COVID-19 has robbed our young athletes of joys they can never get back

When you become an adult it doesn’t take long to look past the (high school or college) games. The memories become about the locker room, the bus rides, the bench and the road trips. The memories are about the teammates, not the team. Even teams that played can’t get a lot of this back.

I hate to throw a stink bomb into the middle of this thread, but myself and many of my friends got drafted and send to Vietnam, so forgive me if I lack empathy here. But it is a game for God sakes.

@Good Knight posted:

I hate to throw a stink bomb into the middle of this thread, but myself and many of my friends got drafted and send to Vietnam, so forgive me if I lack empathy here. But it is a game for God sakes.

There was a recent article about an 87 year old woman who, when she was 12, spent two years hiding from the Germans in a 4'x5' space in a barn with 8 other people.  She talks about how Covid is taking her elder years. She wrote:

But there is no comparison of anxiety, of the coronavirus, to the terror I felt when I was a child. That was a fear with no boundary. This is going to end, and I am already thinking, planning where I am going first, what I will do first, when this ends."

I am very sad that our kids lost a year of sports and school, and I thought CA way over-reacted in banning even outdoor activities for 12 months.

But, everything in perspective.

Thank you for your service @Good Knight and I completely agree with your take and @DD 2024's post. Three of my kids were impacted, including one who's team had a chance for the deepest NCAA run in their school's history, and all three of them were able to put the COVID restrictions into perspective, put their nose to the grindstone and make something of it. Not having sports wasn't great but our focus should be on people who lost their life, their health or their livelihood. 

@Good Knight posted:

I hate to throw a stink bomb into the middle of this thread, but myself and many of my friends got drafted and send to Vietnam, so forgive me if I lack empathy here. But it is a game for God sakes.

You must have skipped the first paragraph.

@RJM posted:

You must have skipped the first paragraph.

Everything in perspective and then 15 paragraphs about missing sports - ?

Seems like a non sequitur.

I need more time for normalcy before I can lament on our losses.   

Sometimes I wonder if this site is still about baseball...... thanks for sharing RJM.

I heard Texas and Mississippi are going back to business as usual....how is that affecting sports there?

@Shoveit4Ks posted:

I heard Texas and Mississippi are going back to business as usual....how is that affecting sports there?

I don't think it has any major impact outside a few inconveniences at this point.  We are in an adjacent state with some modest restrictions in place, and short of a few masks around, and counting people at the gates (they still haven't turned anybody away), I don't see much of a difference.

@Viking0 posted:

I don't think it has any major impact outside a few inconveniences at this point.  We are in an adjacent state with some modest restrictions in place, and short of a few masks around, and counting people at the gates (they still haven't turned anybody away), I don't see much of a difference.

So Louisiana has not limited the number of fans at athletic events?  The LSU baseball game I watched the other day had very few fans in the stands.  I was wondering the same as ShoveIt4Ks.  We live in Sc and everything is limited and my son has played in TN and GA and both places have been sold out with about 25% capacity.  We had to buy season passes so that our family could watch our son's home games.  I'm hoping SC and Tn follow suit but who knows.  Texas A&M still shows limited seating for their upcoming games.  Anybody know if this will change?

Most schools both college and high school in Texas have not announced the changes they will make yet. I am certainly hoping for some increase in attendance.

Thanks for sharing the article. I think it is crazy to minimize the loss to a lot of these kids.  It isn't a contest.  I have had some pretty big tragedies in life, that doesn't mean that it wasn't painful to see my kid lose a season, a graduation, all sense of normalcy for a year.  There are a lot of kids, that sports are all they have.  Maybe their only way out of a bad situation, or the only chance for college.  We can all compare our hardships in life or just appreciate that everyone's situation was different and this affected them in different ways and it sucked.

@PitchingFan posted:

So Louisiana has not limited the number of fans at athletic events?  The LSU baseball game I watched the other day had very few fans in the stands.  I was wondering the same as ShoveIt4Ks.  We live in Sc and everything is limited and my son has played in TN and GA and both places have been sold out with about 25% capacity.  We had to buy season passes so that our family could watch our son's home games.  I'm hoping SC and Tn follow suit but who knows.  Texas A&M still shows limited seating for their upcoming games.  Anybody know if this will change?

I think some of the College rules are stricter than the statewide ones.  Also, in some away games in certain cities, things are stricter.  Locally, it wasn't as if early HS baseball were packed in years past, so I guess they haven't hit the 50% capacity (I think it will actually go to 75% this weekend).  There is plenty of room for those who don't like sitting near people when watching their kids play (such as me ... I don't even sit with my wife usually, who likes to gab with the other moms.....).

For HS in southeast FL I've seen a wide range of spectator rules from no limits at all to one guest per player. My son's school has increased from 3 to 6. I honestly have no idea how they come up with those numbers. So far only one school has actually verified who you are in attendance to watch.

I know our HS baseball is not limiting in our town because we have a huge hill that people can sit on so our seating capacity is great and we have never filled it.  Some of the teams we play have already set it up to limit seating to only parents.  Which means one night anyone can go and the next night when the same teams play each other it is limited.

