Over the years I have been a big consumer of sports news. Specifically, I have followed the fortunes of the New York Mets and before that the St. Louis Cardinals. When the fall and the winter came, I followed some of the St. Louis college teams but after the war, I was much interested in a hockey club named the St. Louis Flyers. As a matter of interest, you may like to know that the nickname for the St. Louis University college team was called the “Billikens.” I wish I could tell you what in the world a “billiken” is. But that is beyond my comprehension at this point. Besides it was the name of college teams and I did not progress to that level of education so it is no wonder that I do not know what a “billiken” might be.
But those musings are behind us now. In recent days the headlines involved pro-football. Apparently there is an income of something like $9 billion to split up and the owners were in a dispute with the players. A week or so ago the owners and the players reached an agreement and we were assured that the pro-football season would take place. I imagine that sports fans who are nuts about football heaved an immense sigh of relief. But that sigh of release did not involve a contribution by myself.
For several years I have maintained the attitude that I would not give a fat rat’s ass to the pro-football coffers. I don’t go to the games and I rarely read what the results are. I do not follow their fortunes on the radio because none of the names make sense to me anymore.
Now I find that the New York Jets have hired an ex-convict to be their wide receiver. His name is Plaxico Burress. Plaxico embodies what has caused much of my disinterest in pro-football. Plaxico is a big man, over 6 feet 5. He is 33 years old, yet more than one team has sought him out after his prison term was finished. That is because he is mean and he can dominate most defensive backs.
Now, apart from wide receivers such as Plaxico, I find that in recent years a lineman who weighs less than 285 pounds is sent to put on some more pounds. I suppose my disinterest in the fortunes of pro-football started with an incident shortly after my arrival overseas in January, 1943. After about four weeks on the troop ship, we landed at the port of Dakar in Senegal. You may recall one of my essays in which I said that the captain tooted the horn so loud that every spy in the neighborhood came running to the port to question us about where we had come from. The spies concluded that we had left from an eastern port of the United States and their pronunciations of Boston, Charleston, and so forth were of great interest to me. But among the GI troops I believe that on no occasion did any American soldiers reveal where we had come from. Actually the port that we left was Charleston in South Carolina.
In any case, after our arrival, we were gathered into groups and taken to an American facility north of Dakar called Rufisque. There was a little time to kill and it was decided that we should play a bit of football. Miraculous as it may seem, one of our troops had a football. He was automatically the quarterback. I was assigned as a lineman, weighing about 150 pounds. Opposite me was a former standout with the Chicago Bears named Coddington. The dirt on which we played was red sand and it blew very easily. I learned a good bit about that dirt because Coddington rubbed my face in it for all of the game. So I guess my views on professional football are biased. And if you asked me, I would say, “Damn right, they are biased!”
As the time has gone by, the players have become bigger and taller and meaner. And the fans, of which there are millions, demand rough play. As you can imagine, when two 250-pound people running at full speed collide with each other, the only word is mayhem. But that is the essence of pro-football. And the coaches demand that their players outmuscle and outwork the opposing teams. Pro-football is not a finesse sport. It is a sport where might makes right. And the collisions result in concussions. The inevitable result of concussions is damage to the brain resulting in dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. I cannot be happy with a sport that produces concussions, dementia and Alzheimers. And so it is that I do not give a fat rat’s ass for what will take place this fall ending in February with the Super Bowl.
I deeply regret that come October or early November the baseball season will end. Baseball has room for finesse and its players are graceful. Football players on the other hand are crude. Plaxico Burress set the example of all that I find repulsive about pro-football.
I used to be a great hockey fan, primarily of the St. Louis Flyers, then later of the Chicago Black Hawks. Hockey players these days practice being as mean as possible and the fans seem to enjoy fistfights. In point of truth, pro-football fans and hockey fans are much like the Romans who fed human beings to wild animals in the coliseum. Pro-football fans want mayhem as do the hockey fans. And the pro-football coaches as well as the hockey coaches demand mayhem from their players. Only now in 2011 are the governing bodies of pro-football looking into the fact that repeated concussions produce Alzheimer’s and dementia. I can only tell you that when two 250-pound people run at each other and collide, there is going to be a concussion or two. But until now, every year the authorities of football have elected to ignore this evidence. The fact that a pro-football career averages only three and a half years ought to tell the authorities something.
But youngsters still aspire to make their college teams, which are the breeding ground for the pro-football players. It is of some significance that pro-football conducts a draft of college players. This is a remnant from the experience of operating a minor league system. The colleges provide that service. But when a youngster becomes a star in college, he can look forward to a career of – on the average – about three and one half years before he is discarded and new people take his place.
So I hope that by this time you have concluded that your Uncle Ezra will be working on essays and reading – hearing – books. I am old enough and big enough that any taunts that I am a softie will have no effect upon me. So I say that when hockey and football scores are announced, I must say that I won’t give a fat rat’s ass for any of the results at the end of the schedule.
E. E. CARR
August 4, 2011
Essay 582
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Kevin’s commentary: Usually with this commentary I try to add insight or at least find a point of contention, but here there simply is none. I have never and will never understand professional sports, I don’t think. The only thing remotely resembling a sport that I “follow” is a competitive video game called Starcraft that I suspect 99% of the population would not consider to be a sport in the slightest. But it is pure competition and skill and to my knowledge nobody has sustained any concussions while, say, micromanaging a flock of mualisks.