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Thread: Sports during the 1918 flu pandemic

  1. #1
    I wear Elly colored glass WrongVerb's Avatar
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    Sports during the 1918 flu pandemic

    Here's what sports looked like during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic

    The COVID-19 pandemic has halted all sporting events, as well as every other large gathering in the United States, and fans are wondering how and when games will return.

    It’s worth it to look back at what sports looked like during the 1918 influenza pandemic, commonly called the Spanish flu. That pandemic lasted 15 months and killed an estimated 50 to 100 million people worldwide, including approximately 675,000 Americans, according to HISTORY. More than 500 million people — about one-third of the population— were infected around the world.

    What did MLB look like during the 1918 Spanish Flu?

    Flu masks were common in 1918 and 1919 during the influenza pandemic. Even MLB players, umpires and managers wore them during games.

    Though the first case of the flu appeared in the United States in March 1918, the MLB season began as scheduled on April 16 and completed most of its slate. It cut one month off the end of the season and ended with Game 6 of the World Series on Sept. 11, which the Boston Red Sox won against the Chicago Cubs. The game played at Braves Field over Fenway Park due to the larger setting, and attendance was lower than usual.



    But that game helped spread a new strain of the virus and caused a second wave of the influenza in the United States. In August, soldiers and sailors returned home from World War I and docked in Boston. Johnny Smith, a sports history professor at Georgia Tech and co-author of the new book, “War Fever: Boston, Baseball, and America in the Shadow of the Great War, told Forbes:

    “And it’s during this period when the Red Sox and Cubs are playing the World Series that these social gatherings – three games at Fenway Park, a draft registration drive, a Liberty Loan parade – all of those events and the regular interactions that people had on streetcars and in saloons and so on helped spread the virus,” Smith continued. “And Boston becomes really the epicenter of the outbreak in September of 1918.”
    The 1919 MLB season started one week later than it had the year before.
    Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. -- Carl Sagan (Pale Blue Dot)

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    The one. The only. Ron Gant's Avatar
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    Re: Sports during the 1918 flu pandemic

    I miss the days when pro athletes were only prone to spreading gonorrhea, herpes and the occasional case of HIV.

    Those old-timers had no idea how good they had it. #Nostalgia.
    Last edited by Ron Gant; 05-16-2020 at 01:24 AM. Reason: I forgot HIV, duh

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    Re: Sports during the 1918 flu pandemic

    Quote Originally Posted by Ron Gant View Post
    I miss the days when pro athletes were only prone to spreading gonorrhea, herpes and the occasional case of HIV.

    Those old-timers had no idea how good they had it. #Nostalgia.


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