What a difference a year makes.
March 11, 2020: “NBA To Suspend Season Following Tonight’s Games,” the league announced at 8:46 p.m. in an official press release that instantly and drastically changed the sports world, just as the coronavirus pandemic was starting to become unavoidable in America.
March 10, 2021: The Rangers teased the possibility of packing their 40,518-seat stadium at 100 percent capacity in Arlington for opening day.
It’s hard to call Texas’ other Major League Baseball team crazy when the governor of the state abruptly ends mask requirements and allows businesses to again operate at 100 percent capacity.
It’s also clearer than ever that we’re getting closer and closer to how life was, in the sports and real world, before March 11, 2020.
Sort of.
When James Harden returned as a Brooklyn Net to Toyota Center last week, you still needed a mask to sit among a crowd of 3,615 in an 18,055-seat arena. And you’ll still need a face covering when the Astros return to Minute Maid Park on April 8.
But Houston’s MLB club announced Wednesday that it could increase the attendance allowed inside its ballpark when Dusty Baker’s 2021 team debuts against the Oakland Athletics in an American League West matchup.
Dallas owner Jerry Jones told reporters he plans to have a full venue next season when Dak “$160 Million” Prescott and the 2021 Cowboys play inside humungous AT&T Stadium.
And on the same day when MLB moved nearer to a fan-filled opening day and the NFL inched closer to an explosive free-agency period — following a full 16-game season and playoff slate that once seemed impossible — the NBA announced that among the 465 players tested for COVID-19 since March 3, only two new players returned confirmed positive tests.
For too long, something was better than nothing.
Now, something really is happening.
Real life became confusing, sci-fi surreal and ghost townish. It also became sad, distant, dangerous and deadly.
Sports disappeared for months.
Simply getting NASCAR and the PGA back on television was a huge deal. Remember when all the national and regional sports channels were forced to televise classic games (and not-so-classic games) because there literally was nothing going on?
But a year after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert spent way too much time in the international spotlight, optimism keeps refusing to go away.
It arrives in small, unexpected places. It’s often discarded by the latest daily annoyance or national controversy. But it keeps returning and shining through.
You might have to keep refreshing and refreshing a website, just to lose a potential first-dose spot for the 500th time in a single day. But there is a vaccine, the once unthinkable is gradually making its way across America, and the best things about the real world are returning again.
The same buzz applies to a sports world that we aren’t the same without.
I’m excited about the NCAA Tournament. Kelvin Sampson’s No. 7 Cougars, who keep looking more and more like a serious Final Four threat. Gonzaga, Michigan, Baylor, the Big 12 … and screaming at the TV because some small school just did something crazy against a big school.
I’m excited about baseball starting in April, again, and the grand ol’ game always being on the tube, inning after inning, day after day, month after month.
I also want the NBA regular season to end so the playoffs, the real season, can begin.
Was it all really that bad if it only lasted a year, 43-year-old Tom Brady won another Super Bowl, the NBA held an All-Star Game and an MLB stadium could soon be packed to 100 percent capacity?
1. It’s not over yet.
2. Yes, it really was that bad. And unbelievably surreal.
But here we are, one year later.
We’re fractured (politics, masks) yet united (the Texans are a mess).
We’re a week away from the first March Madness in two years and less than a month from the first real roar inside the Astros’ home since Game 7 of the 2019 World Series.
What a long, strange trip it’s been.
What a difference a pandemic year makes.
brian.smith@chron.com
twitter.com/chronbriansmith
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