Not Ballparking It Anytime Soon

I’m usually an expert at being a loner. Some of my favorite pastimes are watching baseball by myself, watching basketball by myself, binge-watching TV shows by myself, going to Taco Bell by myself. I’m usually my favorite company.

But I’ve been working from home, and the last face-to-face conversation I had with a human was the cashier at Target telling me to have a good night … last Tuesday.

Since then, life as we knew it changed. We’re now living in what seems like a sci-fi novel, but it’s not fiction. It’s just science. And that’s the worst part.

I’ve already blown through the giant jar of trail mix I thought would last a few weeks (or at least more than the five days it lasted). I’m apparently not good at rationing … and I don’t even want to calculate how many servings and calories I ate in that short amount of time.

I’ve lost all ability to binge TV shows and now have zero attention span, and my apartment has started to look like a freshman dorm room.

So yeah, these are not exactly the circumstances I thought would bring me back from my hiatus.

In a perfect world (or at least one not in a global pandemic), we’d be in the heart of spring training right now. I would have maybe purchased baseball tickets and plane tickets. Maybe. (Let’s be honest … probably not. Being a procrastinator has its perks.)

But it hasn’t really hit me. I haven’t truly focused a moment on the thought of no baseball. One of my favorite things in the whole entire universe, and I haven’t even really thought about it.

I’m worried about a lot of things – from my grandparents to what’s going to happen if we have to fully quarantine and I run out of lime and jalapeno Ruffles.

And my little, basketball-loving heart wasn’t ready for the NCAA season to end so abruptly, which is probably why I haven’t thought about baseball at all.

My heart breaks for a whole lot of NCAA student-athletes who woke up one day and weren’t competing anymore. It breaks for all those who rely on income from working sporting events. It breaks for all the college seniors who don’t get to spend their final semester on campus. It breaks for all the high schoolers whose musicals and sporting events (and everything else) got canceled.

But I get it. Health and safety come first, and I’m going to do my part to make sure all these people didn’t sacrifice so much for nothing and do my best to help save each other. Thus, social distancing.

Whatever weird version of planet Earth we’re living on right now just offered up an excuse (more like a demand) to stay home and write.

(Plus, it took away all the sports, so maybe it’s my duty to fill the void with some overdue ballpark recaps you never knew you wanted and other random thoughts from yours truly.)

So buckle up for my COVID-19 diaries with a lot of reminiscing and probably a lot of nonsense.

Let’s spread the love and baseball together … just in spirit, though. Not like together, together.

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