It’s odd when a business asks you not to patronize its establishments. But we live in odd times.
Today was supposed to be Opening Day across Major League Baseball. A day when baseball fans across the country turn their eyes toward their favorite team, feeling a renewed communal sense of love. We talk to our friends. We high five. We tweet. We get beers. We comment. We turn on our TVs. We find our seats. We smile.
We feel the spark of hope that comes from a season’s birth, however irrational that hope might be for a given ballclub.
But today is not that day. Because Major League Baseball, like the other major sports, and like so many cities, states, and businesses, has told us to stay away. Don’t come. Don’t congregate. Do not participate in gatherings that could aid in the spread of the novel coronavirus that could endanger the health and safety of the rest of the country. Those you love. Those you don’t know. Cubs fans. Brewers fans. Cardinals fans. Yes, even Cardinals fans.
Today is not Opening Day, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important.
Ultimately, today’s shuttering of baseball is a reminder – a really massive, timely, personal reminder – of what we’ve all committed to do. Yes, MLB may have issued it as an edict by suspending the season, but really, it’s a plea to all of us: make this shutdown worth it.
In keeping us apart, baseball is still bringing us together. And the more we stay apart right now, the sooner we can be together watching games.
We still have a community here. Here at BN, and, more broadly, here in the world of people who care about baseball. Today isn’t what it was supposed to be, but maybe it can still be an opportunity to sit together, in love of each other and in love of this sport.
And maybe we can still feel that spark of hope.