Sports canceled/postponed/altered by epidemics or world events? It has happened before
No Miami Open. A NASCAR race in front of just the metal stands at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The entire NBA season stuck on “STOP.”
March Madness in front of empty seats — or, now, no March Madness — doesn’t seem all that mad, as people try to slow the spread of coronavirus bringing COVID-19. Besides, the real world has altered the sports world on more than one occasion.
▪ 1919 Stanley Cup Final: Teams have been hoisting the Stanley Cup since before the World Series, NFL or NBA existed, with two exceptions. Many current hockey fans recall NHL’s lockout of players that eliminated the entire 2004-05 season. Few living puckheads recall 1919, when the flu epidemic halted the Stanley Cup Final between the National Hockey League champion Montreal Canadiens and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association champion Seattle Metropolitans.
The Canadiens full roster numbered only 12 skaters and goalie Georges Vezina, whose name graces the trophy given annually to the NHL’s best goalie. Seattle’s full roster contained only eight players and a goalie. After five games, each team had two wins (there had been a tie in Game 4 that prompted the use of sudden death overtime in Game 5), but Montreal didn’t have enough healthy players. Flu thinned Seattle’s roster also.
Seattle refused to accept the Cup by flu forfeit. The names of the teams, but not the players, are engraved on the Stanley Cup with “Series Not Completed.”
▪ 1942 Rose Bowl: Duke accepted the invitation to be the Eastern/Midwestern representative against Pacific Coast Conference champion Oregon State. Six days later, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, jerking the United States off the sidelines and fully into World War II.
The national security folks thought a massive gathering on the Pacific coast would be way too inviting a target for a Japanese air strike. The game got moved to Duke Stadium, expanded with loaned stands from nearby North Carolina and North Carolina State. An executive order limiting Japanese-Americans travel meant Oregon State player Chiaki Yoshihara couldn’t go.
Yoshihara missed the Beavers upsetting undefeated Duke, 20-16., on Jan. 1, 1942 in Durham, North Carolina.
▪ 1917-18, 1942-45 Indianapolis 500: World War I and World War II stopped the annual running of the 500, which began in 1911. As the United States entered World War II, World War I flying ace and speedway owner Eddie Rickenbacker (yes, the guy the causeway to Key Biscayne is named after) offered the track to the military as a testing ground. The military declined because its equipment already was too advanced for the track.
So, the place sat the entire war with zero upkeep. Rickenbacker wanted to dump the rickety place. After the war, 1937-39-40 Indy 500 winner Wilbur Shaw convinced Terre Haute businessman Tony Hulman to be a majority partner. They bought the track despite a chorus of doubters that included Hulman’s wife. Hulman renovated the track beyond anyone’s expectations and brought on the Indianapolis 500’s glory years. His family owned it until selling to Roger Penske’s company last year.
▪ 1940 Winter and Summer Olympics: Japan was scheduled to do what the United States had done in 1932 and Germany had done in 1936, host both the Winter and Summer Olympics. But with World War II already coming over the horizon in 1938, the Japanese gave up the hosting of the summer event in Tokyo and the winter event in Sapporo.
The Winter Olympics were moved to Garmisch, Germany. Helsinki, Finland would’ve hosted the Summer Olympics. But once Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 truly ignited World War II, both sets of Olympics were canceled.
Helsinki would host the 1952 Summer Olympics. Tokyo got the 1964 summer games. Sapporo hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics.
▪ 1944 Winter and Summer Olympics: Just before World War II became a full-on reality, Italy’s Cortina D’Ampezzo was awarded the 1944 Winter Olympics and London got the 1944 Summer Olympics. London hosted the 1948 Summer Olympics, the first after World War II.
▪ JFK assassination: President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Friday, Nov. 22, 1963. While NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle ordered games be played two days later, nobody outside the stadiums saw them. The NFL’s symbiotic relationship with television took a break. CBS, the lone network doing the NFL at the time, decided to forego football to stay with news coverage.
Smart call. CBS was live when Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby killed assassination suspect Lee Harvey Oswald late Sunday morning, Dallas time.
The next time a U.S. President was shot, Ronald Reagan in 1981, the NCAA went ahead with the national championship men’s basketball game between Indiana and North Carolina after being assured Reagan’s life wasn’t in danger.
▪ 1989 Siena men’s basketball: When the NCAA said no fans for men’s and women’s basketball tournament games, hoop junkies of a certain age flashed back 31 years.
A measles outbreak on Siena’s campus caused the Saints to play their last nine games, including the North Atlantic Conference tournament, in fan-free environments. No fans. No friends. No family. Just players, officials and media, including ESPN’s cameras were in the Hartford Civic Center to see Siena’s 68-67 conference championship win against Boston University.
▪ 9/11: Sporting life, like much of U.S. life, froze for a period after the Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Major League Baseball didn’t play for six days. Minor-leagues canceled the rest of their playoffs. Though farther from the weekend than it had been when President Kennedy was assassinated, the NFL decided against playing on Sept. 16 and 17. Those games were moved to the end of the schedule. NASCAR did the same with the Sept. 16 New Hampshire 300, which became the season finale.
This story was originally published March 12, 2020 at 3:47 PM.
