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With Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican and a sheriff, planning to lift the state’s stay-at-home order on May 4, and ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County Executive Sam Page, a Democrat and a physician, planning to keep the county’s stay-at-home order in place for now, my crystal ball suggested the email promising some June afternoons in the sun at the ballpark was probably a bit optimistic.

Many summer camps have been canceled. Professional sports leagues are talking about playing games with no fans. The unknown of what recovery and reopening looks like hides under a dark cloud of uncertainty.

I find myself somewhere in between. I yearn for Reopening Day; it also scares me.

Hope and fear. Those are the two worlds we live in amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Maybe that is why I’m missing sports so much these days.

Every athletic contest is a battle that balances on a sharp edge.

We hope for the thrill of victory and fear the agony of defeat.

We hope for a home run and fear a strike out.

The hope and fear that strangles our nation right now is more serious — it’s life and death — and that is why the sheer angst of isolation has us all pining for a day outside watching our children compete, while we eat hot dogs and drink beer and high-five our neighbors. OK, cancel the high-five. Those days are gone.

We hope for a return to normalcy, to a regular paycheck not interrupted by furlough, and we fear that the next touch from a stranger will lead to an increase in COVID-19 cases.

For too many of us, in this uber-divided political time, hope and fear become the patriotic flags we wave as a proud sign of our tribalism, when, in fact, they are the emotions that bind us as one nation.

Nearly everybody in this nation, of whatever political affiliation, hopes for a safe end to this isolation and a rebirth of the American economy. Just the same, nearly all of us, even those not yet touched by the COVID-19 disaster, understand the massive tragedy of America losing more lives in a few months . Nobody wants more people to die.

But they will. And some of those deaths will be attributable to the very process of reopening the economy. It’s simple math. It’s going to happen whether the date is May 4 or May 15 or May 30 or July 4. But we will fight over the day, and we will assign blame, because that’s what we do in today’s politics. We look for demons because consensus is too hard.

I had hoped that amid the most divisive political time in my memory, the nation uniting against the unseen enemy of the virus might tamp things down. I fear it did the opposite.

That, too, is why I hope for a return to sports, even if it comes a touch too soon.

This past weekend, my son and I watched way too much of the NFL Draft. We debated the wisdom of a sixth-round pick of a safety from Directional State U who will be playing for a team we don’t even care about because it was so much more fun than online learning, or mindlessly watching politicians and their followers scream at each other on Twitter.

It was a distraction, where we were momentarily taken back to that place we were before.

Based on the , it was a distraction the country needed.

That’s why I hope the summer baseball season starts in June, even though I fear it might be too soon. Play the games without the parents, or limit their attendance and spread them out. Wear masks in the dugout. Wash hands during the seventh-inning stretch.

I don’t know what date is the right date, or which rules are the right rules. But I know on the baseball field, there are no Democrats or Republicans, there are no elections. There is just hope and fear.

I’m ready for hope.