{"id":339547,"date":"2021-03-04T06:04:07","date_gmt":"2021-03-03T20:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=339547"},"modified":"2021-03-04T06:04:07","modified_gmt":"2021-03-03T20:04:07","slug":"covid-concerns-as-the-sports-world-turns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/covid-concerns-as-the-sports-world-turns\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID concerns as the sports world turns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Of Play and Players in the Time Of COVID<\/strong><br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n<em>\u201cThe play\u2019s the thing<br \/>\nWherein I\u2019ll catch the conscience of the king.\u201d<\/em><br \/>\n\t\t\t    \u00a0<strong>\u2014Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Of play and players in the time of COVID-19<br \/>\na new billion-dollar home w\/no live fans for the Raiders<br \/>\nacross the nation and the world a surreal sports scene<br \/>\nCOVID gains more fear than Voldemort and 19 Darth Vaders<br \/>\nstadiums contain photos of fans seated in the stands<br \/>\nCOVID cases mount daily among healthy team players<br \/>\nschedules and games change as coronavirus demands<br \/>\nsports go on despite NO tickets for fans and less players.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nOn Saipan island a CNMI sports broadcaster writes poems<br \/>\nfans all over the world miss their hometown arenas<br \/>\nCOVID couch potatoes play with remotes in their homes<br \/>\npeaceful social distance between international ballerinas<br \/>\nin Moscow dancing Sergei Prokofiev\u2019s Peter and the Wolf<br \/>\nwhile down in More-Old-Ego guess who\u2019s playing golf?<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nChubby Cheeks as COVID-19 Speaks<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nChildren distant learning in silence can\u2019t buy it<br \/>\nchubby cheeks, good diet, COVID lurks don\u2019t try it<br \/>\nI am doing great, put on weight, an old man\u2019s fate,\u00a0<br \/>\ntoo much on my plate, however I relish and relate.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThe poetry rolls out on cyber scrolls despite the trolls<br \/>\nlately much on corona virus and acquisition of old age<br \/>\nseems to mutate daily on each and every notebook page<br \/>\nhey this is\u00a0turning into a sonnet but not yet enough on it.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nTime teasing of future Zooms puts\u00a0a bee under my bonnet<br \/>\nnow I wait for this message to race through cyberspace<br \/>\ncan\u2019t get any vaccine appointment at all for my spouse<br \/>\nas we go stir crazy in our non COVID isolation house.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nSunny cool Snow Moon temperatures in Vegas Valley today<br \/>\nnow if only\u00a0COVID-19 and its new mutations would go away.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Joey \u2018Pepe Batbon\u2019 Connolly (Special to the Saipan Tribune)<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Joey aka Pepe Batbon is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is a sonnet practitioner who enjoys stargazing.<\/em><br \/>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Of Play and Players in the Time Of COVID \u00a0 \u201cThe play\u2019s the thing Wherein&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":322001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[26,23672,23673,13843],"class_list":["post-339547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-cnmi","tag-lvnv","tag-nola","tag-pepe-batbon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}