Mike Anthony: Goodbye 2020, good morning 2021; a sports world gone dark will light up again

Many of us probably didn’t realize just how good we had it for all those years before terms like “social distancing” and “contact tracing” were to be understood and embraced.

Remember the buzz of a packed arena? The ear-splitting crowd reactions and waves of emotion to create and experience together?

The gatherings themselves, as much as actual competition, turned games into events. The gatherings were art to appreciate as much as any touchdown or slam dunk. The gatherings — shared exuberance or frustration, camaraderie either way — were always part of what solidified sports as a microcosm for life.

Sports were ripped away from us in 2020 and returned gradually in a barely recognizable form, with most everyone watching only from afar. They remained a microcosm, though, throughout a year that left us feeling as empty as our arenas. We were told to stay away from our teams — and, worse, asked to stay away from one another.

That’s one slice of heartbreak to take from a wretched mess of a year, that representation of sadness and loneliness offered up by what is usually a world’s beautiful distraction in forms of joy and community.

We’ll get back to that. We will. Someday. Soon, hopefully.

We’ll get back to fumbling around with tickets while searching for seats and the ‘cuse-me, ‘cuse-me, ‘cuse-me of shuffling through stadium rows. We’ll get back to searching for the right lot to park in, waiting for the doors to open, finding the best halftime concession stand. We’ll get back to taking in all the light and color of arenas like Gampel Pavilion and the XL Center. We’ll get back to creating the collective roars when a ball goes through a hoop or a puck slides into a net.

Good morning, 2021. Goodbye, 2020.

The coming year will be better.

That doesn’t mean much of anything will change next week or next month or even as winter turns to spring. The pandemic, the root of unimaginable destruction and discontent, rages on. Only patience, science, vaccine distribution and responsible behavior will end it — not a numerical calendar change or a symbolic turning of the page.

But we can take a collective breath today and settle on an optimistic hope that we’ve experienced more challenges than we will face. We enter 2021 with hope for health, happiness. We enter with hope for and a return to some degree of normalcy that we might not have realized was such cause for celebration as we were living it year after year after year. Hope, hope, hope. That’s not lost.

The buildings will fill up again. The sun above Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium will shine on thousands. We’ll wedge shoulder-to-shoulder and spill food and drinks while lunging for a foul ball.

If anyone took for granted the vibrancy of a crowd, I’d guess few will again.

More than 75,000 fans watched LSU defeat Clemson for the college football national championship in January, and more than 60,000 fans watched the Chiefs beat the 49ers in the Super Bowl in early February. College basketball played out to all the regular on-campus pageantry. High school gym bleachers shook.

Yet all the while, a strange virus was slowly spreading across the globe, destined for our shores. In March, America’s sports world went dark, the flick of a switch that ultimately was a lightbulb moment in that we should realize that the greatest joy in sport isn’t necessarily victory but actually getting together to celebrate one. The greatest joy is in one another, not one versus the other — a lesson or reminder that should apply to every area of life.

When you look back and consider the real losses of the past year — 344,000 lives, included — you see communities and families fractured, a country divided, sporting outcomes almost entirely irrelevant. Championships matter only in a certain context. Never as much as the experiences we’ve been robbed of, in and out of sports.

What is even left to say about 2020? Its misery has been documented every day for nearly 10 months now. The year was awful in just about every way, testing us, pushing us. At least it made us recognize what also goes overlooked — the power of random kindness and working together, for example.

Now we look ahead, though. Thankful for what we have. Expecting to get it back. Recognizing how wonderful it all once was.

High school athletes had their seasons, and a major part of their development, ripped away with the cancellation of sports in the spring and fall. They deserve a return to competition, and their families deserve to come together on the sidelines.

College kids, the focus of our state’s main rooting interests, have been asked to isolate or enter a bubble or live a life that is nothing like the student-athlete existence they envisioned. They deserve to play before a crowd as much as 10,000 people at a time deserve to see them perform in person.

Parents and kids deserve a day with the Yankees or Red Sox or Yard Goats.

Everyone deserves the Olympic Games.

We all deserve the ability to gather and, when we do, we should recognize what a sight to behold a crowd at a sporting event actually is.

We had it so good for so long. We didn’t in 2020. We will again. We will come out of the corners of our little worlds that we’ve been confined to. We will gather and ooh and ahh. We will play our part in what a full return to sports means — having a crowd on hand for the necessary sights, sounds, emotions.

We’ll recognize how special that is. And when we fill arenas we used to fill, the world will feel normal again, because those settings are a reflection for what’s taking place everywhere else.