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| A Los Angeles Class Submarine firing a torpedo. |
This pandemic has certainly been disruptive and unprecedented in so many ways. Businesses of all sizes are in economic free fall. This includes the business of sports. The National Basketball Association outright cancelled the remainder of the 2019 – 2020 season. The National Hockey League, Major League Soccer, and Major League Baseball all postponed their seasons. The NCAA followed suit a few days later and cancelled all sports for the remainder of this school year. Today, the International Olympic Committee decided to postpone the Summer Olympics Games.
Basically, the NBA Finals, the NHL Stanley Cup, the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments, and the start of the Baseball season are not happening when, arguably, we need them the most. The leagues, teams, and players are certainly all losing income, but so are the networks.
So, there are no sports at the time when the rather large portion of the population that follows sports could most use them. We are stuck watching reruns. I favor the Big Ten Network where I can watch replays of Michigan football and basketball. Thankfully for ESPN, Tom Brady announced he was signing with Tampa Bay just as all sports closed down. That story will kept them occupied for two weeks.
I cannot watch a steady diet of sports reruns. I would have watched March Madness. That is such a great and exciting tournament. I am not sure if my team, the Michigan Wolverines, would have qualified but I am certain the Michigan State Spartans would have. I feel bad for the players and the fans but in the larger scheme, it is a small sacrifice to make the health and well-being of fans and players alike.
Tonight, April 6, 2020, was to have been the Championship Game of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. It is one of the sports highlights of the year for me. I never miss it. Many people never miss it. Instead of basketball, I am watching a Netflix series: Winter Sun.
We are lucky these days to have access to a large number of films. I have Comcast, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video. Prime Video is more and more my go-to place for movies. Given that I am writing about not having live sports, it would seem logical that I might be watching sport related movies.
I have watched a few sports movies. My favorite sport movies are Pele: Birth of a Legend, Miracle, and Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius. I will watch them whenever they are on. They are motivating and uplifting. Just what we need in these unprecedented times. In these first two weeks of home isolation, I have watched The Natural and The Legend of Bagger Vance. Just this week, I watched The Babe Ruth Story, the 1948 starring William Bendix. Bendix portrayed Babe Ruth in a more idealized light than the 1992 version, The Babe, in which John Goodman played Ruth.
More than sports movies, I have watched more movies about seafaring men. I have watched Mutiny on the Bounty with Clark Gable and Charles Laughton and, one of my all-time favorites starring Errol Flynn, The Sea Hawk. I have also watched submarine movies. I love submarine movies and the tension close quarters brings for these stealth warships. This love affair began when I first saw Run Silent, Run Deep, the World War II classic starring Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster.
In the past three weeks, I have seen four movies; three about Soviet submarines and another about a US sub rescuing the Russian President from an attempted coup. The Hunt for Red October was the first I watched. It is based on the first Tom Clancy’s first book. The film is as gripping as the novel. The second was based on a true story, K-19: The Widowmaker. The K-19 was the first Soviet ballistic missile submarine. On its maiden voyage, the reactor coolant system had a broken pipe which led to radiation leaks that caused the evacuation of the crew and the boat being towed back to port for extensive repairs. Eight crew members heroically gave their lives to save the rest of the crew. The third movie about a Soviet submarine was Phantom (2013) in which a rogue KGB unit takes over a ballistic submarine, with a phantom propulsion system, with the intent of starting a nuclear war between the US and China.
The most recent submarine movie was made in 2018. I missed any advertising for it or I would have seen it in the theaters. Hunter Killer stars Gerard Butler as a US submarine commander. It is a fast-paced movie in which the US sub takes with the aid of a Soviet submarine commander rescues the Russian President from a coup attempt.
It doesn't a psychiatrist to figure out that submarines movies appeal to me more because these days we are battling another stealth silent killer in the Covid-19 virus.
I am hoping and praying that this pandemic ends soon for so many more reasons than just sports or any kind of movies.
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