What Glen Kuiper misses most about sports amid coronavirus hiatus

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Editor's note: Like you, Bay Area athletes and NBC Sports Bay Area insiders, reporters and analysts are feeling the sports void during the coronavirus stoppage. They'll share their thoughts twice a week in "What I Miss About Sports." Next up in the series: A's play-by-play broadcast Glen Kuiper.

The 2020 Major League Baseball season was scheduled to open March 26, getting underway with our Oakland A’s hosting the Minnesota Twins.

It could still be the year the A’s make a deep playoff run, maybe even bringing home to Oakland a fifth World Series Trophy. And while that might very well happen, we will have to wait on these hopes as together we all fight a bigger opponent.

Exercising our patience is difficult as the anticipation for a brand new season was upon us. But with so much uncertainty, one thing is certain: I already miss baseball. I know we all do.

Baseball has been central to my life since I was very young, and so this unexpected turn leaves me missing the many big and little things that come with the baseball season in the Kuiper home, and life.
I miss:

-Waking up and looking at every box score from the previous night’s games.
-My wife, Amanda, asking me how the day/evening’s game went.
-My kids, Jack and Annie, asking me over breakfast if the A’s won.
-Studying the starting pitching for the next game.
-Pulling into parking lot at the Coliseum and feeling the excitement in air, and in my heart for the upcoming game.
-Sitting in the dugout, talking baseball with players, coaches, and staff.
-Quietly sitting in my chair in our broadcast booth filling out my lineup card.
-Pregame dinner with my colleagues (who are my great friends) in the press lounge.
-Pregame laughs, and there are a lot of them, in the booth before we go on the air.
-The sense of pride I have when I call the A’s games for the awesome Oakland fans, and making sure I give them the very best I have so that they might enjoy the game as much as I do.
-Our fans. The wacky, crazy, devoted, diehard Oakland fans.
-Reminding fans that “when its time for a change, think Speedy Oil Change and Tune Up."
-Calling out the “Chapman Dive” and the “Olson Scoop” and the "Laureano Throw” and, of course, “That baby is gone!!”
-Hearing Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration” after an A’s win.
-Ray Fosse’s mustache.
-Dallas Braden’s beard.
-Driving home after the game knowing I get to do it all over again the next day.
-The full days of being immersed in baseball.

We will be back together soon, better than ever, but until then, be safe, be kind to each other, and I will see you at the Coliseum, A’s fans!

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