What is even weirder than driving into a near-empty parking lot, putting on a mask before exiting your car, and walking into a near-empty Minute Maid Park on a Friday night after having your temperature checked?
Turning on the TV the next morning and seeing thousands of video game-like virtual fans flickering on the screen inside what was supposed to be a near-empty Wrigley Field.
Fake news: Meet fake sports.
Since mid-March, we have repeatedly been told by many of our national and local political leaders to stay in our homes and avoid the contact of other human beings. Safety and distance would ultimately save us.
Now that professional sports have finally resumed en masse, stuck-at-home fans have been replaced by pumped-in fake crowd noise, cardboard cutouts, oversized advertisements, huge video screens and virtual representations of the real thing.
Actual attendance is always preferred. But the new money spends just as well.
The NBA is playing inside a protective bubble. MLB started its long-delayed season by playing games inside 40,000- and 50,000-seat stadiums, with 99.99 percent of the seats unfilled. MLS is holding a tournament inside its own bubble atmosphere. The PGA, MMA, NASCAR, IndyCar and WNBA have all returned to action.
Many of the above professional athletes can enter, leave and re-enter their bubbles. You couldn’t get into one if you tried. And you probably have to wait a little longer for your coronavirus test results.
Without live sports, I often wrote about the return of sports. I now fully enjoy typing the words “Sports are back.” We need the distraction and inspiration. We need something.
But with America and the economy still so uneven and the coronavirus still limiting so much of what the country normally does, I was reminded more than ever this week that professional athletes live in an entirely different world than us.
Of course. That’s obvious.
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes recently signed a $503 million contract extension during an international pandemic.
Outfielder Mookie Betts signed a $365 million extension with Los Angeles before playing his first game with the Dodgers, during a time when his new home city continues to struggle with COVID-19.
Sports has been big, big business for decades, so the insane money is nothing new — and I would rather Mahomes and Betts get what they deserve than another $868 million for billionaire owners.
But even the most cynical observer would eventually admit that athletes, as a whole, currently look like 1 percenters, and normal, everyday Americans look like they’re stuck living real life.
The script wasn’t supposed to go like this.
Sports were going to return as the coronavirus faded away. Our return would follow.
Remember when the virus was going to last a few weeks or, at worst, a couple months?
Remember when the NBA suddenly stopped its season, but it felt like it was only a matter of time before The Association returned to packed arenas across the nation?
That last sentence is unthinkable right now. And the NBA currently can’t tell you when it expects to have fans back inside Toyota Center again.
For more than four months, we have been confined to the real world, trying to find a way through the daily madness and discover a path out of the national chaos.
Masks before everything, hand sanitizer after everything. Is it worth the risk of eating inside a restaurant or picking up take-out food? Is it worth the risk of being inside the same house as your parents, close friends or extended family members?
Work from home — if you still have a job — while teaching your children from home. Closed businesses, layoffs, furloughs, pay cuts, social unrest and political grandstanding … you know the 2020 drill. With the coronavirus still confusing, frustrating and enraging us, pro sports are out of our touch.
Athletes are taking serious risks daily. Just wait until the NFL starts cracking pads and sweat really starts flying.
It’s not their fault that they are playing inside near-empty stadiums and arenas. Athletes are following the rules, not making them.
But for all the uncertainty about whether MLB can actually complete its heavily abbreviated 60-game season and the NBA can finish the Finals inside the Florida bubble, there are levels and levels of protocols, procedures and planning that surround everything. There is a coherence to the new, sanitized sporting world that is still missing from the real world, almost 140 days after everything started to fall apart.
I love that sports are back.
Justin Verlander is pitching inside Minute Maid Park again. George Springer is swinging a bat. James Harden and Russell Westbrook are on the same court. Deshaun Watson will soon face Mahomes in person.
I just wish that we didn’t have to be so far away from it all.
brian.smith@chron.com
twitter.com/chronbriansmith
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