“I miss me, too,” he said.
As the Super Bowl XLI approaches, and many thousands or perhaps millions of sports fans will be enjoying the spectacle.....I wonder if it's worth it.
Yes, I love to occasionally watch sports, however mostly Olympic Sports. Not the hard-driving one on one Football type except for perhaps the Super Bowl. The "best of the best" is hard to resist.
In an Op-ed by Thomas A. Bowden who writes for the Ayn Rand Institute
Source he states; "Spectator sports invite us to take pleasure in our capacity for admiration. Different athletes display different virtues--one performs well under pressure, another shows consistent excellence despite advancing age, a third publicly takes pride in his accomplishments--but each contributes to the vast storehouse of sporting memories that fans draw upon every day, as reminders that difficult goals can be achieved by focused, dedicated effort."
I can agree with his evaluation, and his overall Op-ed, but still a nagging doubt arises, after reading in The New York Times two weeks ago about Andre Waters, the former Philadelphia Eagles player who committed suicide last November and was later determined to have had significant brain damage caused by football-related concussions.
Now another New York Times article
Dark Days by Alan Schwarz and despite the positive spin by Thomas A. Bowden, which I can philosophically agree with nags at me.
The reality of Ted Johnson comments; “There’s something wrong with me,” said Mr. Johnson, 34, who spent 10 years in the National Football League as the Patriots’ middle linebacker. “There’s something wrong with my brain. And I know when it started.” should cause alarm among the NFL, but I doubt it will, nor will Football come to an end.
In my own youth I loved Baseball, as many young boys do, and wanted to be the greatest pitcher in the world. My idol was Bobby Shantz, because one of my Stepfathers had been his Minor League catcher before Shantz would become famous, and then disappeared to relief pitcher because of a pitched ball breaking his left wrist. Shantz was a lefty, and considered one of the best Fielding pitchers of all time.
Source:Bobby Shantz
With coaching from my Stepfather, I became a better than average pitcher, though not a lefty, and as things were in those days, bats, balls, gloves, and catchers masks were a premium, unless some neighborhood kid had one. So,filling in as a catcher one day, I missed my pitchers wave off call, and caught a rising fastball dead square in the forehead, and was out cold they tell me for more than 15 Min's.
I'd suffered a major concussion which took me weeks to recover from. My baseball days were done, as I could never take a ball coming at me head-on again. All the practice, sweat, and blood given up ended in an instant.
For me it was a single moment in time, that ended what might have been....and since I'd never been a physical contact sport type, I can still understand what drives those that take it game after game. That overwhelming desire to achieve, to ignore the pain, and the concussions evident in Football to be the "Best of the Best": I wonder again.....is it worth it?
As Ted Johnson says, "I miss me, too."