UT and GSU both have sold out.  Very limited seating and sad part is there are people who want to get in that can't because the seats are all either family or reserved seating.  The good part for me may be if they keep it up I will definitely get my money back for my reserved seats since we play LSU, Vandy, Florida, Arkansas, and Kentucky at home and those seats are selling for $180-250 per seat because the visitors have to buy from season ticket holders to get in unless something changes.

Side note:  Everyone see where Kentucky high schools gave a year back to everyone this year who wants to come back.  Rumor is Tennessee is considering the same thing.

@Viking0 posted:

I think some of the College rules are stricter than the statewide ones.  Also, in some away games in certain cities, things are stricter.  Locally, it wasn't as if early HS baseball were packed in years past, so I guess they haven't hit the 50% capacity (I think it will actually go to 75% this weekend).  There is plenty of room for those who don't like sitting near people when watching their kids play (such as me ... I don't even sit with my wife usually, who likes to gab with the other moms.....).

I can tell you with absolute certainty that at least SOME colleges have tighter rules then the states they reside in.

I think from my perspective this is such a huge loss for a few reasons,

- it effects everyone, all sports, all activities, all lives.

- it is mental, physical and social.

- it is by a large measure self inflicted

I did a quick search, from 1964 to 1973 - 10 years. 2.2 million young men were drafted out of 27 million eligible. I by no means intend to diminish that sacrifice but it doesn't have the impact that the past year has due to sheer number of individuals directly suffering from it.

I didn’t realize there would be a political reaction to this article. The memories do matter. You're an adult for a long time. You’re only a junior and senior once. Kids don’t get to retrace their steps and redo their childhood.

If we want to take a political angle on the story self harm is up 330% among teens in the past year. Overdoses are up 119%. Depression is up 94%. Anxiety is up 84%. If kids had their extra curricular activities from sports to other school activities to after school jobs do you think the numbers would be different?

@PitchingFan posted:

Side note:  Everyone see where Kentucky high schools gave a year back to everyone this year who wants to come back.  Rumor is Tennessee is considering the same thing.

A year back for what?  Just for sports?  That's kind of putting the cart before the horse.  Really, they should allow kids a year extra of school in general, if they were online all year.  That would play havoc with budgets, but think of all the kids who haven't learned much this year.

“…our focus should be on people who lost their life, their health or their livelihood.”

Eh, that sounds good on paper.  It’ll give us warm fuzzies, but people lose their lives, health and livelihood each and every day – pre-Covid, during Covid and they will post-Covid.  Yet do we put on our focus on them?  Nope.  Here and there a little, but for most part, we focus on all the – still very real – struggles and obstacles of our own lives. And our family and friends.  That doesn’t make us bad people.  Nor does focusing more right now on Covid-related loses make us more virtuous.  Is a Covid-related death any more tragic than when my 8 year old niece lost her battle with brain cancer in 2019?  Nope.  Yet no one was out then telling people they should focus more on children who lost their lives, health or livelihood due to brain cancer.  The powers-that-be leverage the massive numbers of Covid deaths in such a way to try to convince us it’s somehow worse than dying from other things.  They prey on and exploit the spectacle of size. Almost 2,000 US children die every year from cancer, so you’ll never hear a peep on any network, in any speech or any platform about them.  Sorry, kids.  You 2,000 precious lives don’t make the cut. Call us when we can politicize you and turn your tragedy into a talking point.  Until then, you're no Covid.

I’ve been saying this since last spring – Covid deaths don’t own a monopoly on tragedy.  Tragedies come in all shapes and sizes and no one gets to say how the other 332 million of us can feel about them.  @Good Knight  I sincerely appreciate and thank you for your service and sacrifice, but being drafted (both my fathers were as well) and sent to Vietnam does not make it any more virtuous in drawing thresholds for empathy for others.  There are hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths here in the US and that’s absolutely horrific by every measure.  But there are also hundreds of millions – likely billions – of other lower-level tragedies and sufferings here each and every day that are very real and very hard for many to ignore/escape from.  Stack up 163 “mini” tragedies over the course of a year and you might find yourself standing on the edge of bridge ready to end it all.  We can’t go up to that person say “dude, it’s just game. Suck it up until you know what real suffering is.”  Perspective is key and wholly virtuous, but it is not some magic wand that simply erases every lesser loss.  It looks like Shaughnessy understands that.

Worse than Covid. But not as newsworthy. People are crazy about masks. But I don’t walk up to people in restaurants and tell them that’s the heart attack special they’re eating. I don’t tell people, “Lose some weight for your own good you lazy, slack ass.”

A person dies every 36 seconds in the United States from cardiovascular disease. About 655,000 Americans die from heart disease each year.

https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm

Danj I did not claim any virtue because I have little. What I said was let's not confuse real problems with baseball!

@Good Knight posted:

Danj I did not claim any virtue because I have little. What I said was let's not confuse real problems with baseball!

