Don’t Forget Your Thumbs

By John Lipez

That thumb thing relative to washing your hands is a topic I never thought I’d be writing about in Down River, but here we are in March of 2020 and our world as we know it has been turned upside down and we’re still fearful it could still be in for a good shaking or two.  

Yes, the coronavirus has brought us to a point few among us ever thought we’d see: a virus in China finding its way across Europe and into the United States, showing up on both coasts and inching its potentially lethal effects closer and closer to Clinton County.

Here we are, checking the daily updates from Washington and Harrisburg, watching the grim count of victims trending upward and upward, hoping and praying the government-suggested and imposed mitigation steps can stem the disease’s spread so we here at home and elsewhere across the United States can at same point in the not too distant future restore some level of normalcy to our lives.

But short-term, that doesn’t look to be the case; in fact, far from it.

This issue of the print Record is a short-sized one, owing to the impact the coronavirus has already had in Clinton County. Whereas as usually in the last issue of March, The Record would be devoted to our spring sports issue, highlighting the upcoming seasons for the teams at Bucktail and Central Mountain High Schools; not this time.

We were anticipating quite the spring on the local level, what with the return of almost the whole squad from last spring’s record-breaking Bucktail softball team, and defending district champs in both the Central Mountain softball and baseball teams.

But now, local sports and so much else, they’re all very much up in the air. The unanswered question at this point is: will the virus’s spread be curtailed to the point that schools can resume, non-essential businesses and industries can reopen, we don’t have to be reminded to remember our thumbs when we wash our hands, we don’t have to exercise “social spacing” when out and about?

It’s the unknown that weighs on us all at this moment in time. No one can say that in two weeks, three weeks, things will get back to normal. Might that take six months? A year? 

In the meantime, here’s the overriding question: what about the toll on the health of the general populace? Will the pandemic reach the point where, because of the lack of sufficient treatment equipment, medical professionals will have to decide who lives and who dies?

An economy can come back. And if the folks in Washington can stop their bickering, they can mount the resources to speed that effort, or at least, mitigate the short-term crunch on business, industry and our citizenry in general.

But if our nation’s response to the coronavirus proves to be insufficient, and it’s too early to make that judgment, and thousands of lives are unnecessarily lost and the long-term health of thousands more jeopardized, printing all the money in the world won’t help.

In stressful situations such as this in the past, the nation often turned to sports, major league baseball kept intact during World War II. But now a sports-crazed country has been denied that centuries-old part of the national fabric.

No, as spring arrives, no baseball; not Little League, not high school, not college, not professional. But in one of life’s great ironies, while out for a ride last Saturday, our journey took us through Sugar Valley to a field near the auction barn on the south side of the valley; and guess what we saw: a large group of young Amish men had turned two wagons onto their sides, pushed them together to create a backstop, and were engaged in a game of baseball. They seemed to be enjoying the contest immensely (although it likely was difficult to tell one team from the other as they were all dressed in black).

As some point baseball will return beyond a makeshift field in Sugar Valley. And when it does, it will be a barometer that the coronavirus should be on the wane, this according to none other than Vin Scully, the 92-year-old Los Angeles Dodgers broadcasting legend.

Scully has been out of the broadcast booth for three years now, but still very much pays attention to what’s going on in the world, both on and off the field of play. 

In a recent interview detailed on yahoo.com, Scully said when the crisis slows, we’ll know by the crack of a bat. “If baseball starts up, we’ve got this thing beat and we can go about our lives. Baseball is not a bad thermometer, when baseball begins, whenever that is, that will be a sure sign that the country is slowly getting back on its feet.”

Scully said he’s not sure when that day will come, a shortened big league season now assured. “But somewhere along the line, I hope and pray that baseball will start up, that will be so wonderful, that will be a rainbow after the storm, that, yeah, things are going to get better.”

Mr. Scully, we couldn’t agree more. We’ve seen worst case scenarios for the end of pandemic and we’ve some best case scenarios. We join with baseball players of all ages, anxious to get back on the field of play, hoping the resumption of play will come sooner rather than later. 

From Little Leaguers to major leaguers, from sports fans to non-sports fans, that day can’t come soon enough. But it will, just as Vin Scully said, a rainbow after the storm.