Some history we do not want to repeat

Instead of recent suggestions, there was Bulgarian Blood Tea and Mus-Ter-Pep, which was a mix of mustard, turpentine and pepper. And then there was the Pittsburgh medical man who claimed success with a mix of iodine and creosote.

In Minneapolis, there was opposition to the ban on high school football. Two schools ignored the rule and were in the middle of their game when sheriff’s deputies took the field and tackled a bit of their own.

Back on the college front, the Nebraska Cornhuskers mutated on their own league – who had decided not to play in the fall – and went off on their own to play.

All this sound familiar?

It should, even though it is not the state of American sports and society by 2020, because we are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The above scenarios are all from 1918 when the United States – and the entire world – went through a similar but much more deadly pandemic:

The H1N1 flu virus or, as it became known, Spanish flu.

The similarities between then and now are proof: history repeats itself.

Retreat is not meant to be a sort of scare tactic. We can learn about our present circumstance by looking closely at a century past.

And anyone who mocks such a historic primer should read the stories of athletes such as NHL Hall of Famer “Bad Joe” Hall, Texas lineman Joe Texas, “Long Negs”, Negro Leaguer Ted Kimbro and the famous umpire Silk O’Loughlin knows.

As so many now follow a blueprint from the past, their bullying is a part of history we do not want to repeat.

All of them – and dozens of others in the sports world – all died during the pandemic.

Some were killed because medical practices were ignored and teams were advised to return to competition too soon.

To date, the current COVID 19 pandemic – which has increasing numbers in several states – has infected more than 5.2 million Americans and killed more than 165,000. The US – which has 4.2 percent of the world’s population – accounts for about 22 percent of global coronavirus deaths.

Against that background, several colleges and universities have chosen this fall to not play football like other sports. About here includes the University of Dayton, Central State, Miami University, Wilmington, Wittenberg and, most importantly, Ohio State.

The Big Ten and the Pac-12 both announced this week that they are postponing football, possibly after the spring.

Meanwhile, the other three Power 5 leagues – the SEC, ACC and Big 12 – plan to play some changed schedules.

In 1918, 18 of the 88 colleges that play major college football – including Alabama, LSU, and Tennessee – did not take the field in the fall.

The entire Missouri Valley Conference – which then included Kansas, Kansas State, Nebraska and Missouri – canceled football, although Nebraska balled and played six games.

Ohio State also played six games that season, while Miami played five, Wittenberg four and UD just two.

Unbelievably, the Dayton Triangles – in a city where the three waves of pandemic in 1918 and 1919 killed at least 701 people – went 8-0 in 818. They won the Ohio League, although several other pro teams in the Midwest decided not to compete this season.

At the college level, less than 30 percent of the originally planned games were played.

USC did not begin its schedule until Nov. 23.

The University of Missouri plans to play football until campus closes when 1,020 students contact the flu.

Pitt canceled the season in late September, but a month later, when the pandemic seemed more under control, Panthers coach Glenn “Pop” Warner put together a last-minute schedule. His team defeated powerful Georgia Tech, went 4-1 and claimed a piece of the national title along with 5-0 Michigan.

The best record in the nation that season belonged to 9-0 Texas.

But as John Maher and Kirk Bohls reported in their history of Longhorn football, the Texas team – after a season-end victory over Texas A&M – returned to campus, where the Spanish flu claimed 200 lives , including her 17-year-old guard Joe Spence.

A bigger challenge then

The situation in 1918 was more challenging than it is now.

World War I was still going on – a ceasefire would be signed on November 11 – and the Spanish flu was more deadly than COVID-19. In its three waves, it killed 675,000 Americans and at least 50 million people worldwide.

After the first wave – which hit in the spring of 1918 – there was a dip in infections and deaths in the summer and people dropped their guard. Crowds gather again. There were festive bonfires in the street where people burned their masks.

But the flu came back in the fall with a vengeance and super spreader events carried it to the masses.

The World Series was put on hold due to the war and ended in mid-September, with the Boston Red Sox beating the Chicago Cubs in six games. The crowds gathering in Boston turned the city into the new epicenter of the pandemic.

During the season, several Red Sox, including Babe Ruth, fell ill but recovered. Renowned Boston Globe baseball writer Eddie Martin, one of the series’ official scorers, died of the flu.

So did baseball players like Kimbro, who had just joined the Army because the flu destroyed one military camp after another in America.

Camp Sherman, outside Chillicothe, had killed 5,686 soldiers and killed 1,777.

Philadelphia held a Liberty Loan Parade in late September that drew 200.00 spectators. Three days later, all 31 hospitals in the city were filled and in the space of four weeks, more than 12,000 people died.

In October of 2018, 195,000 people in the US died of the Flu.

The sports world received numerous casualties because younger people were particularly vulnerable to the flu. COVID-19, on the other hand, has become the elderly victim and the immune compromiser although recently many young people have fallen ill.

Of particular concern to college administrators is the emerging study that shows that a high percentage of patients who have recovered from COVID-19 have developed myocarditis, a heart condition that can result in sudden heartbeat.

Several college players who have had COVID – including the Brady Feeney of Indiana Hoosiers – are now reporting heart problems.

‘I have Coach for my name, not Doctor’

None of us want to be isolated in our homes when wearing masks in public. We all yearn for normalcy.

Players and coaches who argue to go through their seasons is understandable. But I deprive the deniers of crackpot and now there is a growing wave of anti-waxer conspiracy theorists.

They spew all sorts of false theories: The faxes will contain monkey hairs as tattoos of government tracking. Some say this is a CIA plot.

One of the best responses I have heard from a coach comes from Tom Allen of IU, who told Bob Kravitz of The Athletic:

‘I’m not able to make those decisions. I have ‘Coach’ for my name, not ‘Doctor’.

‘You can say,‘ Hey, I want to play. ‘I understand it… .Therefore you balance that with‘ We follow the advice of medical experts ’and that is where it should come down to.

‘And we will follow her song. I have said from the beginning: ‘As long as doctors say we can do this, we will do it. And if they tell us we can not, we will not. No matter how bad we want to play. ‘”

If medical advice is ignored by teams, chances are you will end up like Canadiens defender Joe Hall.

Montreal made the Stanley Cup final in 1919 and on its way to play the Seattle Metropolitans spent several days training at the facilities of Victoria Aristocrats, whose coach and owner, Lester Patrick, had shrugged off the idea of ​​teams playing through the pandemic.

In February 1919, the Victoria Daily Times quoted Patrick as “setting a record for signing players … if one man was hit, another was secured to fill his place.”

It is thought that this is where the Canadiens were infected.

2 – 1 was the halftime score. Players from both teams fell seriously ill.

The 37-year-old Hall – who was known to be a maintainer and had played in more Stanley Cup games than one in his career – calmed down with a temperature of 104 degrees and was taken to a nearby sanitary facility.

With more than half of the Canadiens attacking, the team could not get enough player field for Game 6. The championship was called.

Four days later, Joe Hall died of the Spanish flu.

And history has now come full circle. His great-grandmother, Dr. Sarah Hall, is an anesthesiologist at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital on Vancouver Island and has spent the past few months treating COVID-19 patients.

Larry Hall, Joe’s grandson, is an owner of the Ontario Health Club and recently told the New York Times:

‘What happened to my grandfather is now relevant in a way I never thought it would be. The flu that hit the Stanley Cup came at the end of a series of pandemic waves. People relaxed, and then it unfortunately came back. ‘

It cost his Hall of Fame grandfather his life.

That’s the kind of history we do not want to repeat.