Is a 334% increase over the past year in teen self abuse a real problem? 119% increase in drug overdoses? 94% increase in depression? 84% increase in anxiety? Do you think there’s any connection between canceling school and extracurricular activities and these numbers?

The logical thing would have been to quarantine the elderly and those in poor health, and let the rest of the population get on with life.  Covid is a non-issue for young people.  What we have done, and continue to do, is ridiculous.

@RJM posted:

I didn’t realize there would be a political reaction to this article.

Sure. Because no other COVID link has ever had a political reaction.

@Smitty28 posted:

The logical thing would have been to quarantine the elderly and those in poor health, and let the rest of the population get on with life.  Covid is a non-issue for young people.  What we have done, and continue to do, is ridiculous.

they couldn’t beat the bad orange man without a crisis.

I am sorry that this has become political. It was inevitable.

I look back daily and wish that we would have known how better to handle the virus.

I am in agreement with anotherparent.  What is more important is the lost education. You dont need sports to compete against the world stage, you need educated individuals. So many lost out this year, there are dozens if not millions of poor households in America that dont have wi fi. How did they expect them to learn. And they lived in places that couldnt give a crap about them.  I think you might find those places with higher youth cases of suicide and crime. JMO

I get it about losing out in sports. Fortunately, after a regroup, sports continued here. My son in law traveled every weekend up north this summer with his son for LaX tournies. Summer baseball was played and HS sports are happening. We are lucky we live in a place where you can be outside.

I have had my vaccination, but still required in my county to wear a mask. In my community you can be fined $25 for no mask.  I have no problem with that. I am happy to see seniors out and about and not afraid to live what life they have left.

Here is my problem in this topic. How the HECK does the greedy SEC get off charging so much money for tickets? $180-250 a seat for visitors? What are regular prices? Student prices?

Are they in financial trouble?  Come on man, this is a time that people need to go out and enjoy themselves and be outdoors. Everyone, not just those with extra bucks.

Most programs have limited seating due to county regulations. Here in Boca Raton, season tickets went quickly. Seperate tickets are sold old immediately each week. They are $10 each no matter where u sit. Players and coaches get 4 free tickets. If they dont use them they share among themselves. Visiting team allowed a certain amount, same price $10. I think students are free but limited. Most students not on campus take virtual classes.

Maybe I am misunderstanding, I know certain teams sell out, but at what price and who are they really hurting?

When weighing the risk of conducting school and school activities versus sheltering and shutting down, I think what has not been considered strongly enough is that the hallway, the cafeteria, and the locker room are nearly as important in the education process as the classroom. One could argue they are more important.

I don't believe the "greedy" SEC, or their member schools, are charging $180-$250 for seats to baseball games.  Season ticket holders may be getting that on StubHub and the like, but the SEC isn't getting that money.  Just regular old supply and demand for people with supply getting what they can from people with demand. 

We prioritized old people ahead of young people.

I'm old.  Most of my old friends seem to think it's good that we prioritized the old ahead of the young.  I don't.

My go-to metric is Total Years of Life Lost; not total fatalities.

Thank you 9and7dad.  It is called supply and demand.  When the big boys come to town and can't get tickets to see a ballgame people are willing to pay.  it is happening all over.  I looked at several mid-major schools and their bigger archrival games are getting similar prices for tickets.  The season tickets cost the same as always but the supply and demand process has kicked in and if you are wanting to go watch a game then you will have to pay that amount to get in.  I bought mine to make sure that my son's family and friends could come watch him but have almost made my money back on the first few weeks because we sold the ones that we were not using for $30 a seat which was the cheapest of anyone.  Sold two days last weekend to fans of our opponent that live in Knoxville.

The midweek game this week for UT is not doing a pass list and there are no tickets available.  I reckon I will just hope that he does good this weekend and does not travel for the midweek game.

@9and7dad posted:

I don't believe the "greedy" SEC, or their member schools, are charging $180-$250 for seats to baseball games.  Season ticket holders may be getting that on StubHub and the like, but the SEC isn't getting that money.  Just regular old supply and demand for people with supply getting what they can from people with demand.

Well ticketmaster, stubb hub etc make money from service charges.  But that was not what was stated.

I guess the ticket holders are doing quite well.

I hope it's not an impermissible benefit.

So I took two SEC programs with availability at both stadiums, same section. One was UF, home game, 80 dollars less in a brand new stadium, then the other stadium they would be playing a few weeks later.

Bringing this back to the OG's post, Covid was, and is a political football used for control. For the most part, a population was controlled with F.U.D. and that was leveraged to win an election.

Not to worry, Team Vaccine is here to save us.

@Go44dad posted:

Not to worry, Team Vaccine is here to save us.

Thank goodness!

Lol

Per @TPM What is more important is the lost education. You dont need sports to compete against the world stage, you need educated individuals. So many lost out this year, there are dozens if not millions of poor households in America that dont have wi fi. How did they expect them to learn. And they lived in places that couldnt give a crap about them.  I think you might find those places with higher youth cases of suicide and crime.

