In his seminal book “Homo Ludens,” the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga argues that play is bedrock to culture, that a society doesn’t truly become one until it plays games. To him, playing is what makes us a community, one of the things that binds us together as a species.
What the world would look like without sports? We finally know the answer to the question, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. Perhaps you’d contemplated this outlandish scenario before, over beers at the bar, or in a freshman philosophy class, but it existed only as a thought experiment placing you in some joyless, more austere world.