Harden must quarantine until Friday; could play in  opener

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121 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Luzerne County; 9,230 statewide

By FRED LIEF 
 Well, had enough yet? 
 Don’t look at the score. 
 How bad did it get? 
 Like nothing before. 
 B.C. (Before Coronavirus) 
 The Setup 
 An omen, maybe. Hard to say. 
 The drumbeat starts on New Year’s Day. 
 The calendar flips, one quick turn 
 And then we’re mourning 
 Wild-card Patriots thrown off course. 
 New England, Brady mull divorce. 
 A perfect Cajun title run -- 
 
 's cooking; Clemson’s done. 
 Astros punished, sign-stealing scheme. 
 
 are dumped by team. 
 No need to wait. Oh, yes, there’s more -- 
 Cora, Beltran are out the door. 
 Conor McGregor’s in the cage, 
 Fighting again, all fists and rage. 
 
 ’s up … for the Hall of Fame. 
 Just one voter omits his name. 
 Then in the California hills 
 The fog rolls in, the heart soon chills. 
 A chopper’s down: shock, disbelief – 
 
 and waves of grief. 
 LeBron, on court, gives heartfelt shout, 
 A declaration: 
 Sports still reeling by Super Bowl, 
 Where takes control. 
 Chiefs rally with alarming speed -- 
 At last a crown for Andy Reid. 
 Down Under, Novak has his way, 
 Bulks up his Grand Slam resume. 
 Pete Rose makes yet another plea: 
 The Astros were much worse than me. 
 Auto race scrapped, Chinese Grand Prix. 
 Whirlwind’s coming we don’t yet see. 
 Tyson Fury reclaims the throne, 
 Pummeling Wilder to the bone. 
 
 ends in flames and fear 
 And Hamlin winning like last year. 
 Staples Center fills to the hilt 
 For Kobe at the house he built. 
 A.C. (After Coronavirus) 
 The Shutdown 
 
 is feeling well 
 But lost his sense of taste and smell. 
 High-fives banished by NBA, 
 Fans in Europe are kept away. 
 Olympic angst: Delay? Abort? 
 Indecision, a medal sport. 
 We then look up and turn around -- 
 The house is burning to the ground. 
 The NBA shuts down its game. 
 In college sports it’s much the same. 
 March Madness hangs on hope and prayer 
 But it’s soon gone, beyond repair: 
 The games not played, the crowds not heard, 
 The shots not made, the dreams deferred. 
 No bracket busters, office pools. 
 Coronavirus sets the rules. 
 The NHL, with ample cause, 
 Decides to put the league on “pause.” 
 Spring training stops. It’s getting rough. 
 The Ides of March throws nasty stuff. 
 
 forced to run for cover -- 
 A revision like no other. 
 Kentucky Derby scratched for May; 
 French Open topples on same day. 
 Indy 500, down the hatch. 
 Same with Wimbledon – game, set, match. 
 
 , the Olympics done. 
 The torch is passed to ’21. 
 Sports keep falling like dominoes, 
 And no one cares about the ‘Stros. 
 Amid the chaos, doubts and fears 
 
 joins the Buccaneers 
 The Substitutions 
 Fans are desperate, start to show it -- 
 End of the world as we know it. 
 They don’t feel fine. They want some juice. 
 Hey, there’s soccer in Belarus. 
 Need some action to get it on? 
 Then bet on baseball in Taiwan. 
 Try some arm wrestling on TV. 
 Ax throwing, maybe? Spelling bee? 
 Filling the void till hoops restarts 
 Is Jordan’s (in 10 parts). 
 Virtual sports help get us back 
 And NASCAR has the inside track. 
 Make-believe spin, make-believe crash. 
 What’s real? ’s racist trash. 
 Live and remote! NFL draft. 
 The league shows off its high-tech craft 
 Managing this odd displacement -- 
 
 in his basement. 
 Big cable draw, golf’s got the goods: 
 Peyton, Brady, Mickelson, Woods. 
 Baseball? Just negotiations, 
 Insults, tweets and accusations. 
 Comeback plans for Fourth of July 
 Go stale like month-old apple pie. 
 The Struggle 
 Part I 
 Death on a Minnesota street 
 Turns up the volume, spikes the heat. 
 A time to march, a time to seethe: 
 Black Lives Matter and “I can’t breathe.” 
 “We want justice,” says Eric Reid, 
 Brought with all deliberate speed. 
 “Enough,” says Jordan, on new ground, 
 “Pained … plain angry” and now unbound. 
 Lisa Leslie’s online decree: 
 If not “outraged,” don’t follow me. 
 Osaka is, no need to ask.
 Come the Open, it's on her mask.
 NASCAR moves to another lane, 
 Bans Dixie’s flag -- a blight, a stain. 
 