I will respectfully disagree with you here.  Education comes in MANY forms.  Some of the most educated and truly smart people don't have diplomas hanging on their walls.  Yes, for many (and thank God), sports help educate lots and lots of people.  Real world usable skills are developed and honed in sports and they aren't skills associated with exit velos and spin rates.  Ask any adult who participated in athletics which was more important to their success post-high school: calculus and knowing the 50 state capitals or experience working with different personalities and overcoming adversity.  Baseball IS a game.  But it is SO much more.  For anyone who honestly believes activities like sports are simply frosting, you're missing so much.  Too much.  The game IS a just a game.  The experience, however, is worthy of a diploma/degree itself.  And it's not just baseball/sports.

While I appreciate the problems associated with poor households not having access to wifi/education, ask those who were fortunate enough to be able to learn remotely.  While it's better than nothing, it's just slightly.  I have a 17 year senior boy and a 14 year old 8th grade girl.  Their district has lots of money, so each kid 7th-12th gets issued an Apple laptop every year.  The money and technology is there and both my kids are candid in saying they're receiving not education.  These are regular kids with access to some things that a lot are not, yet they'll look you right in the eye and tell you it's garbage.  What kind of 14 and 17 year old has the wherewithal at those ages to recognize that their education over the last year has been a joke?  I wasn't able to reflect back on the quality of my high school education until I was in my late 20s.  Because I didn't have 2 items to compare.  But these kids have had front row seats to pre-Covid and present-Covid education.  My kids have told me that cheating is now so easy that everyone is doing it.  Even the smart kids.  Think about that for a moment.  My kids have been back full time at school since January and the education is no better.  Because about 20% of the student population has elected to still remote learn.  It turns my stomach, but my senior son has something very close to no real education for the 2nd half of his junior and 100% of his senior year.  It's the easiest thing in the world to say that "it's better than nothing," but if you dig into it all and really inspect what is going on, you'll see that those getting it and those unable to are almost equally handcuffed by what we've done.

Well, this was my point.  Instead of giving only athletes back a year, to make up for the time that was lost, they should offer ALL students back a year, to make up for the education that was lost.

Per @TPM What is more important is the lost education. You dont need sports to compete against the world stage, you need educated individuals. So many lost out this year, there are dozens if not millions of poor households in America that dont have wi fi. How did they expect them to learn. And they lived in places that couldnt give a crap about them.  I think you might find those places with higher youth cases of suicide and crime.

Danj,

I will respectfully disagree with you.  In short, lost education means lost employable skills in a global market place.  Our country continues to fall behind in education and technical skills around the world.   Baseball and athletics employ very talented few in the world.  Education is the big picture.

@fenwaysouth  We agree that education is the big picture/key.  It seems that we might disagree somewhat on what meaningful/quality education actually consists of. We also agree there are very few jobs available in baseball and athletics.  If getting kids ready for jobs in baseball and athletics is what you extracted from my post, then I failed miserably in articulating my point.

I've been in hiring management for 15+ years now and few are actually bringing skills that can make immediately impacts, if ever.  Countless kids are spending $100K+ for degrees in things like criminal justice and quickly finding out that there are only a dozen "CSI-style" jobs in most cities.  So they come to me and we train them in things they never learned in 4 years of college.  And we do a good job at that.  Where these kids are wholly UNSKILLED, are things like working well with conflicting personalities, dedication, loyalty, integrity, overcoming adversity, problems-solving skills, coping with failure, deductive reasoning, accountability, etc.  Xs and Os can be taught at any point and are done so fairly easily.  A central component to most classroom "learning" is little more than temporary memorization.  The skills I just listed above are an absolute bear to teach and few are getting exposure to them despite massive amounts of time and money pouring into our universities.

@Iowamom23 posted:

Sure. Because no other COVID link has ever had a political reaction.

The thing is several of the political reactions are of the cancel culture nature. The article is about what kids lost versus the thrills the writer had as a high school athlete. Then some posters felt the need to compare the relevance of high school sports to war, death and education. It doesn’t change the kids missed out and it’s too bad. The writer even discounted his perspective relative to the big picture.

@fenwaysouth posted:

Per @TPM What is more important is the lost education. You dont need sports to compete against the world stage, you need educated individuals. So many lost out this year, there are dozens if not millions of poor households in America that dont have wi fi. How did they expect them to learn. And they lived in places that couldnt give a crap about them.  I think you might find those places with higher youth cases of suicide and crime.

Danj,

I will respectfully disagree with you.  In short, lost education means lost employable skills in a global market place.  Our country continues to fall behind in education and technical skills around the world.   Baseball and athletics employ very talented few in the world.  Education is the big picture.

I am so glad that you get it. 

IMO in order for most people to succeed in life they need to be educated AND they need to know how to compete. It takes both. That’s the beauty of playing team sports in college. It’s a metaphor for life and prepares student athletes for the challenges and the pitfalls of life. There are plenty of educated people who don’t know how to compete and underachieve in life. The misrepresentation of the Covid19 virus, and the bad decisions made because of misinformation, have badly hurt student athletes by taking away BOTH the ability to compete AND the opportunity to learn in a classroom. Both are damaging.

