John Blanchette

It is simply not the case that Jim Fitzgerald has either attended or worked for every college and sports franchise between here and Seattle.

Among the lesser and self-evident lessons from our ongoing limbo is just how much sports can be missed when they’ve been furloughed.

Often the most difficult part of helping is deciding what part of ourselves to give.

In Spokane, it’s possible that while there could be fewer baseball games this year, there could be more in 2021 and beyond.

So your favorite collegiate rower or third baseman will have this lost spring of athletic eligibility restored. Good deal. Any sliver of doing-the-right-thing by the NCAA deserves a huzzah. And if it throws a little chaos – or even a lot – into the machinery of college athletics, that’s almost a bonus for some of us.

This is now the Year of Playing Dangerously. Presuming anyone gets to play from this point on.

You could say feelings were mixed when the Gonzaga Bulldogs learned Wednesday that NCAA Basketball Tournament games would be played in virtually empty arenas – though there was one overriding sentiment.

It’s unlikely that any fan base will feel as emotionally empty – OK, robbed – as Gonzaga’s local mob, which has been teased with seeing the Zags launch a tournament run here in town.