The worst March

Some people love July. Height of summer, no school. Great month.

Some people love December, for similar reasons in Australia, though school runs until about the 20th. Then, you know, Christmas.

Some people love October because of Halloween and because the leaves turn.

Me, I've always been partial to March. It's not because of the arrival of spring, directly, though the warming of the weather in the U.S. was always pleasant. No, it's because it represented a confluence of the things I loved, all within a four-week span.

Since this is a movie blog, I'll start with the movies. From when I was young, March was always the month of the Academy Awards. And it used to be in late March, almost April. It was the crowning moment for the previous movie year, when you got to finally find out what was the best of the best.

Then about 25 years ago, two other things came along to surpass the Oscars, especially once the Oscars moved to February. For a couple sweet years there, though, they were all in the same month.

In 1993, I started playing fantasy baseball, and that love has come to define my love for baseball, especially now that the Red Sox have long since exorcised their curse and won four World Series. Each year in March, I would begin feverishly planning my strategy for drafting that year's team, a glorious day that usually would arrive sometime after the 20th of the month.

Then the very next year, 1994, I started following March Madness. Another obsession was born, though this one was limited to the three-week period in March and early April when the tournament was actually happening, as I never became a season-long college basketball fan. But that tournament ... well it was just about the best and most fun thing going, especially if you had five or ten bucks riding on it.

This year ... none of those things happened.

Oh, I got my Oscars, when my favorite movie of last year was crowned best picture. That was pretty cool.

But by the time the calendar flipped over to March, that was a distant memory, replaced by all coronavirus, all the time.

March Madness, on the other hand, was cancelled. And my fantasy baseball draft has been postponed indefinitely, vaguely planned now for the weekend before the start of the season. But no one knows when that might be. If it will be.

Of course, the loss of small pleasures such as a month of back-to-back awesome things pales in comparison to the deaths of what may end up being millions of people. But you know I know that without me having to say it. Today, I just want to mourn March for a minute.

In the good old days in the mid-1990s, I used to spend the month with a fantasy baseball magazine and a printed out March Madness bracket under my arm, catching exciting finishes of basketball games as I basked in a new spring warmth and talked with friends. And I was no casual participant in these activities. I ran March Madness pools and I commissioned fantasy baseball leagues. I was in neck deep in preparations and statistics and a general sense of joy.

I think specifically to the spring of 1995, my final in college -- and think, sadly, how lucky I was compared to this year's college seniors, who will end their college careers with remote learning and having drinks with friends over Zoom.

But anyway, that year two friends and I spent our two-week spring break in Florida to stay at one's parents' vacation house. It was Sanibel Island on the west coast of Florida, not one of the typical spring break hot spots you see in Spring Breakers. But there was another group of women from our school staying in the same neighborhood, who we got together with on a couple occasions (though not together with, unfortunately).

As much as I love and remember that experience for what it was -- beach, friends, drinking, the possibility of romance -- the things I really remember were waiting excitedly for Thursday through Sunday to roll around, so I could watch a new round of college basketball, as I was doing pretty well in the pool I was running, and researching which pitchers and hitters I wanted to draft later on that month. And then going over to watch the Oscars at the place where those girls were staying. It was David Letterman's lone year hosting. You know, the whole "Uma-Oprah" shtick. Forrest Gump won best picture.

That was exactly 25 years ago. It was my quintessential March. I've had many good ones since, but that was the best.

And this is the worst.

There's no baseball. There's no basketball. We've already celebrated the old movies, and there are no new ones.

And people are dying.

A lot of people.

I've got my fingers crossed for April, but, you know, not for any good reason. April will likely be worse.

But maybe, just maybe, we can flatten the curve, and May will be this year's March.