 , all strength and pride, 
 Has drivers walking by his side. 
 A reckoning, and none too soon -- 
 Even Goodell changes his tune. 
 We need, he says, to listen, feel. 
 The players now are free to kneel. 
 Missing from this good intention? 
 Kaepernick’s name, not a mention. 
 What’s in a name? Here’s something new: 
 “Redskins” under “thorough review.” 
 Has found his moral core? 
 His sponsors simply said, No more. 
 New name? You gotta laugh or scream: 
 For now, “Washington Football Team.” 
 By year’s end, wanting to do right, 
 
 see the light. 
 The Startup 
 Part I 
 A kick, a smack, a well-placed knee -- 
 Sports returns with the UFC. 
 Golf in Texas: Field is rested, 
 Fans are barred, swabbed players tested. 
 The Belmont’s empty, out of place 
 And rules shortened race. 
 NBA joins Disney’s bubble, 
 Makes a wish to wall off trouble. 
 NHL restores some order, 
 Puts two hubs north of the border. 
 Baseball’s back and the sport retools: 
 Sixty-game season, beer league rules. 
 Cardboard fans (all gimmick and lark) 
 Don’t buy hot dogs, don’t pay to park. 
 Soon all goes wrong -- COVID’s winning, 
 Marlins pounded in first inning. 
 Cardinals, poof! Wide infection -- 
 Vanished, gone, witness protection. 
 Jumbled schedule, ghastly mess. 
 Who plays where is anyone’s guess. 
 PGA? ’s here. 
 Brooks Koepka can’t win every year. 
 Sports giveth; sports taketh away. 
 College football’s the price to pay, 
 The risks too daunting to confront -- 
 Big Ten, Pac-12 decide to punt. 
 Weeks later, pressured, in a bind, 
 Both leagues reverse: Uh, never mind. 
 At Indy, wins once more. 
 The silence drowns the engines’ roar. 
 The Struggle 
 Part II 
 Now Kenosha commands the stage -- 
 Days of anguish and nights of rage. 
 The Bucks refuse to take the court -- 
 A ripple then waves of support. 
 The NBA, of course, goes first. 
 Others follow as bubbles burst. 
 Floyd and Arbery; Taylor, Blake. 
 How much longer? What does it take? 
 
 asks, on being Black: 
 Why won’t my country love me back? 
 The Startup 
 Part II 
 Sports pauses with a mournful heart: 
 
 , , … days apart. 
 Baffert's Derby, scores, 
 With protests outside Churchill’s doors. 
 Blue Jays sing, “Oh, give me a home,” 
 Landing where the Buffalo roam. 
 So much sports now, to say the least: 
 April famine, September feast. 
 NFL season starts anew. 
 Players link arms, fans promptly boo. 
 Open tennis: ’s startling show; 
 Golf’s Open, likewise, . 
 Tour de France, . 
 Stanley Cup bubble, . 
 Defying odds, even reason, 
 Baseball makes it through its season, 
 Leaving summer and into fall -- 
 
 ’s time, October ball. 
 Patriots-Chiefs, virus attack -- 
 Cam Newton can’t avoid this sack. 
 Whole teams are benched, blow after blow. 
 Tennessee Titans? Where’d they go? 
 A Preakness filly makes some noise -- 
 
 outruns the boys. 
 WNBA stands tall. 
 
 can play some ball. 
 
 ? What’d you say? 
 Just like Nadal she wins on clay. 
 LeBron, , own Disney’s gym, 
 Sense Kobe’s there, above the rim. 
 The Dodgers, Kershaw expiate 
 The ghosts of 1988 
 As baseball puts its year to rest 
 With ’s COVID test. 
 The White Sox bring back 
 (Their deal fell through for Connie Mack). 
 
 takes NASCAR’s jewel, 
 Family bloodlines filled with fuel. 
 The Marlins smash that old boys’ gang. 
 Glass ceilings shatter with . 
 Dustin Johnson outplays them all -- 
 Green jacket just the style for fall. 
 Both lightning and the lightning rod, 
 
 , the Hand of God. 
 College basketball’s set to play -- 
 Mangled schedules, disarray. 
 Steelers rolling but, yes, there’s flaw. 
 Niners banished by county law. 
 Across the week more games are strewn, 
 Even on Wednesday afternoon. 
 Through it all, a truth emerges: 
 Games go on while COVID surges 
 And records fall, that much is clear -- 
 Consider . 
 Now set, the college playoff queue: 
 Tide-Irish, Clemson-OSU. 
 Then look who’s back? The NBA. 
 Seems you were here the other day. 
 But who can tell? It’s all a blur: 
 The games they played, the way we were. 
 The Summation 
 Let’s see this out, get to the end, 
 And who knows what’s around the bend? 
 But we’ll toast, of course, don’t think twice -- 
 Take a deep breath and roll the dice.

Lamentation for sports in 2020: A year of living virally