Doctors and scientists were warning about the dangers of playing games when there was no chance of social distancing and no vaccine.
Meanwhile, the President urged all college teams to play in the fall.
Beyond the sports world, people were just as divided in their pandemic response. There was confusion, anger, misinformation and defiance. While most people followed the medical guidelines, there were also anti-mask leagues and quack cures:
Rather than recent suggestions there was Bulgarian Blood Tea and Mus-Ter-Pep, which was a mix of mustard, turpentine and pepper. And then there was the Pittsburgh medical man who claimed success with a mix of iodine and creosote.
In Minneapolis there was resistance to the ban on high school football. Two schools ignored the rule and were in the midst of their game when sheriff’s deputies took the field and did a little tackling of their own.
Back on the college front, the Nebraska Cornhuskers mutinied on their own league – which had decided not to play in the fall – and went off on their own to play.
All this sound familiar?
It should, though it’s not the state of American sports and society in 2020 as we deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
The above scenarios are all from 1918 when the United States – and the entire world – went through a similar, but far more deadly pandemic:
The H1N1 influenza virus or, as it became known, Spanish Flu.
The similarities of then and now are proof: history does repeat itself.
Looking back isn’t meant as some kind of scare tactic. We can learn about our current circumstance by taking a good look at a century past.
And anyone who scoffs at such a historical primer needs to know the stories of athletes like NHL Hall of Famer “Bad Joe” Hall, Texas Longhorns’ lineman Joe Spence, Negro Leaguer Ted Kimbro and famed umpire Silk O’Loughlin.
When so much now is following a blueprint from the past, their plights are a part of the history we don’t want to repeat.
All of them – and dozens of others in the sports world – all died during the pandemic.
Some perished because medical practices were ignored and teams rushed back into competition too soon.
To date, the current COVID 19 pandemic – which has rising numbers in several states – has infected over 5.2 million Americans and killed over 165,000. The U.S. – which has 4.2 percent of the world’s population – accounts for about 22 percent of the global coronavirus deaths.
Against that backdrop, several colleges and universities have opted not to play football or other sports this fall. Around here that includes the University of Dayton, Central State, Miami University, Wilmington, Wittenberg and, most notably, Ohio State.
The Big Ten and the Pac-12 both announced this week they are postponing football, possibly to the spring.
Meanwhile, the other three Power 5 leagues – the SEC, ACC and Big 12 – plan to play slightly altered schedules.
In 1918, 18 of the 88 colleges playing major college football – including Alabama, LSU and Tennessee – did not take the field in the fall.
The entire Missouri Valley Conference – which then included Kansas, Kansas State, Nebraska and Missouri – canceled football, though Nebraska balked and played six games.
Ohio State played six games that season as well, while Miami played five, Wittenberg four and UD just two.
Unbelievably, the Dayton Triangles – in a city where the pandemic’s three waves in 1918 and 1919 killed at least 701 people – went 8-0 in 1918. They won the Ohio League, although several other pro teams in the Midwest decided not to compete that season.
On the college level, less than 30 percent of the originally scheduled games were played.
USC didn’t start its schedule until Nov. 23.
The University of Missouri planned to play football until the campus shut down when 1,020 students contacted the flu.
Pitt cancelled its season in late September, but a month later, when the pandemic seemed more under control, Panthers coach Glenn “Pop” Warner cobbled together a last-minute schedule. His team beat mighty Georgia Tech, went 4-1 and claimed a piece of the national title along with 5-0 Michigan.
The best record in the nation that season belonged to 9-0 Texas.
But as John Maher and Kirk Bohls reported in their history of Longhorn football, the Texas team – after a season-ending victory over Texas A& M – returned to campus where the Spanish Flu claimed 200 live, including their 17-year-old guard Joe Spence.
A bigger challenge then
The situation in 1918 was more challenging than now.
World War I was still going on – an armistice would be signed Nov. 11 – and the Spanish Flu was more deadly than COVID-19. In its three waves, it killed 675,000 Americans and at least 50 million people worldwide.
