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Philippines, 19 Apr 2024 |
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OUTSIDE LOOKING IN: A SAD WEEK FOR SPORTS PhilBoxing.com Tue, 17 Mar 2020  The New York Post headline of March 13, 2020 issue. By Eddie G. Alinea / The Manila Times What a sad week that was in sports. My and my wife Annie’s youngest grandson Audio is only three years and five months old and a couple days ago he admonished me for trying to leave our house in Meycauayan, Bulacan to go to Manila to do some interviews and researches for future articles I intend to write. “Lolo, don’t go out, baka mahawa ka coronavirus,” he told me in broken English-Tagalog as I prepared to get dressed. “See, mas mabuti pa ang bata, nai-intindihan ang and danger ng paglabas ng bahay at this days of crisis,” Annie butted in while hugging our Baby Boy.” I didn’t know why, but from then on, I no longer attempted to leave the house and travel to Manila to do the job I have been doing, come hell and high water, for 49 years since I was named sportswriter in 1971, a year before Martial Law was declared. “Napahiya siguro sa Apo,” I overheard Annie telling our daughter Kim, who works in Dubai, over the phone on Thursday night. It was already past midnight and while catching sleep, I keep wondering, asking myself, what, indeed, a week that was? What a damn, insane and sad week that was. For one, I answered the question myself. That for the first time in my nearly half a century as a sports media man, I never thought I’d ever see what happened happen the past few days and I still, up to this day, don’t think I’ve come to understand what’s going on. Practically, all of sports, domestic and foreign, have been postponed or cancelled and the world is going into lock down to protect mankind from a deadly and dangerous pandemic now called Covid-19. Which to us, sports media men, sucks as vacuum cleaner does to dirt. But as everybody thinks, it was the right thing to do. Human safety comes first before sports every damn time, no matter how angry some brain-drained people talk about it on social media. The coronavirus is killing people all over the world, that it's continuing to spread in a rapid pace, and that many, many, many more people are going to be greatly affected by this pandemic. Very sad, indeed! Now our sports are gone. The Palarong Pamabansa, which, since 1948 has been the main source for young and fresh talents from the elementary school level to high school, is gone. And so do the regional meets conducted previous to the Palaro. The 98-year-old NCAA, too, is threatening to do away with its 2020 season, and so does the UAAP and other schools leagues. If the NCAA, indeed folds up, that would be the first time since World War II that the collegiate league would not be able to finish a season. Meanwhile, the UAAP, following the NCAA lead, has once again postponed its second semester events until March 17. The UAAP boar, it was reported, has scheduled another meeting this coming March 16 to discuss further plans for the rest of the season. The PBA’S 45th Season, which has just been opened a week ago, has cancelled, indefinitely, the remaining games of the Philippine Cup’s elimination round starting with its only second game last Wednesday. Many sporting events around the world are being played behind closed doors, postponed or cancelled as COVID-19 spreads. For the Tokyo Olympics lighting ceremony, on 12 March, the Greece's Olympic Committee announced spectators will be excluded from both the dress rehearsal on Wednesday and the ceremony on Thursday. It is the first time in more than 35 years the historic ceremony, which takes place at Greece's historic site in Olympia, will take place without an audience. There will be no March Madness, which doesn't seem real just yet but definitely will next Thursday around noon ET when we're not parking it on the couch to watch 10 hours of college basketball. There's, too, no NBA games to watch at night, which was starting to get good as we began to head down the homestretch and toward the playoffs, which may or may not even happen this year. Hockey is done for the time being, too. Will we even see the Stanley Cup lifted into the air this year? The start of the baseball season is going to be pushed back, which feels like the delay of spring and nice weather, two things that make a lot of people happy. The PGA Tour is now done for at least the next few weeks, even after the Tour tried to sneak one through and played the first round the Players Championship on Thursday. The Masters is now the next tournament on the schedule but that has to be jeopardy, too. Tennis, soccer, the XFL… are also done for now. Calling off all the sporting events and Broadway plays and social gatherings are the right thing for us to do, though. We have to think about people who could be greatly affected by this virus. Elderly people who wouldn't have the strength to fight it. People with immune disorders who could die from it, no matter their age. This isn't something we should mess with at all and staying away from each other is the 150-percent right thing to do.  |
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