The Penalty Box
December 9, 2020 at 2:16 a.m.
The Penalty Box
By Roger Grossman-
And that’s true 99-percent of the time.
Today, we need to talk about a one-percent kind-of thing.
And it’s not about me and what I did or didn’t do so much as it is what is happening around the country and the world—sports are continuing.
The comment to me was this: “How can you celebrate your team winning a sporting event in the middle of a world-wide pandemic?”
I won’t say which team I was on social media celebrating, because none of this is their fault and I wouldn’t want anyone to think the comment made to me was an attack on them too, because it really wasn’t.
It was about sports, and its priority in life and society.
I wish I could say I have always had that priority in the perfect place. Truth is, I have not. I have put sports and broadcasting sports ahead of, literally, everything in my life.
Everything.
Kids changed that for me. Having a now 11-year old girl and a boy on the upswing to 7 forces you to examine and re-examine every aspect of your life.
I called it “life audit”.
I laid everything out on the table: my jobs, Tiger Sports, this column—all of it. The goal was to see if there were things that I didn’t need to be doing right now, or ever again.
Like Terrance Mann said in Field of Dreams, “the one constant through all of it is baseball”. You could, for the sake of this discussion, swap ‘baseball’ for ‘sports’ there.
After 9-11, sports helped us get our confidence back as a country. We showed those who did those dastardly deeds that September day that they could gouge us, but they could not destroy us (actually, have you noticed how the terrorist organizations have been very quiet lately? They don’t have to do anything to destroy America…we’re doing a fine job on our own without their help).
Sports is like the toy department in a store. It’s fun to be in, but there aren’t a lot of life-changing things there.
So back to the question at hand.
As a sports journalist, in general, your main mission is to tell a story. Wherever that may take you or whatever that might be, it is up to us to tell the story of a moment, a game, a team, a season or a program.
And when there are sports being played, we are to cover them.
Sports are being played, and we are doing what we are called to do.
And if we are doing that correctly, then ignoring the pandemic in the process of relating that story is inappropriate and misleading! Every team in America, at every level of play, is one phone call away from their season being flipped upside down.
We are all staring it squarely in the face. But we go on, because that’s what we do.
So I asked the person who had challenged my joy about why she was so upset about it, and that’s when we got to the heart of the matter.
This woman’s mother had just passed away a few hours before from complications of COVID-19. She was on social media letting everyone know, and she came across my post.
Ugh.
I shared with her that I totally understood where she was coming from. I have not lost anyone to this invisible killer, but that I don’t need to in order to respect her feelings.
She was raw with emotion, and my celebration came across as callous and uncaring to her even though we have never met.
It’s important that sports continue in the context that they do. I think there a lot of good points to be made about fan attendance guidelines on all sides, and I enjoy those discussions very much.
I admit, I felt a sense of guilt last Friday being able to attend and broadcast the Warsaw boys basketball game at Homestead when not even the parents of the players were allowed inside.
But that’s why I got into this business all those years ago—to take the games to people who can’t be there themselves.
And with God’s provision, I and many others will continue to do so.
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And that’s true 99-percent of the time.
Today, we need to talk about a one-percent kind-of thing.
And it’s not about me and what I did or didn’t do so much as it is what is happening around the country and the world—sports are continuing.
The comment to me was this: “How can you celebrate your team winning a sporting event in the middle of a world-wide pandemic?”
I won’t say which team I was on social media celebrating, because none of this is their fault and I wouldn’t want anyone to think the comment made to me was an attack on them too, because it really wasn’t.
It was about sports, and its priority in life and society.
I wish I could say I have always had that priority in the perfect place. Truth is, I have not. I have put sports and broadcasting sports ahead of, literally, everything in my life.
Everything.
Kids changed that for me. Having a now 11-year old girl and a boy on the upswing to 7 forces you to examine and re-examine every aspect of your life.
I called it “life audit”.
I laid everything out on the table: my jobs, Tiger Sports, this column—all of it. The goal was to see if there were things that I didn’t need to be doing right now, or ever again.
Like Terrance Mann said in Field of Dreams, “the one constant through all of it is baseball”. You could, for the sake of this discussion, swap ‘baseball’ for ‘sports’ there.
After 9-11, sports helped us get our confidence back as a country. We showed those who did those dastardly deeds that September day that they could gouge us, but they could not destroy us (actually, have you noticed how the terrorist organizations have been very quiet lately? They don’t have to do anything to destroy America…we’re doing a fine job on our own without their help).
Sports is like the toy department in a store. It’s fun to be in, but there aren’t a lot of life-changing things there.
So back to the question at hand.
As a sports journalist, in general, your main mission is to tell a story. Wherever that may take you or whatever that might be, it is up to us to tell the story of a moment, a game, a team, a season or a program.
And when there are sports being played, we are to cover them.
Sports are being played, and we are doing what we are called to do.
And if we are doing that correctly, then ignoring the pandemic in the process of relating that story is inappropriate and misleading! Every team in America, at every level of play, is one phone call away from their season being flipped upside down.
We are all staring it squarely in the face. But we go on, because that’s what we do.
So I asked the person who had challenged my joy about why she was so upset about it, and that’s when we got to the heart of the matter.
This woman’s mother had just passed away a few hours before from complications of COVID-19. She was on social media letting everyone know, and she came across my post.
Ugh.
I shared with her that I totally understood where she was coming from. I have not lost anyone to this invisible killer, but that I don’t need to in order to respect her feelings.
She was raw with emotion, and my celebration came across as callous and uncaring to her even though we have never met.
It’s important that sports continue in the context that they do. I think there a lot of good points to be made about fan attendance guidelines on all sides, and I enjoy those discussions very much.
I admit, I felt a sense of guilt last Friday being able to attend and broadcast the Warsaw boys basketball game at Homestead when not even the parents of the players were allowed inside.
But that’s why I got into this business all those years ago—to take the games to people who can’t be there themselves.
And with God’s provision, I and many others will continue to do so.
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