June was a good month for the News Tribune sports staff.
After going two-and-a-half months without covering a live sporting event because of COVID-19, we were getting a little stir crazy, to say the least. Thankfully, the high school summer baseball league allowed us to get back into our natural habitat.
That summer baseball league wraps up this week - well, for a few teams, as Helias, Jefferson City and Fatima have already finished their schedules. While that may be ending, there are still plenty of sports taking place in the next month.
Vivion Field will be hosting scrimmages between local college baseball players for the next three weeks, and Russellville will begin hosting its high school summer series track meets later this week as well.
High school sports teams have camps coming up, and there have been plenty of youth sports leagues to keep kids active this summer.
This gives me hope that we're inching closer to normal. But then, when I look at the national picture, we're still quite a way from getting back to normal.
MLB teams opened their summer camps last week, with opening day slated for July 23 or 24. We may not be able to attend a game at Busch Stadium or Kauffman Stadium this summer, but hey, at least we can watch professional baseball on TV every night, instead of setting our alarms for 4:30 a.m. to watch the KBO.
The NFL has already scrapped two weeks of preseason games, and there's a good chance the other two preseason games will be canceled for each team as well. If that were to happen, what's stopping them from shortening the regular season?
The NBA will resume its regular season later this month, inside its "bubble" at Disney. And the PGA Tour and auto racing have been back in business for quite some time now.
Professional leagues have been responsible with their testing, which is why there hasn't been a widespread panic when we've seen new names of athletes who have tested positive for coronavirus popping up daily. Because safety protocols have been put into place, the leagues don't have to shut down when a player tests positive.
However, it's the unknown that has me worried.
For example, if one or two players on a team test positive for coronavirus, that's manageable. But what if we have more situations like the NWSL's Orlando Pride, which had six players and four staff members test positive, and as a result pulled out of the NWSL Challenge Cup?
The MLB season begins in less than three weeks, and David Price announced Saturday he would not play this season for health and safety concerns. I don't blame him, and other stars like Mike Trout and Buster Posey are also mulling whether they'll play this season. If more stars follow suit, how long until pundits begin discussing whether an asterisk should be placed next to the 2020 World Series champion?
Last week, the Tennessee Secondary Schools Athletic Association announced the high school football and soccer seasons will be postponed at least one week, as the Tennessee governor extended the state of emergency through Aug. 29. It would not surprise me to see similar actions from other state associations.
But when it's all said and done, I feel optimistic about covering fall sports in a few months.
From what I've observed in the past month, rules have been implemented, protocols have been followed and athletes have been responsible with their social distancing.
It may not look the same, but if we stick to common sense measures, I like my chances of pulling out my scorebooks and stat sheets and putting them to use this fall.