Strike One: Everyone close to high school athletics is still feeling the sting of losing the spring sports season. In my case, I had five seniors in my baseball program that’d I been with over the course of the last four years. These kids had worked their tails off during the off season in anticipation of us potentially having the best team/season in our school’s brief history. We were primed. Just like a lot of others, of course.
Then COVID-19.
I still hurt for those five young men.
Despite holding out hope that the powers that be might find a way to salvage some of the baseball season (we didn’t have any labor relations issues to overcome) if we pushed things back into the summer months, no one could make it work. Trust me, I tried. Playing fields are still under total lockdown in some places, and others are allowing only small gatherings for single team practices. No games. We had no where to play.
Except in Fort Collins.
Thanks to the efforts of the Fort Collins Baseball Club and cooperation from the City, who relaxed restrictions to allow 13 players in the home dugout and 12 in on the visiting side, they set up the “City Series Championship” featuring the city’s four big high schools – Fort Collins, Rocky Mountain, Poudre and Fossil Ridge. They played a round-robin tournament.
Fort Collins High won the event, but the real winners were the seniors from each squad that got to suit up and play for their school – against their rivals – one last time. Under these dire circumstances, it was a fantastic send-off for these young men.
I have to admit I was very jealous when I first heard of the plan. Why couldn’t we do something like this in other places? Other cities like Greeley, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Grand Junction…they could have done the same thing, right? And what about the Denver suburbs? There are like a dozen high schools in Aurora, right?
No one but those forward thinkers in The Fort could make it work.
To be fair, no one at the Colorado High School Activities Association or with any of the school districts had a “pandemic response” playbook at their disposal. There was no previous experience to fall back on. Everyone in a decision making position has consistently taken the path of least resistance during all this and been sure to err on the side of caution. No one decided that going out on any kind of limb as the best available option.
Loss mitigation.
Except in Fort Collins.
But still, if the folks in The Fort could be so forward thinking, and do such a great job of focusing on doing something special (while maintaining safety guidelines) for the Class of 2020, others in management positions elsewhere (there’s only so much we could do as coaches…trust me, we tried) could have as well.
Maybe collectively we’ll handle the next pandemic a little bit better.
Strike Two: Let’s go ahead and assume (and at the moment that would be a pretty huge assumption) that there is some form of a partial Major League Baseball season. Just humor me here.
Let’s say they do actually get the players on the field, minus fans and under a bunch of goofy looking new “guidelines” to protect everyone’s safety. Let’s say the Colorado Rockies do take the field at 20th and Blake at some point in July.
If they do play say a 60-game schedule or something close to that, and then are able to have some sort of expanded post-season (that should include a College World Series-style tournament) what would make the abbreviated 2020 season a successful one for the Rockies?
In other words, given all that’s happened, and all that’s going to (possibly) happen off the field after this season and next, what’s the measuring stick for a good partial year? Where’s “the bar?” What would make everyone happy and satisfied that the Rockies are back on track and that 2019 was an anomaly?
Given that the play-off field will reportedly be expanded to eight teams from each league, it’s hard to imagine that any of the 15 National League teams will be satisfied with not making the 2020 post-season. Nor should they be. Are the Rockies in the upper half of the NL?
This is a team that made the play-off two of the last three seasons. The same core is in place. They certainly should be a play-off team under these circumstances.
For the Rockies, the shortened season should help, actually. It will mitigate the lack of organizational depth. One of the big advantages the Los Angeles Dodgers have over the rest of the division is that their farm system is so deep and talented that injuries to key players don’t derail them. They just call up a top prospect from Triple A and plug him in. Works every year.
But fewer games should mean fewer injuries, along with putting less physical strain on the Rockies who are “forced to play half their games at high altitude.” (I’m sorry…but I still can’t get on board with this excuse, even if everyone at Coors Field does. But that’s a me problem.)
The old saying “if we can just stay healthy” always bothers me. No team in any sport ever “stays healthy” for a full season. Why even say that? But this won’t be a full season. That’s an advantage for a team like Colorado that needs all hands on deck to make the play-offs. They’ll have the advantage of having a guy like Charlie Blackmon become a DH, and the extra time off should give young Brendan Rodgers a chance to be 100% and ready to contribute. Less innings for the starting pitchers should benefit them as well.
Yes, the Rockies need to make the play-offs. The projected set up gives them a better chance to do so than in a typical season.
Then, when the next off season arrives, we might not get the Nolan v Bridich drama all over again.
That is, IF there’s a season at all. That’s a very big IF…
Strike Three: We’ve heard a lot about the NBA’s plan to go into the bubble at Disney World to isolate the players from exposure to the virus and try to finish off this season. And of course Major League Baseball’s often bumbling attempts to start their season has been front page news, too. But what about the NHL?
If we’re being honest, the NHL has handled this unprecedented situation better than any of the other North American sports leagues. Not much “breaking news” has leaked out only to be proven false shortly thereafter. Seems as if the league has been calm and calculating in its approach to dealing the virus and all that goes into restarting the season while dealing with it.
They’ve had and continue to have problems of course. The Colorado Avalanche are one of five teams that have reported positive COVID-19 tests among players and staffers. Most recently, with virus cases on the rise in Florida, the Tampa Bay Lightning have had to shut down their practice facility (again) after three more positive tests.
Still, with all this swirling around the NHL does apparently have plans for a re-start. IF these plans hold, there will be one exhibition game, and then it’s directly to the Stanley Cup Play-offs. We don’t know exactly where the games – minus fans of course – will be played since the league is not opting to have everyone gather in the same place as the NBA is. Hockey will gather their teams in “hub cities” to start with. If I were a betting man (and I’m not) I’d say Denver – given the stable situation here in regard to the virus – is a decent bet to be selected as a host/hub city. Official word will come out pretty soon.
Much like the NBA, these play-offs are supposed to start at the end of July. We’ll see if that holds, of course, because the league is being careful and not putting anything out there that’s set in stone. Good for them.
Remember, it will have been almost exactly four months since these players last took the ice by the time they report to “training camp” on July 10th. That’s a full off season. They get two weeks to get in game shape before they jump into games that count.
The Avs will enter the post season as the second-seeded team in the Western Conference. They were playing great hockey when the season was halted. They remain a legitimate threat to win the franchise’s third Stanley Cup – IF – play resumes and a full play-off schedule gets completed. They still have questions between the pipes, but everything else is in place.
The first six months of 2020 has been arguably the worst year any of us have ever lived through. How much would an Avs Stanley Cup run help remove some of the sting? Even though we couldn’t be there in person to see them lift the Cup, and we’d be strongly discouraged from attending a victory parade, and the rest of the Hockey world might – would – put an asterisk next to it, we wouldn’t have to.