Sue Bird & Megan Rapinoe's engagement is just what we needed

This has been a long, exhausting, Zamboni fire of a year. And a month, for that matter. And a week.

Remember when Amy Coney Barrett got confirmed to the Supreme Court? That was Monday.

Tuesday was the last game of the World Series, and it ended with Justin Turner coming out because he tested positive for COVID-19, then being a selfish, possibly disease-spreading idiot without a mask during the celebration. And Donald Trump stranded a bunch of old people in the dark in Nebraska.

Speaking of Nebraska, the Cornhuskers aren’t playing this week because Wisconsin has too much coronavirus to field a team. Trevor Lawrence, the best quarterback in the country, won’t be playing on Saturday either, because he’s got the rona, too. Things aren’t much better in pro football, where the Giants barely even have an offensive line now thanks to the virus — although at least that won’t really make a noticeable impact on their performance.

Yasiel Puig, one of the most fun people in baseball, who missed this entire season after nearly signing with Atlanta as a free agent, then getting coronavirus, is now being sued for sexual assault.

Meanwhile, cheating-ass A.J. Hinch is back in baseball immediately after his season-long suspension, managing the Detroit Tigers now, with the possibility looming that cheating-ass Alex Cora is just going to get his old job back with the Red Sox.

Hockey still has racism and cronyism, but apparently in the Ontario Hockey League, not body-checking this season, because, sure, that’ll stop the virus from spreading..

And basketball… who the hell even knows?

Even what passes for good news this week, the Wilpons no longer owning the Mets, comes with the caveat that the person buying the Mets is Steve Cohen, who, you guessed it, also sucks pretty bad.

So, at the end of all this, and awash in anxiety about next week, which shapes up as even worse (you may have heard about this election we’re having and all the issues surrounding it), it’s not just congratulations to Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe on their engagement, but thanks. We needed this. We needed the reminder that love can sustain us through all this.

We needed a glimmer of purely positive emotion, in a familiar way, that cannot be denied or hit with a “yeah, but…” Bird and Rapinoe have given us so much already with their performances on the court, on the field, and in being great ambassadors of humanity, and it’s wonderful that they have each other. So, congratulations and thanks.