Life Without Sports

These are sheltered times. People leaving their offices behind to work from home, schools closed, stores shutting their doors to the public — the world is being put on hold right now and with that, sports are canceled. I know, I know, there are worse things going on than a lack of baseball games, but for some of us, the lack of sports will change how we live our lives.

Sports are an escape for me. They’re a way to remove myself from the day to day things that otherwise occupy my mind — work, kids, money, the world at large. I turn on game and for a few hours those things leave my brain as I concentrate on what my chosen team is up to.

How do you escape from the world when the very thing you use to escape no longer exists for the time being?

All my television watching is centered around sports. Whether it’s hockey on a Tuesday night, an afternoon baseball game on radio while I’m at work, 7am Saturday morning Premier League soccer, or SportsCenter at 3am when I can’t sleep, sports rules my life. It keeps my company every night when my husband heads out to his AA meeting. It’s my insomnia companion. It’s my solace when the world is going to hell and now the world is actually going to hell and I’m left with Andy Griffith reruns and a constant barrage of news bites telling me what I already know. How to cope? What do you do to fill the time normally taken up with home runs…