It Ain't Over Till It's Over

The remarkable Yogi Berra - an 18-time all-star who hit 358 career home runs when baseball had fewer games each year - is known for many remarkable sayings, things like “it’s deja-vu all over again.”

He had another saying that I’ve been thinking about lately, especially when people claim that Coronavirus will somehow go away when a vaccine is developed and things will go back to normal.

Yogi said “it ain’t over till it’s over.”

There is a shared assumption in this country that once the virus problem is solved, things will instantly return to the way they were.

President Trump promises that once the virus goes away, restaurants will open, businesses will hire the people they laid off, customers will come flooding back and Broadway theaters, baseball stadiums and colleges will all be filled.

Not quite.

We know, of course, that more than 170,000 people won’t be here any more - a drop in the bucket for a nation of 330 million, but a tragedy for everyone who knew one of the victims.

We can only guess how many restaurants won’t re-open.  Earlier this month, industry experts estimated that one in three restaurants won’t be coming back. In one pessimistic poll, 80 percent of restaurant and bar owners questioned said they were uncertain if they will open again.

Now we aren’t quite certain what will be happening with public schools. And I have read stories that some college students are talking about deferring their studies - they would just come back to class next year.

How many? Your guess is as good as mine. But, let’s pretend for a minute that you are a high school senior who doesn’t know what the 2020-21 year will bring.

You want to go to college when you graduate. And, by the fall of next year, it should be safe. But, colleges only admit so many people - they can’t build a lot of classrooms and libraries and dormitories overnight - and lots of the students who were admitted to the freshman class this year plan to come back.

Say there were 3,000 freshmen admitted this year, and a third of them decided not to come. Maybe they wanted to wait for real classes, and didn’t want to pay all that tuition to see home videos. 

That means when the current crop of high school seniors tries to get into that college next year, a thousand of those 3,000 seats will already be filled. 

Is that number too high or too low? Well, lately I have been reading about colleges that open and then quickly close again.

Even before the virus entered the picture, it was hard for many people to get into a good college. Some rich and famous people have gone to jail for trying to get their kids into college by cheating and got caught.

You mean they claimed their daughter was on their high school school rowing team when there was no rowing team? Yep, things like that.

Or let’s say you are a landlord. Make it a modest landlord, who owns two or three commercial buildings. And the dry cleaners and restaurant and snack bar have closed, or have strict limits on occupancy. Even better, they are not paying rent.

Do you know that some hedge funds that loaned money to the bank that holds your mortgage have been filing legal claims, trying to force small landlords into bankruptcy. Why? Well, sooner or later someone is going to come up short when the county and state don’t get their taxes, and if the owner is bankrupt and you hold the judgement, you stand a good chance of recovering most of the money you lent out. At least you are ahead of all the other creditors.

That, sadly, is the law. And, we all believe in law and order, don’t we?

For homeowners, there is a real question about defaulting on their mortgages. No one has a good number, but estimates are ranging from two or three per-cent of homes to 10 per-cent or more.

That would create millions of tragedies, of course. Just imagine what would happen to the value of your house if there was a house in foreclosure on every block in the neighborhood.

Now the wonderful thing about capitalism is that every crisis creates a new opportunity, One business closes, another opens to replace it. Some people win, others lose.

But if you want to open a restaurant and you can’t get the containers to pack your food in - the manufacturer in another state couldn’t get the raw materials or their workers left town because they had no savings and had to find work elsewhere - well, you have a problem.

Sometimes, our dreams get in the way of reality. I heard a sportscaster on the radio the other day, complaining that we should open baseball stadiums because nothing is better than being out in the fresh air and sunshine. He was mumbling something about political correctness.

Well, he probably goes to the game through that wonderful gate that says press - you know, the one to the elevator up to the press booth.

He probably forgot what it was like when 20,000 or 30,000 people try to get into a stadium at the same time. Heck, he probably forgot what it is like sitting in the stands when there is no strong wind blowing. Ever smell that bowl of chili from four seats away?

I love the idea of getting back to normal. I think the experts know what they are doing, and lots of politicians are smart enough to follow them. Except for the ones who don’t, and the growing list of hospitalizations show who they are.

Then, if you really want to worry, think about this. We don’t know the long-term effects of Coronavirus. There are stories about athletes getting sick, recovering, and finding out months or years later they just can’t compete any more. But, no hard evidence either way - just another reason for caution.

Or, if you want to think big, just ask what the social and political implications are in Saudi Arabia, where last year 2.5 million Muslims came from all over the world to perform Hajj - the religious pilgrimage to Mecca. This year, the number was cut to about just 1,000 people, all from within the kingdom.

Religion is taken seriously in the Middle East.

So, when we think about the Spring and how soon everything will be getting back to normal, just remember Yogi.

It ain’t over till it’s over.

FOOTNOTE - While Yogi Berra is credited with saying “it ain’t over till it’s over,” there are lots of claims to who said it first, or whether it came before or after other similar sayings, like “it ain’t over till the fat lady sings,” or “it ain’t over till the fat man sings,” sexist and body-shaming comments that go back to the days when opera was more important to popular culture than it is today.

When Luciano Pavarotti failed to perform at the Met in New York City in 2007,  for example, the New York Post ran a headline - “Fat Man Won’t Sing.” 

Sports writer Dan Cook used the phrase in the San Antonio News-Express around 1975 or so to boost interest in a terrible local basketball team, the San Antonio Spurs. “It ain’t over till it’s over,” he told the fans. As expected, the team didn’t make the playoffs. It was over.

Of course, Lenny Kravitz — who came to the party late - could claim that he really popularized the saying. “It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over” was a song on his second album, Mama Said, and later released as a single in June, 1991. Kravitz (who wrote and produced it) said he was inspired by Motown, soul and Earth, Wind and Fire.

That’s another thing about Yogi Berra and his sayings - still waters run deep.