After the first wave – which hit in the spring of 1918 – there was a dip in infections and death in the summer and people dropped their guard. Crowds gathered again. There were celebratory bonfires in the street where people burned their masks.
But the flu returned in the fall with a vengeance and super spreader events carried it to the masses.
The World Series had been moved up because of the war and ended in mid-September, with the Boston Red Sox beating the Chicago Cubs in six games. The crowds that gathered in Boston turned the city into the new epicenter of the pandemic.
During the season, several Red Sox, including Babe Ruth had become sick but recovered. Well-known Boston Globe baseball writer Eddie Martin, one of the official scorers of the Series, died from the flu.
So did baseball players like Kimbro, who had just joined the Army as the flu ravaged one military camp after another in America.
Camp Sherman, outside of Chillicothe, had 5,686 soldiers fall ill and 1,777 die.
Philadelphia held a Liberty Loan Parade in late September that drew 200,00 spectators. Three days later all 31 hospitals in the city were filled and in four weeks’ time, over 12,000 people were dead.
In October of 2018, 195,000 people in the U.S. died from the Flu.
The sports world suffered numerous casualties because younger people were especially vulnerable to the flu. COVID-19, on the other hand, has victimized the elderly and the immune-compromised although recently many young people have fallen ill.
What’s become especially concerning to college administrators is the emerging research showing a high percentage of patients who’ve recovered from COVID-19 have developed myocarditis, a heart condition that can result in sudden cardiac arrest.
Several college players who’ve had COVID – including the Indiana Hoosiers’ Brady Feeney – are now reporting heart issues.
‘I have Coach in front of my name, not Doctor'
None of us like to be isolated in our homes or wear masks in public. We all crave normalcy.
Players and coaches arguing to continue their seasons is understandable. But I don’t get the crackpot deniers and now there’s a rising wave of anti-vaxxer conspiracy folks.
They’re spewing all kinds of phony theories: The vaccines will contain monkey brains or government tracking tattoos. Some say this is a CIA plot.
One of the best responses I’ve heard from a coach comes from IU’s Tom Allen, who told Bob Kravitz of The Athletic:
“I’m not in a position to make these decisions. I have ‘Coach’ in front of my name, not ‘Doctor.’
“You can say, ‘Hey, I want to play.’ I get it….But that’s why you balance that with ‘We follow the advice of medical experts’ and that’s what it has to come down to.
“And we are going to follow their lead. I’ve said from the beginning: ‘As long as doctors say we can do this, we’re going to do it. And if they tell us we can’t, we won’t. No matter how bad we want to play.’”
When medical advice is ignored by teams, there’s a chance you’ll end up like Canadiens’ defenseman Joe Hall.
Montreal made the Stanley Cup finals in 1919 and on the way to play the Seattle Metropolitans it spent several days training at the facilities of Victoria Aristocrats, whose coach and owner, Lester Patrick, had pushed the idea that teams play through the pandemic.
In February of 1919 the Victoria Daily Times noted Patrick: “set a record for signing players…as one man was stricken, another was secured to fill his place.”
It’s thought that’s where the Canadiens were infected.
With the grueling championship series knotted 2-2-1, players from both teams were falling seriously ill.
The 37-year-old Hall – who was known as an enforcer and had played in more Stanley Cup games in his career than anyone – ended up with a 104-degree temperature and was taken to a nearby sanitarium.
With over half the Canadiens stricken, the team could not field enough players for Game 6. The championship was called off.
Four days later Joe Hall died of the Spanish Flu.
And history has now come full circle. His great granddaughter, Dr. Sarah Hall, is an anesthesiologist at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital on Vancouver Island and has spent the past few months treating COVID-19 patients.
Larry Hall, Joe’s grandson, is an Ontario health club owner and recently told the New York Times:
“What happened to my grandfather is relevant now in a way I never thought it would be. The flu that hit the Stanley Cup came at the end of a series of pandemic waves. People relaxed, and then, unfortunately, it came again.”
It cost his Hall of Fame grandfather his life.
That’s the kind of history we don’t want to repeat.
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