Sure, we miss sports. But what price are you willing to pay when the cost is coronavirus?

It’s just a game.

Remember that when you don’t fill out your March Madness bracket at the office, or when you don’t pick up the kids from a canceled practice, and you wag an angry finger at a coronavirus outbreak that you swear is nothing more than a media-driven hoax.

If missing out on sports is that devastating to people around here, then we are staggered at their lost sense of priorities. And that’s coming from a sportswriter who kinda needs sports to justify his paycheck.

So what if the NBA Finals wait until August, or if Opening Day for Major League Baseball stalls until Memorial Day weekend?

You say the sports world is overreacting with all of these cancellations, postponements and suspensions of play.

We say lives are at stake, until they’re not. Is a non-conference softball game on a Tuesday in March really worth the risk? Are the people dying from coronavirus really not worth giving sports a prolonged intermission?

The truth is, we don’t know what we don’t know, not when it comes to the lethal potential of the coronavirus that has swept our planet, and not in regard to how quickly it can spread through a stadium filled with neighbors and friends.

Like all things, this has come to pass. Until it does, we’re glad to take a pass.

So how about we do what the NBA did, shaming all the other sports leagues to follow suit?

Let’s press the pause button on sports and entertainment. Let’s focus on life and death, safety and health, protecting our children and keeping our grandparents secure from a threat we have yet to fully understand?

Do you really want to learn the hard way? Do you want to find out after the fact that nothing about this reaction was an overreaction?

And, let’s be clear. If this pandemic does not kill tens of thousands, that doesn’t mean all of this was for nothing.

Maybe, just maybe, by playing it safe, we are ensuring nothing comes of this. I can’t prove it will save lives, but then, you can’t prove it won’t. Do you really want to err on the wrong side of this argument?

My daughter can’t believe she didn’t get to play in a junior varsity softball tournament this weekend. I want her to know there are bigger things in life than junior varsity softball tournaments.

There’s the greater good, framed by the big picture, set against the backdrop of social responsibility to consider. If this entire coronavirus disappears into the night by April, what was really lost by canceling or postponing the Masters or the NCAA Wrestling Championships?

When the results of games trump the potential of lost life, we have lost our proper perspective.

Me and the kids were going to opening weekend for the San Francisco Giants next month. Now we’re not. Big deal.

We’re glad the NBA paused its season. Good on them for walking away from millions of dollars because the risk-reward bore no reward worth winning.

Good for the NCAA for buckling to pressure. We expect them to grant all spring athletes another year of eligibility, now that we know they are capable of doing the right thing.

We’re sorry for the college basketball players whose season ended out of nowhere, especially the seniors. We’ll tell you the story of Fresno State wrestler Josh Hokit next week, and how his wrestling career came to an unceremonious close while reading the news on Twitter.

We’ll be sorrier if we find out lives are lost when we could have done more to save the people we love.

We’re not panicking, not in the least. We’re protecting our families, planning against the worst, and praying for an end to whatever this might become.

Let the games go on? Only over our dead bodies.