The sports seasons of 2020 are about to take a place in the realm of what if.

Are we left to imagine Pete Alonso, the Mets’ bear of a first baseman, crashing another 50 home runs? Will we pass the summer arguing how many wins the new Yankee Gerrit Cole might have racked up? How many goals the swift-skating David Pastrnak might have scored for the Bruins in the playoffs? Will regular-season boo birds ever get a chance to remind the Astros they were cheats?

Two months ago I wandered into the Los Angeles locker rooms of the Clippers and the Lakers, two of the best basketball teams in our corner of the cosmos cohabitating in one building. I asked about incipient rivalry and all of them said: Wait until the playoffs and hope for a fabled Western Conference finals, LeBron James trying to school Kawhi Leonard, Paul George feinting, taking Anthony Davis off the dribble.

Just wait.

Absent a virological miracle, this may all be left to fantasy.

A virus has accomplished what even World Wars could not. Our major sports — basketball, hockey, soccer and baseball — are shelved for a month or two or perhaps a full season. We are now a quarantine nation, and our sports teams are shuttering alongside us. The N.B.A. announced Wednesday it was suspending games. Hockey, soccer and Major League Baseball have followed suit.

Statistical asterisks might attend to careers forever. For older players, like a transcendent James in the late autumn of his N.B.A. career, this will be time perhaps never recaptured.