Today, Major League Baseball begins its pandemic-shortened season. Basketball is set to return July 30, they will be playing inside the bubble at Disney World. None of this is without a paradox; What does that even mean in a country where the death toll is guaranteed to keep rising? Is any of it worth the risk if we don’t bother to enjoy the game?
I live in Los Angeles so my team is the Dodgers. My family are big baseball fans, they already had their mini-plan season tickets before everything shut down. My parents would have been there opening day. But now there are no people in the stands, they will be playing for an empty stadium. It's going to be interesting how this season goes.
Tonight, we plan to get one of our favorite sandwiches, Lanza Brothers, it's a small hole in the wall market downtown near Dodger stadium. We are going to try to enjoy opening day with some kind of sense of ritual that we normally do. The ebb and flow of life with my family kind of runs through baseball, when the baseball season starts we get excited and talk endlessly about our team and our players, having debates on the wisdom of our new signings and who is going have a good season.
All of this seems pretty trivial in the face of the crisis that we are still dealing with. But this pandemic is not the responsibility of the Dodgers nor my family to solve, we need to be safe and protect ourselves as best we can. And continue to live and find joy in life where we can. It will probably be weird for the first couple of games, but I am hoping the players and staff can stay safe and we can get back into some kind of fun that my family and myself usually have. We can give each other a hard time about silly things and enjoy some good food and a couple of laughs. Here's hoping that another shoe doesn't drop...
Day 1006: 5 Minute Freewrite: Thursday - Prompt: basket ball
