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For the last few days, sports fans around the world have been wandering aimlessly around their homes while repeatedly pinching themselves whenever they instinctively put on ESPN to see if they’re just living in the middle of a bad dream as the world of athletics has virtually come to a standstill over the past week or so.
The nightmare began when the NBA announced it was suspending its season thanks in no small part to the dumbassery of Rudy Gobert and the dominos only continued to fall from there, as the NHL subsequently followed in its footsteps before Major League Baseball called an end to spring training and pushed back the start of its regular season to god knows when.
It’s currently unclear if either of those first two leagues will eventually be forced to call things off entirely like the NCAA did when it officially canceled March Madness or if they’ll simply pick up where they left off, but given how things are looking right now, it’s going to be at least a couple of months until we’ll see some semblance of normalcy.
On Friday, golf fans learned that they’ll also be without a tradition like any other when Augusta National announced it was holding off on hosting The Masters until an undetermined date, and now, another sport’s premier event has been canceled in the form of The Kentucky Derby.
For the past 75 years, horse racing enthusiasts and lovers of large hats have descended on Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May to pound mint juleps and take in a glorious day of racing, but on Monday, organizers announced they’ll be postponing the event for the first time since it was pushed back a couple of months courtesy of World War II.
As a result, fans will have to wait until September 5th to get their fix, and while this is certainly a bummer, it’s far from the most shocking development in the world and obviously for the best.