No pain, no game

When you play sports or games of any kind, acquiring aches and pains--if not outright injuries-- is part of the deal. Your turn comes eventually.

I used to work with a jolly old 71 year old life insurance salesman. He was the stereotypical life insurance salesman—the friendly, mildly hilarious, super-persistent, slightly maddening kind.

He was probably well suited for his work, not only because he’d been doing it for 40 years, but that persistence seemed to be a genetic trait for this guy. “The Dartman”, as he called himself, had had his second hip replaced right when I met him, and still spent every weekend playing tennis.

Dart is in mid-70s now, and as far as I know he still plays. The last time I saw him, on the train about a year ago, he was on his way to his basketball league game on a Thursday night. My guess is that he must be a point guard. Where else would your coach put a 5 foot 5, 70-something with the energy of a 17 year old?

I had met my friend Dart back in 2003. He was pretty open about the pending hip trip to the hospital, even though I barely knew him. Among other things, he joked that he might come of out it a few inches taller. Being the nosey person I am, I asked if he had heard about what had happened to Dick Schaap and what he thought.

Dick Schaap was my all-time favorite sportscaster, and I know a lot of sports fans who thought he was the Ace of Spades among top quality sports journalists. A year and a half earlier, Schaap had gone in for a hip replacement and didn’t make it out, having passed away due to complications that arose in surgery, a couple days before Christmas.

Schaap had spent a couple of decades in sports television journalism after his days at Cornell’s powerhouse Lacrosse program; an experience that seemed to shape his perspective on life and love for sports. He not only knew what he was talking about, but also had a down-to-earth demeanor in the days long before sportscasting was made up of bantering big guys in big suits with big rings, and Stuart Scott boo-yahs. His gentle candor was one that was more common in the 1970s and 1980s, but a rarity now.

The type of class Schaap demonstrated and lived out has somehow gotten lost among today’s aggressive tactics. Nowadays, the Jay Mariottis see their craft as a little more than a means to openly bad mouth what and who they don’t like about everything. Other knobs, like Bob Costas and Jim Gray, tend to psychoanalyze, badger, and denigrate athletes the way that Maury Povich does of his own nutty guests.

Like this old life insurance salesman, Schaap had a great talent for disarming people, and I remember Schaap asking quirky questions that would often bring big time sports stars back down to earth, almost forcing them to talk about their love of the game.

My friend Dart, had no fear heading into hip surgery and seemed to take it like a champ. Much to my liking he remarked about Schaap’s great work and how he seemed like a great guy to have a beer with.

Once you get past 30 you naturally begin to fall apart, and that’s no way to conduct a past-prime sports career.

In the give and take of that conversation I also muttered that I spent the summer with my leg in a cast because of a sports injury. Without hesitation, Dart took with me the same liberty he probably has taken with his own doctors, and against their orders. He dictated to me, “Don’t ever quit. Don’t ever let them tell you that you can’t go on playing.”

Without even knowing me that well, he read into my own irrational sports passions. Like many of us, I always had the urgency to keep playing the game even when good sense and prudent practice of sports medicine might tell me to stop.

Plus, once you get past 30 you naturally begin to fall apart, and that’s no way to conduct a past-prime sports career.

Racking up the numbers, I have two bad knees, and had a blown out patellar tendon on the left side. I’ve had the same shoulder dislocated three times, twice in open play. I’ve had sprained wrists, sprained fingers, and have taken a ball of every kind in the face at least once including a baseball in the chin and a racquet ball square in my eye. Don’t even get me started about my wrestling days.

Like most men, I have taken hits in the groin too, and I have fallen on my head a few times. The last part might explain my own gripping compulsion toward this whole sports racket.

But it wasn’t soccer or baseball, or even my stint as a defensive end on the pee wee football team that handed me my first injury. The insanity goes back way further than that. My first sports injury and only time I ever broke a bone in my whole life was playing a game of a different nature. It was Duck-Duck-Goose.

At age 5, I had spent one day nagging my mother to take me to preschool, at The Hobby Horse even though it wasn’t my day to go. It was all because I had a crush on this other five year old named Laura, who attended the school every day, and I had to see her.

Mom eventually buckled, but to my chagrin Laura left just as I was arriving. Bad Karma, now what? Nothing much else to do saw my way into this kiddy game I had played a couple times before.

The Duck-Duck-Goose basics were simple even for a 5 year old. A bunch of kids sit around in a circle, while a designated lead-off kid taps every kid on the head one-by-one, and says “duck”. Then he picks out a “goose”. Goose has to chase the lead-off guy before he makes it around the circle to then sit in Goose’s space. This whole game, when you think about it, runs counter to the “no running” rule that children are forced to observe in every other facet of life.

Anyhow, on this day, the problem was that the lead-off batter was the biggest kid in the class, the token fat kid. He hit “goose” on the kid to my left, forcing normal play to send the kids running around the circle. Unfortunately for me, this all concluded with the big fat kid crashing down on my hand, breaking my pinky finger to bits.

It was an interesting way to call a rain delay, since, screaming my head off, I abruptly put an end to this game. I never would have thought back then or now of Duck-Duck-Goose as a contact sport.

A long time ago I once heard someone joke that if synchronized swimming could be an Olympic sport, then both food fights and pie throwing should be too. After all, who’s ever been injured during synchronized swimming?

Then there’s that streamer-on-a-stick gymnastic activity and a lot of other hokey activities that make up Olympic competitions. Just the same, Duck-Duck-Goose could fit right in there too.

Sure, it’s not like injuries make up what constitutes the difference between a true sport or a bogus one. Or that one sport trumps any other in terms of importance. I’m sure there is someone out there who gets as pumped up about synchronized swimming (or pie throwing) as I do about my favorite sports.

I can’t put words in the mouth of the late Dick Schaap, but I think he’d chime in on one thing that dwells in my mind. That is that sports or any recreational competition --whether it involves throwing a ball, shooting an arrow, or even if it is a Tex-Mex chili cook-off—is worth your effort and every minute of your time if it stirs your soul.

Often enough, the best part is not winning the game or the victory lap afterward, but perspective we gain by our persistence in playing the game. Moreover, we get to enjoy major dividends doing something because we love it, and for no other reason.

The games we play, whatever your flavor, are always well worth life’s aches and pains. But then again, you knew that.