@fenwaysouth you get the Cadillac El Dorado @RJM you get the steak knives.... everyone else, You’re Fired!

#ABC

#CiFC

😂😂😂

@Shoveit4Ks posted:

@fenwaysouth you get the Cadillac El Dorado @RJM you get the steak knives.... everyone else, You’re Fired!

#ABC

#CiFC

😂😂😂

A lifeline for those who get this.

Sadly ABC is spring sports at the Ivies

Don't get the initials, shove it 4ks, but that is one of the great scenes ever.

If anyone hasn't seen it here it is, and if you have seen it, watch again.  Great late Friday entertainment.   7+ minutes. Mature audiences: Language

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrhSLf0I-HM

#CiFC = Cellular Intrinsic Fiber Cementum?

This is fun, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_vSirIJEsY

@adbono posted:

IMO in order for most people to succeed in life they need to be educated AND they need to know how to compete. It takes both. That’s the beauty of playing team sports in college. It’s a metaphor for life and prepares student athletes for the challenges and the pitfalls of life. There are plenty of educated people who don’t know how to compete and underachieve in life. The misrepresentation of the Covid19 virus, and the bad decisions made because of misinformation, have badly hurt student athletes by taking away BOTH the ability to compete AND the opportunity to learn in a classroom. Both are damaging.

Have to say, there are plenty of successful people who did not play college sports.  However, if what baseball teaches is how to deal with life's curveballs, then I'd say that this group of kids has been thrown a fat one.  How will they deal with it?   Will it make them stronger and better, or will they feel sorry for themselves for the rest of their lives?  Seems to me that that's the big question, and I don't know the answer, even among my own kids.

Laying political blame is not going to help anyone come out of this better.  That's making excuses.  You have to ask, "how are you going to use the time that you thought would turn out differently?"

And, I've got 3 kids who have all been impacted in different ways.  But, HS sports are being played this year.

I've avoided this site for 6 months.  I'll probably avoid it indefinitely after this, but expect that I may be banned and my post taken down.

First, I have several family members and close friends that have served in our military and I respect them all.  Any life lost is tragic and please correct this if I'm wrong, but I think we lost about 60,000 soldiers in Vietnam between 1954 and 1975.   I don't think you can directly compare the two, Covid and Vietnam, but we lost  about an extra 70,000 people under the age of 54 in 2020, and that doesn't include any of the numbers over in 2021 so far.

I got Covid shortly  after I stopped posting here about 6-7 months ago.  Covid made me the sickest that I've ever been, and I am in shape, and I don't mean in shape for 50, I mean really in shape, Jack LaLanne type shape.  I have zero pre-existing conditions and never missed a day of work or school due to illness in my previous 50 years.  Covid kicked my ass and if I was a little older, it would have been a real battle for survival.

As I have done in most my other posts on this matter, I want to review real data from 2020.  The hardest hit groups in the wake of Covid, by percentage increase in deaths, looks like this.

Notice that the hardest hit groups, by increased percentage of deaths, are between the ages of 15 and 44.  Very few people in these age groups actually died of Covid, why are they the biggest percentage increase?  Well, because of the things more intelligent, thoughtful people warned about.  But the "dangerously stupid" chose to listen to a political narrative instead of facts.  They paid attention to rantings of sensationalized, for profit news, instead of checking for themselves.  Substance abuse, depression, suicide, etc. in the wake of "anti-social" distancing, business closures, school shutdowns, and general despair, these were the plagues brought on by the "dangerously stupid", not Covid.

In order to gain political power, the "dangerously stupid" were recruited to ignore the real data, and become willing accomplices in robbing young people of their education, their socialization, and irreparably damaging their future.  But worse than that, we now know the "dangerously stupid" increased young peoples' death rates more than any other age groups' rate.  The "dangerously stupid" took out more young people in one year than Covid by itself ever could have, and more young than the entire Vietnam war did over 21 years if you really want to talk about tragedy.

So, to the "dangerously stupid" on this site, and I think you at least suspect who you are, maybe take some solace in knowing there are at least another 80 million of you out there.

Coming on the site and calling posters dangerously stupid should get you suspended or banned. This is not a site for name calling. Especially since it’s throwing gas on a fire that has mostly smoldered on the site.

@RJM posted:

Coming on the site and calling posters dangerously stupid should get you suspended or banned. This is not a site for name calling. Especially since it’s throwing gas on a fire that has mostly smoldered on the site.

There has been much worse said in past threads

my son is just finishing a quarantine, he has been forced to miss the last 2 weeks of practice due to a close contact. The interesting thing is that he had Covid over the holidays and is not required to quarantine by the CDC, actually the CDC actually clearly states that he is not subject to quarantine or testing. his school on the other hand doesn't agree...they have made a determination that 60 days is the safe number. So he has spent the last 10 days in a school imposed exile for no reason other then the administrator is a scared (they probably came from an Ivy or Centennial conference school) and now that he is schedule to get parole one of his roommates has tested positive!! I can't wait till the geniuses get their arms wrapped around this one.

