The Worst Possible Loss

As professional sports leagues seek to return to competition in the coming weeks, the continuing COVID-19 pandemic increases the chances that teams will have to deal with more than just victories and defeats.

Dr. David Aronoff has seen it for himself.

The devastation. The loss. All of the complications the coronavirus pandemic has brought upon people across the United States.

An infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, he feels glad that many don’t have to witness what he and his colleagues have too often since March. People on life support, fighting for their lives. In some cases, death.

As the NFL tries to find a safe way back to action amid the current health crisis, Aronoff urges league officials to keep things in perspective. If football can be played in 2020, it will be as much about relationships as it will be runs, receptions or returns.

“It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that we are all living through what I would say is the most challenging infectious disease pandemic since HIV,” Aronoff told AllTitans. “When we’ve heard tragic stories of players and coaches dying, it always tears a hole into the fabric of an organization. If that happens in a professional sports league, it will be an incredibly sobering event.”

Of course, that is no different than when it happens at any level of competition.

‘TOO MUCH TO HANDLE’

In the spring of 2016, tragedy struck the Vanderbilt baseball program, which plays its home games blocks away from Aronoff’s office.

Pitcher Donny Everett drowned in a fishing accident at Normandy Lake in Manchester, Tennessee, where he spent the afternoon with some teammates just days before their NCAA Tournament opener against Xavier.

Vanderbilt lost that contest and the next one against Washington, which brought a sudden end to its season. That, coach Tim Corbin said, was of no consequence. What mattered was the grief that overwhelmed him, his players and many others connected to the program.

“I dealt with the death of a captain while I was at Presbyterian College,” Corbin said in an interview with AllTitans. “I went through the death of a young man who was supposed to come here, and he tragically died just before coming here. All of them are just so painful in a lot of different ways.

“This one, because Donny had so much charisma and an effect on the team – forget the fact that he was really good – it just became too much to handle. The only remedy is time. A lot of it.”

Even today, even after Vanderbilt won the 2019 College World Series in Everett’s honor, the wound, Corbin said, is still open, and it will be for a while.

“Once you take on the responsibility of someone else’s child, they become part of your athletic family. In a lot of cases, sometimes more than that,” he said. “It just takes a tremendous amount of time to recover. It took a lot of time for our kids to recover, it took a lot of time for me personally and our staff to recover.”

EMOTIONAL SWINGS

One of the most recent in-season deaths of a professional athlete happened nearly a year ago.

Los Angeles Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs unexpectedly passed away on July 1, 2019 in his hotel room before a series against the Rangers in Texas. He was 27.

Soon after, fans left memorabilia and tributes outside of Angels Stadium in Anaheim. Angels players and others around the league, blindsided by the loss, posted tributes on social media and found ways to honor him on the field. A close friend, Washington Nationals pitcher Patrick Corbin wore Skaggs’ No. 45 the next day against the Florida Marlins and led the Nationals to a 3-2 victory.

In their first home game after his passing, on July 12, the entire Angels team wore No. 45 jerseys. Skaggs’ parents, siblings and wife threw ceremonial first pitches. Poetically, two L.A. pitchers threw a combined no-hitter that night in a 13-0 victory, which started a five-game win streak that got them four games above .500 and nine games out of first place. That was as close as they got the rest of the season.

“I can’t explain it, man,” All-Star outfielder Mike Trout said in a press conference. “We lost a teammate, a friend, a brother. Just have to get through it. It’s going to be tough. The next couple of days, the rest of the season, the rest of our lives.”

Things did get more difficult. As the season wore on, the defeats mounted. The Angels lost seven in a row to start August and finished 72-90, their worst record in 20 years and 35 games out of first place.

FINDING THE GOOD

The emotions are the same even if the athletes aren’t professionals or aspiring pros.

Shortly before midnight on May 12, 2010, Matt Malkowski, then a senior at Grafton High School who played baseball and football, was struck by a drunk driver near Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

Malkowski died seven weeks later after fighting for his life in a hospital. In Grafton, it took the whole community and then some to grieve, according to English teacher and baseball coach Brian Durst.

The coach’s wife, Suzie, designed shirts that said, “I Hit 4 Matt.” The shirts sold not only in Grafton but in other communities. Today, many in the region still wear them.

“The slogan became a motto for Grafton,” Durst said. “It’s hard to be upset about a strikeout or a bad play when you still have the opportunity to play the game you love. And that goes for anything in life. Matt died young and never had the opportunity to take on the next chapter of his life.”

That season, Grafton made it to the state finals.

“We dedicated our effort to make sure his family understood how much we missed him and appreciated him,” Durst said. “It gave us a lot of incentive to take nothing for granted. If there were any positives to take away from such an awful event, it was unity.”

Corbin too eventually found some good in his team’s most profound loss.

The man who has led Vanderbilt’s baseball program since 2003 has made sure Donny Everett’s parents, Teddy and Susan, remained involved with the team. That, he said, has helped both sides keep alive the memory of a dynamic 19-year-old with Major League dreams who left the world too soon.

“Donny’s parents have become close friends of the program,” Corbin said. “Donny’s loss was his parents' gain, for all of us. They became godparents of our staff’s kids. We gained something positive from it, and that’s it. Although, for them, nothing has been easy. Every year that goes by, every holiday and every baseball situation, it’s just another reminder of their son.”

MOUNTING LOSSES

Aronoff wants the NFL and other professional sports leagues to think about reality before players hit the field again.

And the fact is that COVID-19 presents a risk to everyone from players to coaches, especially older adults or people who have underlying health conditions. The disease may affect some more than others, but it’s hard to predict who will recover easily and who won’t.

“Even though the people who are in the age group of players tend to do well with COVID-19, they don’t always,” Aronoff said. “We have seen previously healthy young people get sick enough to die, and sometimes do. But if we’re thinking about people who are now coaches or in management, they’re the age group at higher risk.”

Even if players, coaches and other team personnel do well with the disease, they still run the risk of infecting their family members at home. That is why, Aronoff said, teams and leagues must enforce strict protocols for their personnel, even when they are away from the field and facilities.

“Stay home when possible, but if you need to go out in public, socially distance and wear a mask. Participate in good hand hygiene,” Aronoff said.” That may be a source of stress for players, but that could help them for getting inadvertently infected, or infecting others.”

Recently states including Tennessee, Arizona, Texas, Florida and others, have seen increases in COVID-19 cases. As of Monday, per the state’s tracker, Tennessee had 35,102 cases to go with 526 deaths. On Friday, there were 32,229 coronavirus cases to go with 502 deaths.

To Aronoff, the most sobering numbers lie below the surface. About one out of every 100 individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 in Tennessee passes away. Per every 100,000, eight Tennesseans die from the disease, per Statista.

Those numbers may appear low if you compare them to those of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Louisiana, but the risk is still very much there. Each NFL team travels for eight games every season.

That’s why Aronoff hopes the NFL does not lose sight of what’s truly important as it continues to wrestle with the unknown. To date, more than 119,923 families have lost a loved one to the disease nationwide.

“NFL teams are really families,” Aronoff said. “They’re close-knit groups. In that regard, imagine somebody in your family having to go into an ICU, being on mechanical ventilation, or possibly dying.”

Corbin doesn’t have to imagine it.

“Center yourself,” he said. “Understand that what you have right now, and the people you have it with, are the most important things in your life. If you immerse yourself in those things, there is fulfillment and satisfaction.”

And little chance for the worst kind of loss.