Still five more months of this?

You can expect some more of those as the California Interscholastic Federation and the Central Coast Section have pushed back the start of their tournaments — effectively ending a chance for most fall sports.

But you know all this already because I’ve been beating you over the head with it for the last few weeks.

For nearly 20 years, I’ve almost always had a built-in story to write with dozens of games occurring on any given day during the school year. While the Daily Journal sports team can’t get to all of them, we do a pretty good job of keeping our finger on the pulse of the Peninsula, which enables us to find those human-interest feature stories that help break up the monotony of game stories every day.

And even as the slow period of the summer allowed me to recharge my batteries, the summer baseball season was always enough to keep me sharp for the following fall.

Since mid-March, however, I have thought to myself every morning as I got ready to come into the office: “what am I going to write today?” which can be mentally draining. I think I’ve done a pretty good job of providing fresh, local content. I think I went nearly three weeks before I was shut out of a local story.

The hope was the coronavirus would be in check enough to have a fall sports season, but that’s not happening and there is no guarantee that the schedules proposed by the CIF and CCS will happen in six months.

Until then, I will keep grinding away, trying to give you a look into the Peninsula sports scene as best I can, in whatever context that may be.

***

You never know when inspiration is going to hit. I found myself in just that situation as I was searching for a picture of baseball’s Opening Day to run with the season preview story that ran in today’s paper.

I was trying to find a combination of words to describe what I was looking for, including the word “bunting.” A lot of pictures of baseball players shortening up the bat as they squared around to bunt a pitch.

But that was not the “bunting” for which I was looking. No, I was searching for the ruffle-y, ribbon-esque, red-white-and-blue decorations that baseball parks put out to celebrate the first game of the season. They are the same decorations teams pull out to spruce up the park during the World Series.

All of this got me to thinking: what is bunting? Why not just call it “decorations?” According to Wikipedia, bunting “is any festive decoration made of fabric, or of plastic, paper or even cardboard in imitation of fabric. Typical forms of bunting are strings of colorful, triangular flags and lengths of fabric in the colors of national flags gathered and draped into swags or pleated into fan shapes.”

OK. That explains what bunting is, but it didn’t address from where the term “bunting” came.

Wikipedia answers this question directly below the definition. Turns out bunting was, originally, a type of wool fabric that was used to make ribbons and flags beginning in the 17th century. It including signal flags for the Royal Navy, where the officer who was responsible for raising signal flags was known as a bunt — a term still used today for a ship’s communication’s officer.

Also of note: “bunt” is German for “colorful.”

So, as you settle in to watch the start of this wacky 2020 baseball season tonight, you’ll be armed with more bunting knowledge than you ever knew you needed.

Just think: five more months until the (hopeful) start of the high school sports season.

Nathan Mollat can be reached by email: nathan@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: 344-5200 ext. 117.