I can just see it, the kid is going to spend 20 plus days in quarantine for no reason other then stupidity because the science only matters when organizations of authority decide it does. In the real world they would get sued and lose but that won't save his ball season. on the good side it will save me the donation I make every to the school every year, they have a better chance of the campus being hit by an asteroid then me continuing that.

Last night I told him point blank there is are reasons people are self employed and one of the big ones is so you can tell organizations like our schools, some corporates entities and unreasonable clients to go pound sand!

Edit - as of 930 AM he received anther 10 days quarantine. I hate academia as if I didn't before now it is worse.

I think there's argument to be made that most of us have been dangerously stupid.  The 2 dominant political parties in our country rushed to politicize the pandemic.  That was mistake #1, but that falls squarely on the two parties and the media (both of them).  Mistake #2 was when the majority of us 332 million bought 100% into one of the 2 parties' stances - hook, line and sinker - and completely dismissed most of what the other side was saying as garbage/lies.  Because no way the "truth" and best path forward could reside right down the middle, right?

It seems most people today TRULY believe that our country's problem is the OTHER party.  They believe it with every bone in their body.  Death, taxes, and the other party is TRULY out of their minds.  It's as factual to us as 2+2 equaling 4.  My side is right and the other is wrong.  Period.  End of story.  It's been my belief for quite some time that our country's biggest problem is our division.  Neither party is going away.  No matter how much we believe eliminating the other would "fix" everything, it's wholly unrealistic/impossible.  Yet we're all running as fast as we can AWAY from anything that will combat our division.  Here's the "truth" that almost no one will like or be comfortable with - had we taken half of what the left wanted and half of what the right wanted, I'd argue that our country would have weathered the pandemic far better than we have.  It would still be riddled with flaws, but it would be infinitely closer to a holistic/comprehensive approach.  Me, personally, I feel that anyone who sees absolutely zero merit in the other sides' arguments...   that's who is dangerously stupid.

@old_school posted:

my son is just finishing a quarantine, he has been forced to miss the last 2 weeks of practice due to a close contact. The interesting thing is that he had Covid over the holidays and is not required to quarantine by the CDC, actually the CDC actually clearly states that he is not subject to quarantine or testing. his school on the other hand doesn't agree...they have made a determination that 60 days is the safe number. So he has spent the last 10 days in a school imposed exile for no reason other then the administrator is a scared (they probably came from an Ivy or Centennial conference school) and now that he is schedule to get parole one of his roommates has tested positive!! I can't wait till the geniuses get their arms wrapped around this one.

I can just see it, the kid is going to spend 20 plus days in quarantine for no reason other then stupidity because the science only matters when organizations of authority decide it does. In the real world they would get sued and lose but that won't save his ball season. on the good side it will save me the donation I make every to the school every year, they have a better chance of the campus being hit by an asteroid then me continuing that.

Last night I told him point blank there is are reasons people are self employed and one of the big ones is so you can tell organizations like our schools, some corporates entities and unreasonable clients to go pound sand!

Edit - as of 930 AM he received anther 10 days quarantine. I hate academia as if I didn't before now it is worse.

I hear you..my son got a bad chipotle bowl, something he eats 1-2 times a day, spent a night next to the toilet unable to keep anything down and has effectively been quarantined for a week...no covid, no positive tests (tested daily)...1 bowl of food that had some bacteria in it and viola...he missed several games and bullpens. The whole time he is fine with it to a degree because he doesn’t want to the THE guy to get any of the big leaguers sick but at the same time wants the ability to compete.

@DanJ posted:

I think there's argument to be made that most of us have been dangerously stupid.  The 2 dominant political parties in our country rushed to politicize the pandemic.  That was mistake #1, but that falls squarely on the two parties and the media (both of them).  Mistake #2 was when the majority of us 332 million bought 100% into one of the 2 parties' stances - hook, line and sinker - and completely dismissed most of what the other side was saying as garbage/lies.  Because no way the "truth" and best path forward could reside right down the middle, right?

It seems most people today TRULY believe that our country's problem is the OTHER party.  They believe it with every bone in their body.  Death, taxes, and the other party is TRULY out of their minds.  It's as factual to us as 2+2 equaling 4.  My side is right and the other is wrong.  Period.  End of story.  It's been my belief for quite some time that our country's biggest problem is our division.  Neither party is going away.  No matter how much we believe eliminating the other would "fix" everything, it's wholly unrealistic/impossible.  Yet we're all running as fast as we can AWAY from anything that will combat our division.  Here's the "truth" that almost no one will like or be comfortable with - had we taken half of what the left wanted and half of what the right wanted, I'd argue that our country would have weathered the pandemic far better than we have.  It would still be riddled with flaws, but it would be infinitely closer to a holistic/comprehensive approach.  Me, personally, I feel that anyone who sees absolutely zero merit in the other sides' arguments...   that's who is dangerously stupid.

