Losing Spring Training is more crushing a casualty of Coronavirus than all the other sports combined

But first, a life update:

It feels irresponsible to start any message without the customary COVID-19 report. Home is great. Is it fun? No, but that’s okay. Doing what you’re told is never fun, but when you have loved ones in the high risk group, you do what is necessary for their health (even if they won’t do it for themselves).

I’m lucky enough to have the opportunity to continue working from home, but we shouldn’t let that small detail take away from what I am by staying home. I’m a damn hero.

However, the biggest beneficiary from this hiatus is Ares. Ares, as you may recognize from such fame as this website’s banner, is living his best life. Honestly, he is everyone’s publicly stated goals in this pandemic. He’s renewing his commitment to exercise, losing weight, getting phenomenal sleep and spending high quality time with loved ones.

Last, but certainly(!) not least, the wedding. We have found our venue! Literally (and I actually mean literally, very unlike when people say “literally” and mean “figuratively” which literally means the opposite of the word “literally”) everything else is to be determined. Part of that is due to our combined inexperience with wedding planning (it’s a first for us both) and part of it is due to there being nothing too sacred in this world for COVID to cast an invisible yet sinister shadow over. I wish luck to everyone else in a similar situation as us. Despite all this, I’m glad I get to weather it all with my beautiful, resilient fiancé.

On to the main event:

Let me start off by saying I was devastated by the indefinite suspension of the NBA season. Steph Curry just came back, we were guaranteed a new Western Conference Finals representative, and there were close races for the last playoffs spot in both leagues. I understand this is a relatively unpopular opinion, but I believe that Lebron deserves the MVP this year. (I also think it’s ridiculous that there’s only one MVP award.)

I won’t pretend that I know more than what I learn watching the Sharks collapse in the playoffs every year, but hockey does not have the same positive effect on the world as Spring Training does. And lastly, I’ll admit that postponing the Olympics is a terrible travesty in it’s own right. Quick history lesson: 1914, 1940, and 1944 were the only times the Olympics have ever been cancelled. Aside from these years, they’ve never even been delayed. For those of you paying attention, the only events that affected the timing of the Olympics were the World Wars … and COVID. What company.

However, even postponing the Olympics does not hold a torch (eh?) to the loss of Spring Training.

Impending good fortune

Spring Training is the land of optimism. It’s where dreams you didn’t realize you had are realized.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

This article was posted by The San Francisco Chronicle last year about Pat Venditte: https://www.sfchronicle.com/giants/article/Pat-Venditte-brings-his-switch-handed-13643870.php
In it, they go into depth on one of the recent signings of the offseason. Pat Venditte is a baseball unicorn. He can pitch with both hands. That’s like something out of fantasy. They even created a rule for him called the Venditte rule in which he must declare which hand he is going to pitch with before every at-bat and that he must use that hand for the entirety of the at-bat. At one point the author of the article, Al Saracevic, writes: “He’s a good clubhouse man and the ultimate bullpen Swiss army knife. Bochy should have fun plugging him into various situations.” I was absolutely ecstatic about the Venditte signing last season. He was not only going to be fun to watch, but a unique and effective asset for the Giants out of the bullpen.

In 2019, Pat Venditte pitched in two games, totaling 3 and 1/3 innings. His ERA was 16.40. ERA is a measure of how many runs a pitcher would give up in a game if they pitched the full 9 innings. This number is based on the rate at which they had given up runs to that point. In essence, this number means that based on his history, you could expect Pat Venditte to give up 16.40 runs if the Giants let him pitch the entirety of a 9 inning game. Granted, two games is a very small sample size, but its also absolutely terrible! With the way the Giant’s offense played last year, they would have lost every game Venditte pitched by at least 19 runs!

All jokes aside, only Spring training can create not only great optimism, but even expectations of a tremendous season from a 34 year old mythical creature who had pitched only 86 and 2/3 innings over parts of 4 major league seasons to a career ERA of 4.80. (For comparison, the average ERA across all MLB pitchers last season was 4.53 (which by the way was the 10th highest in a season ever!).) Suffice to say, our collective optimism was slightly misplaced, but at the time it felt so justified. Nothing else in the world (and yes I’m including Disney) can create a sense of impending good fortune like Spring Training can.

The end of the endless winter

My least favorite time of the year is from the second weekend in February till Opening Day (which keeps getting earlier, but is typically last week of March/first week in April). It’s the time when sports shrivel. Yes, there is a basketball game every other day (if we’re lucky), but that’s it. So barren is this tundra that the XFL – the land of professional football outcasts and wobbly “spirals” – has found surprising success by holding it’s season during this time frame for starving sports fans.

But then, like the beginning of The Lion King, light appears on the horizon. It’s only light, you can’t see the sun, but you know it’s coming. The trees start to come into focus, the antelope slowly rise. That is Spring Training. Is it the sun? No. But, it is the universal signal that the sun is coming, that the end of the endless winter is nigh. COVID-19 has enacted an unnecessary daylight savings time. Sure, the daylight might last a little longer to make up for the delay, but now we have to wait even longer to see, and all we’re getting out of it is some confused antelope.

Parting Thought:

I genuinely wonder during this time whether it would be more effective to convince people that they should act in self-preservation, or if it is best to convince them to look out for loved ones by not exposing themselves and acting as a conduit for transmission.