Going coronavirus crazy, remembering something called sports

What do you need, right now, as you go crazy in your coronavirus lockdown?

Some people say that all they really need is for me to agree with them. If I start being agreeable, they promise me that I'll find my lost virtue and even begin to see.

Yet here in the land of the blind, crafting that kind of agreeable hell is beyond my powers. But I can make something everyone needs. Just look:

A blue canvas chair on the grass.

See it? And that venti iced latte in the cup holder? Don't touch it. That's mine. Go get your own.

And a white line of fresh chalk on the grass, about 120 yards long. And 75 yards away, another identical line, parallel to the first. The sound of a foot on the ball. Players warming up. The referee in the center circle blows the whistle.

A proper soccer match.

Not with avatars in a computer game, but something you may have forgotten: real human athletes playing sports.

Before you go all nativist on me, I'll agreeably make for you a field for baseball, or even a ballpark, like Sox Park. You can sit along the first base line, say in section 126, row 26, seats 1 and 2.

OK?

But you need real players, not ghosts, not some Ray Liotta stepping out of a cornfield.

You need human players who scratch and spit. You need the games. Remember?

We need sports. Some of us also need to go to church, too, but the unselfish among us insist that we wait for our elected leaders to tell us when we can accept Holy Communion.

I probably shouldn't have provoked you there. Now you'll get angry and tell people I want you to die. I don't want you to die. I wear a mask to the store. And I don't want to die.

But not being able to watch my beloved Chicago Fire FC, and the Chicago White Sox, is just killing me.

Or a Sunday league, say, between Serbians and Croatians, players smoking at halftime, refighting their old wars on a field. Or good youth sports, when kids hit their mid- to late teens, and learn what they've got inside of them, when they're immortal.

But the pro games, that's what I really miss, the power and stunning technique. I think you miss it too.

That left-winger catching a 50-yard pass with his foot, not breaking stride, curling the ball into the far corner of the goal. Or the rookie center fielder learning the South Side winds, turning his back and sprinting to where the ball will be.

The foot on the ball. The ball on the bat. Remember sports, the last meritocracy in a world befouled by politics?

Sports aren't religion. Sports aren't 100% pure. But watching sports is a healthier way for coronavirus shut-ins to pass the time than Twitter, and definitely not as greasy.

It's the mastery of sports that I miss, like the simple mastery of a great songwriter, say Townes Van Zandt, and "Pancho and Lefty":

Pancho was a bandit boy/ His horse was fast as polished steel/ He wore his gun outside his pants/ For all the honest world to feel

But watching a writer at work is so boring you'd want to pluck your own eyes out. He gets up, looks in the fridge for liver sausage, eats in silence with a stupid look on his face and sits down again.

Or she gets up, smokes, plays with her evil cat and sits down.

What's so fun about that?

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I probably should tell you about this mental problem I have, because you might have it too. When something hurts me deeply, I just suppress the hell out of it, and keep my mouth shut, until eventually, there's an explosion.

That was triggered by news in the Tribune about the producer of "The Last Dance" working on a new documentary project about White Sox (and Phillies) great Dick Allen.

Dick Allen and that war club of his.

I became emotional thinking how lucky we are to watch another sports documentary about something that happened long ago. And that's when it hit me like a crystal bullet right in the nose:

I'm just a pathetic bleeping loser staring at the bleak shoreline of a sports-less hell.

I'm so starved for sports that I get excited about a documentary? What happened to the games, loser? Remember the games? Loser?

I'll be damned if I watch another marble race. They're bringing back horse racing, but I'm Greek, so I don't gamble. I do get up early on the weekends to watch the German league, the Bundesliga, which has returned without fans.

Fox Sports is pumping fake fan sounds on its broadcasts to offer a more "authentic" viewing experience. That's pathetic. Is this a test for when they broadcast NFL games without fans?

Some of you are probably groaning, demanding that I just keep serving trays of political red meat. But you can't live on a diet of red meat alone. Besides, red meat is the new smoking.

Not wearing a mask was the new smoking. But that was a week ago. Now it's meat. Oh, you haven't heard about it? Don't worry. You will.

You'll feel the social shame of wanting a porterhouse steak soon enough. A cheeseburger? How dare you? The legions of Greta Thunberg will cancel you.

But can they deny us red meat, religion and sport too?

What's left to love?

Oh, I know what we can love.

Government.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who also hosts a radio show on WLS-AM.