It’s not the political parties fault. It’s the people’s fault. Too many people have forsaken religion for politics. Politics is the new religion. People tend to cling to their religion. Therefore, in the current state a person’s political party can’t be wrong or their belief system is wrong.

I never used to know or ask what people’s politics are or how they voted. Now they tell you without being asked.

I’m of x nationality and y religion pride has been replaced I’m a Republican or a Democrat.

@old_school posted:

Edit - as of 930 AM he received anther 10 days quarantine. I hate academia as if I didn't before now it is worse.

Have you contacted the NCAA?  Who I think follows CDC guidelines.

My understanding is that if a player has had covid within a 90 or 120 day period, he does not have to quarantine if exposed.  After that period, he has to begin taking required tests again.

I don't know if that is for all divisions.

Just a suggestion.

@RJM I’m of x nationality and y religion pride has been replaced I’m a Republican or a Democrat.

I'll take it even one step further.  It's now even less "I'm a Democrat" or "I'm a Republican" and more "I'm not some crazy right-wing nut" or "I'm not some crazy left-wing nut."  I find it borderline hilarious (or super sad and utterly pathetic) that most of us TRULY believe the other half is crazy.  Like legitimately out of their minds.  Very few are willing to entertain the notion that we've both lost our minds.  Or at the very least, both lost our way.  Until there is consensus on that, it's foolish to believe improvement is possible.  Either we're all crazy or none of us are.

Danj ... My best friend (also each other’s best man) grew up with a teacher mother and parole officer father. Both his wife and he are in the social work field. Given the parents were union members in the 20th century and his background I wouldn’t expect him to be anything but a Democrat. But understanding his background and family background helps me understand where he’s coming from.

In turn, where my father was a corporate executive, my mother did PR for the oil industry and I started my own successful business and sold it he knows where I’m coming from. When we get to the wall and know there’s no sense going any further we back off.

The first step to sanity would be people turning off Fox, OAN, CNN and MSNBC. I watch infrequently to see what they’re selling regarding important events. These are not news networks. They’re propaganda machines for their respective parties. They don’t tell the truth. They offer up political spin. They promote the part of the story that promotes their truth. They’re designed to fire up viewers and piss them off about the other side. The same goes for talk radio.

I would welcome actual news with no spin and sadly it doesn’t exist.

@RJM I would say those networks are all entertainment now targeting a specific demographic. It is hard to find any actual news these days. I don't think I've watched an actual "news" story in 3 or 4 months. I'm a much happier person because of it.

@baseballhs posted:

I would welcome actual news with no spin and sadly it doesn’t exist.

I watched WGN News Nation one night. It’s supposed to be straight news. It appeared to be. The thing is there isn’t as much news as the cable news stations invent. In most cases the daily news is mostly boring.

I get most of my news from a Flipboard news aggregator. I get both sides from Fox the MSNBC and everything in between. The key to information is confirming it. Confirmation is not finding the exact same report on a second source. Confirmation is a second view. Even so, people are swayed by their political bias.

I don’t believe anyone who didn’t miss a paycheck should be receiving checks from the government. Some people do.

@RJM posted:

I watched WGN News Nation one night. It’s supposed to be straight news. It appeared to be. The thing is there isn’t as much news as the cable news stations invent. In most cases the daily news is mostly boring.

I get most of my news from a Flipboard news aggregator. I get both sides from Fox the MSNBC and everything in between. The key to information is confirming it. Confirmation is not finding the exact same report on a second source. Confirmation is a second view. Even so, people are swayed by their political bias.

I don’t believe anyone who didn’t miss a paycheck should be receiving checks from the government. Some people do.

There is a reason the news shows once lasted an hour on network TV, wedged between sitcoms and sports.  There just isn’t that much important information to recap in a 24 hour cycle.  When you have 24 hour networks dedicated to “news” you have to make 24 hours worth of content to fill the time.....aka spin, slant, commentate and sometimes just make shit up.  

These infotainment outlets should have to run a disclaimer when they editorialize facts, which is 99% of the time.  Frankly, I don’t get how anyone watches any of it from either side without feeling their intelligence is being assaulted.

Boy, it seems like there are an awful lot of people here who are seeing through the dense cloud of BS we're all forced to live in.  That's super encouraging to me at a time when I've seen little that gives me hope of coming together.  Leave it to baseball fans - the superior breed (hehehe) - to actually use their brains and think for themselves.

I've shared it here before, but I regularly (every day) read from about 5 "news" sources - CNN, MSNBC, USA Today, The Daily Wire and Fox News.  If a story appears on all 5, I label it as actual news.  Sadly, there are other real news stories in all 5 of those sources, but as others have said, they're intentionally omitted if it doesn't fit their preferred narrative.  I actually think that's a bigger problem than fake news and lies.  if you're only consuming news from one side, I promise you you're missing out on nearly half what is actually going on out there.  Sadly, too many will write off my comments by simply thinking "no, I'm not missing out on anything real; just lies that the OTHER side always tells."  It's this blind loyalty/sheep deal that so many Americans are infected with.  Many have turned to "fact checking" sites.  I tried that, but then I used my brain and quickly noticed what they were doing.  If you haven't done your research and used your brain with regard to fact checking sites, you're still infected.  I had a previous boss that always said "inspect, don't expect" and it couldn't be smarter than when applied to news and fact checking sources.

