2020 has been a year of isolation and grief, but there’s always room for love.
— NYT: Top Stories
Author: Michelle Dryden
File-This Jan. 28, 2020, file photo shows a remembrance board at a memorial for Kobe Bryant near Staples Center in Los Angeles. Bryant, the 18-time NBA All-Star who won five championships and became one of the greatest basketball players of his generation during a 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers, died in a helicopter crash Sunday. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File)
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 David Stern.
Wild-card Patriots thrown off course.
New England, Brady mull divorce.
A perfect Cajun title run —
Joe Burrow ‘s cooking; Clemson’s done.
Astros punished, sign-stealing scheme.
Hinch and GM 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.
Jeter ’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 –
Kobe, daughter and waves of grief.
LeBron, on court, gives heartfelt shout,
A declaration: “Mamba out.”
Sports still reeling by Super Bowl,
Where Patrick Mahomes 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.
Daytona 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
Rudy Gobert 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.
Masters 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.
Tokyo’s off, 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
Tom Brady 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 “Last Dance” (in 10 parts).
Virtual sports help get us back
And NASCAR has the inside track.
Make-believe spin, make-believe crash.
What’s real? Kyle Larson ’s racist trash.
Live and remote! NFL draft.
The league shows off its high-tech craft
Managing this odd displacement —
Roger Goodell 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.
Bubba Wallace, 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 Snyder 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,
Cleveland Indians 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 Tiz the Law 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? Morikawa ’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, Sato 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?
Doc Rivers asks, on being Black:
Why won’t my country love me back?
The Startup
Part II
Sports pauses with a mournful heart:
Brock, Thompson, Seaver … days apart.
Baffert’s Derby, Authentic 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: Thiem ’s startling show;
Golf’s Open, likewise, DeChambeau.
Tour de France, Slovenia’s day.
Stanley Cup bubble, Tampa Bay.
Defying odds, even reason,
Baseball makes it through its season,
Leaving summer and into fall —
Bob Gibson ’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 —
Swiss Skydiver outruns the boys.
WNBA stands tall.
Seattle Storm can play some ball.
Iga Swiatek? What’d you say?
Just like Nadal she wins on clay.
LeBron, Lakers, 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 Justin Turner ’s COVID test.
The White Sox bring La Russa back
(Their deal fell through for Connie Mack).
Chase Elliott takes NASCAR’s jewel,
Family bloodlines filled with fuel.
The Marlins smash that old boys’ gang.
Glass ceilings shatter with Kim Ng.
Dustin Johnson outplays them all —
Green jacket just the style for fall.
Both lightning and the lightning rod,
Maradona, 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 Tara VanDerveer.
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.
— Associated Press
Getting to play Cheetah was even better for the “Saturday Night Live” star, who loves superhero movies: “It was huge on my list of things I wanted to do.”
— NYT: Top Stories
Ok, here’s a look at the best holiday-themed television episodes.
— FOX News
A mother and child look at the line of trucks parked up on the M20, part of Operation Stack in Ashford, Kent, England, Friday, Dec. 25, 2020. Thousands wait to resume their journey across The Channel after the borders with France reopened. Trucks inched slowly past checkpoints in Dover and headed across the Channel to Calais on Thursday after France partially reopened its borders following a scare over a rapidly spreading new virus variant. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
LONDON (AP) — Around 1,000 British soldiers were spending Christmas Day trying to clear a huge backlog of truck drivers stuck in southeast England after France briefly closed its border to the U.K. then demanded coronavirus tests from all amid fears of a new, apparently more contagious, virus variant.
Even as 4,000 international truck drivers spent yet another day cooped up in their cabs, some progress was evident Friday, with traffic around the English Channel port of Dover moving in an orderly fashion towards the extra ferries that were put on to make the short crossing across to Calais in northern France.
The military personnel were directing traffic and helping a mass testing program for the drivers, who must test negative to enter France. French firefighters have also been drafted to help the military test drivers for coronavirus.
Officials from Britain’s Department for Transport said all but three of the 2,367 coronavirus tests conducted so far have been negative.
France closed its border for 48 hours to the U.K. last Sunday after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said a variant of the virus that is 70% more transmissible is driving the rapid spread of infections in London and surrounding areas. As a result, the capital and many other parts of England have seen lockdown restrictions tightened and family holiday gatherings cancelled.
Most of the testing is being conducted at a disused airfield at Manston Airport, 20 miles (33 kilometers) from Dover. Free food and drink was being sent to the stranded truck drivers and more than 250 portable toilets were put in at Manston, with 32 others placed along the gridlocked M20 highway.
“The most reassuring thing is that food is getting through at Manston, and I have to say a big thank you to everyone who volunteered to help drivers stick it out in cold conditions in the days leading up to Christmas,” said Duncan Buchanan of Britain’s Road Haulage Association.
The mood among the stranded drivers appeared to be mostly sanguine, especially compared to their anger earlier this week at the situation and the lack of facilities.
“I know it’s been hard for many drivers cooped up in their cabs at this precious time of year, but I assure them that we are doing our utmost to get them home,” said British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.
The virus has been blamed for over 1.7 million confirmed deaths worldwide, including nearly 70,000 in Britain, the second-highest death toll in Europe behind Italy.
On Saturday, Britain is extending tighter lockdown restrictions to more areas as authorities try to stem the spread of the new variant. Over the past two days, the U.K. has recorded its two highest daily infection numbers, at just below 40,000. That is stoking fears that the country’s beloved National Health Service will face acute capacity issues in its hospitals soon and thousands more people will die from the virus.
In a video message to the nation, Johnson said this Christmas was “not about presents, or turkey, or brandy butter” but about hope, in the form of coronavirus vaccine shots being delivered and more vaccines being developed.
“We know there will be people alive next Christmas, people we love, alive next Christmas precisely because we made the sacrifice and didn’t celebrate as normal this Christmas,” the prime minister said.
Johnson said Thursday that more than 800,000 people in Britain have received the first dose of the vaccine developed by American pharmaceutical firm Pfizer and German biotechnology company BioNTech. The U.K. was the first country in the world to approve the vaccine and began inoculations for health workers and those over 80 on Dec. 8.
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Follow AP coverage of the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccines and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
— Associated Press
“I am so disappointed and saddened that this happened,” a New York hospital executive wrote to his staff after workers who did not have priority cut the line for the vaccine.
— NYT: Top Stories
On a holiday when health experts admonished people not to travel, the weather brought its own hazards across much of the country.
— NYT: Top Stories
As the nation looks forward to Christmas Day, many lawmakers in Washington agree the second stimulus checks are necessary and past due.
But, President Trump now has these lawmakers in limbo as he suggests that Congress should pay $2000 instead, and he could possibly veto the $600 payments. He has not signed the current bill as yet.
So, there is a battle over how much to send — $600 per person, or $2000? The debates are taking place between Capitol Hill and the White House.
A Census Bureau report shows that there is “a stark difference in how far each check would go toward covering one month’s rent.”
However, Thursday House Republicans blocked a Democratic attempt to pass the $2000 direct payments to Americans.
Therefore, the fate of the massive $900 billion coronavirus relief package passed by Congress earlier this week hangs in uncertainty.
Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci is inching up percentages for community immunity as millions of Americans are traveling for the holidays.
— NYT: Top Stories
The free-trade pact would help both sides avoid tariffs, but Britain would still face economic costs from being outside the European Union.
— NYT: Top Stories
The trade agreement comes after months of negotiations, but it still leaves critical details to be worked out.
— NYT: Top Stories