Back In The Saddle Again

“To have a comeback, you have to have a setback.”

– Mr T.

I pity the fool who doesn’t imbibe of the deep wisdom of Lawrence Turead, especially when it comes to turning setbacks into comebacks. T was down on his luck several times throughout his life, routinely making tough moments into something better. A few of his wins along the way came as a byproduct of his sports prowess, even having tried out for the Green Bay Packers in his youth, missing out on a spot due to a knee injury. Just another setback.

But this is not an article about Mr. T, his cereal, his cartoon, or the incalculable volume of fools he has pitied. T is not the only athlete to experience a setback along the way.

Over the next month-plus, three of the big four sports leagues will re-engage in something resembling the end of their season. Hockey and basketball will ramp into their playoffs, and baseball will play the emotional equivalent of an aperitif. With each of them far afield from normalcy, here are a few of the factors that may be weighing on the pros as they go.

Psychological

Any way you slice it, this will be a historically unique season for each sport. The athletes who are more easily able to assimilate change will have a leg up on the rest of the crowd, and those who find “different” particularly challenging could struggle mightily. Smaller-to-nonexistent crowds, impacts to home field advantage, and the ever-present fears of catching  COVID all make quite a potent cocktail to distract the minds of athletes at the leading edge of their games. The impact those minute distractions can have on the apex of physical and mental acuity? It will be interesting to see.

Not to mention the psychological impacts on the players who have decided to sit this one out. Will seeing their cohorts back in play without them impact their psyche? Those team bonds and relationships? You see a player coming back from a gruesome injury having to also surmount the psychology of placing that stress on a part that failed them before. It wouldn’t be a huge leap to think that a percentage of the players coming back to play are doing so with some sizable reservations as well.

Physical

It’s true that most of the athletes with downtime used that time to heal injured bodies, and so it’s an easy assumption to think that most teams will be re-engaging at their healthiest and most-complete, right? While that math may be immediately true, there’s also the simple fact of the uneven – and often inadequate – training these thoroughbreds had to engage in over their break. To go from “working from home with the tools you’ve got” straight into the “all or nothing” part of your season over a few weeks is a huge demand on any physique.

While each league is trying to give the teams time to get back to pace, the hockey and basketball onramps are the equivalent of jumping onto a moving train, and baseball may see their results skewed by teams that are built to compete for the short haul, instead of the usual 162-game grind that is a pro baseball season. Look for teams to leverage that strategy to their advantage, if they can.

Rhythmic

The NHL and NBA will be competing during a timeframe that has always been their offseason. Baseball will end somewhat on track, but will still see some major kinks, including the loss of their All Star game. The NFL will see impacts of their own, and this is all before the next wave of this crazy thing erases the blackboard and makes us start planning all over again.

For the players that spend most of their waking hours geared toward improving and perfecting their craft, shifting their calendars to this degree could actually have impacts on them long after they finally get seasons back on track hopefully prior to 2032.

So, while the pros may be headed back to the ice, hardwood, and field, they have a lot of flotsam and jetsam simply to clear out from between their ears to perform at their ultimate best. How they approach and succeed should be a huge part of who actually comes out on top for each. Saddle up and have a killer weekend, DNVR Nation. Are you ready to get started? Are the players on your team?