So based on your logic the first 5 or 6 weeks of New York nursing home scandal you didn’t consider it news? Maybe it was only 3 weeks but half of the outlets you listed did their damn best to bury it

Men (and Republicans) are more likely to over-react to national invasions:   Sept. 11....the War in Iraq.

Women (and Democrats) are more likely to over-react to bodily invasions (toxins, germs, radiation):  Covid....Lockdowns.

Personally, I strive for a centrist approximation of reality.

I've attached a Gallup poll from 6 mos. ago showing attitudes towards Covid,  by party and gender.

Two examples from the poll:

Worried about getting the coronavirus:

Dem women 80%

Rep men 20%

Ready to return to normal activities right now:

Dem women  3 %

Rep men  64%

@old_school  I am not going to get into specific examples.  What I meant was the only way to be 100% sure something is news  - without further research - is when an item appears on every news source and is reported on in similar ways.  But those items are quickly becoming extinct.  Anybody remember when an earthquake, a hurricane or a murder was just an earthquake, a hurricane or a murder?  Today we assign a political affiliation to them - immediately.  Tragedies like these could actually bring us together, if only for a short while.  Today, these and many more, divide us mere seconds after they've concluded.  We cannot help ourselves from instantly leveraging them to further argue for our political agenda.

@game7 To each their own, but I'd argue Republicans and Democrats are more likely to over-react.  Period.  Here's a litmus test.  Go find some independents or other non-Democrats/Republicans and count how many of them constantly over-react.  You won't need a calculator. 

@DanJ posted:

@old_school  I am not going to get into specific examples.  What I meant was the only way to be 100% sure something is news  - without further research - is when an item appears on every news source and is reported on in similar ways.  But those items are quickly becoming extinct.  Anybody remember when an earthquake, a hurricane or a murder was just an earthquake, a hurricane or a murder?  Today we assign a political affiliation to them - immediately.  Tragedies like these could actually bring us together, if only for a short while.  Today, these and many more, divide us mere seconds after they've concluded.  We cannot help ourselves from instantly leveraging them to further argue for our political agenda.

I get and kind of agree with you, I actually blame the media. Remember when a hurricane was a natural disaster that unfortunately have been happening since the planet has existed? Now is a weather event due to climate change caused by greedy oil companies...

Remember when people who broke into a country were called criminals not undocumented immigrants?

Remember when after you illegally came to a country and were allowed to stay and your kids were citizens because they were born here wasn't considered racist?

Remember when you didn't listen to commands from the police and you were deemed a dumb ass who deserved to be arrested not championed as drug addict trying to rebuild his life?

Remember when using your eyes and brain to realize there are serious differences between men and women was deemed as logical and not sexist?

Remember when being born to a sex was a reason to identify as it?

When simple things like these are controversial there is not going to be much in the way of agreement on most anything. I am not even taking a position on them just stating the obvious.

You guys see the Cardinals got Arenado?

@old_school With all due respect, I don't think you need to officially take a position to convince everyone you've taken a position.  Take a look over all your "remember whens" and you'll notice a clear trend.  One that doesn't deviate even once.  I can actually identify with a lot of what you've said, but it's important to recognize that bringing a completely one-sided approach like that is a total non-starter for those who carry different opinions than you do.  You're guaranteed to get nowhere before anything has even begun.

Seeking agreement is chasing a ghost.  I'll save you some time.  The other side is never going to agree with you.  You are never going to agree with them.  You're free to feel all you've said is obvious, but it doesn't change the reality of the situation.  It doesn't get us any closer to coming together.  It doesn't work the problem.  I think far too many people these days SINCERELY believe that if they hold out long enough and fight tooth and nail, that eventually 332 million people will all end up on the same page - the page they personally prefer and are 100% sure is "right."  I can't begin to tell you how ridiculous that is.  They're pinning their hopes to some bizarre miracle that will never come.  Hope is not a strategy.  No one seems to like it - even a little bit - but the only workable path forward is compromise.  And that means concessions - from everyone.  I am way passed being done dreaming of people waking up some day and agreeing with everything that I think is "right."

I’m a tree. If you disagree you’re a bigot!

@LuvMyKids posted:

You guys see the Cardinals got Arenado?

WTH do you think this is, Luv, a baseball discussion board?

Stick to political opinions and CoVid rants, please.

Can anyone tell me how to opt out of a thread!

Son pitched three innings last night and this was my view.  I never would have thought I would say I was glad I got to be there.  

Just in case random people find this page and think that it represents the entire membership on the site, I'd note that many have chosen to quarantine (ahem, ignore) this thread.

.... and some haven’t become hypersensitive in cancel culture and can differentiate the sarcasm and jokes.