? Little did we know that we all should have cared.
As 2019 turned into 2020 everything was going better than expected. The winter sports scene could not be gliding along any better, the Celtics and Bruins were having what appeared to be seasons that they would end up in the championship finals, the Patriots hit a speed bump and were knocked out of the play-offs but they made the play offs and there is always next year with the Patriots. The local college basketball season was in full swing and all the local team both men and women were doing alright. URI and Providence College grabbed the headlines but Bryant and Brown were getting their love as well, and hockey the P-Bruins were gliding along and the colleges and high schools were getting fan interest.
It was safe to say that the sports scene in Rhode Island was on top. Attendance was up, interest was high, and the winter was mild! All was right in the world – or was it? That little news blip about the virus in China was growing, and on the move; it was spreading across Asia into Europe and it seem to explode from the end of the nightly news to one of the top three stories each evening, right behind the Democratic primary and President Trump. There now was this virus that moved into Italy. Still no worries for the USA, it was still a half a world away.
As March began, everyone’s mind was on the play-offs. Locally, the high school championships began, the professional teams were rolling along, and the college teams were gearing up for the “BIG Dance”. In this region, sports, spring, and getting past the winter with no real weather issues made the 2019-20 sports season one of the best that this state has seen in years – and spring was going to be even better! That virus wasn’t a concern, or was it?
As the darkness of winter started to brighten up with the glow of spring, that virus, know as corona, jumped the oceans and invaded the United States, spreading like wildfire from the west and the east virtually at the same time. It went from a back story to the main story on every news source, every day. The American people who thought that it won’t arrive here, or we will develop a vaccine before it gets here convinced themselves that it wasn’t a problem.
In a blink of an eye it took over the United States, front page news, lead stories, concerns and borderline panic has engulfed the nation. Sports has taken a backseat, but the decision makers were determined to forge ahead and have the professional season run it’s natural course, the NCAA was going full throttle with the “big dance”, spring training was gearing up for opening day in April and locally the conclusion to the winter sports season was at hand with the championships of every sport ready to begin. We were going to beat this!
In an instant, it all changed. On March 12th. It began with an NBA player that contracted the virus and may have passed it on to teammates, opposing players, officials and fans. The realization that the virus was spreading everywhere and there was no real plan of containment. Real people were coming down with corona.
The elected officials had to make some tough choices to combat the disease, limit large groups in an area, encourage those who showed symptoms of the virus to stay inside their homes for a 14-day self-quarantine period. But it was too late the virus had spread too fast. So like Dominos, soon after the NBA suspended their season, as did the NHL, Major League Baseball stopped their spring training games and pushed back MLB’s opening day by two weeks, and even Major League Soccer stopped it’s season. The PGA cancelled the Players Championship and push the Master’s back to a later date as did the Boston Marathon. Even NASCAR pushed back several events. The NFL cancelled any off-season programs or meetings and all but shut down. Then in a move that caught everyone’s attention, the NCAA called off it’s famous March Madness National tournament for both Men and Women, this sporting event so closely tied to St. Patrick’s (which all celebrations and festivities have been cancelled as well) so there will be no conference championship tournaments, no national championship tournament and no National Champion crowned for the 2019-20 season.
Back here in Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Interscholastic League, who earlier in the week decided to continue to play its State Championships across the board by eliminating spectators at each event, in the hope of reducing the corona risk. But the virus spread into the schools, Saint Raphael’s first, then Westerly, and Cranston West. It was clear that the show cannot go on. It was a tough decision for the student athletes, especially for the seniors, so on that day, that date March 12, 2020 when all other sports stopped in Rhode Island it stopped as well.
Was it a popular decision? Probably not, however, it was the correct decision across the board, from the professional level to the minor league level to the college and high school level, down to the amateur and youth level, it wasn’t worth risking thousands of people’s health on a virus which has caused so much damage in so little time with virtually no research and no idea how to combat it. So, sports as we know it is on hold.
Sports that seemed untouchable, for many of us, sports got us through the good times and bad times of our lives, gave us hope, and something else to think about. The pause button has been pushed and we really do not know when it all will resume.
People often speak of the ripple effect, how one minor event causes a ripple in the water that continues to grow and expand, well we are seeing that effect right here and now.
A little known virus in China has expanded and made it’s way around the world and now it is here and in it’s wake it has done something that everyone thought impossible – it stopped sports from being played, it has made us adjust the way we interact with each other, it’s made us think is this it or is there something else? Chances are this will pass, and we will fall back to our daily routine, and yes, sports will come roaring back. But the date March 12th 2020 will always be remembered as the day that every sporting event in the United States stopped!
