|
I started off with torn ligaments in my knee at 13. Then, as the organization and the competition increased, the injuries came faster and harder. Broken nose (three times), broken jaw (fractured in the first half and dismissed as a »bad wisdom tooth,« so I played with it for the rest of the game), ripped knee ligaments again. Torn ligaments in one ankle and a fracture in the other (which I remember feeling relieved about because it ment I could honorably stop drill-blocking a 270-pound defensive end). Repeated rib fractures and cartilage tears (usually carried, again, through the remainder of the game). More dislocations of the left shoulder than I can remember (the last one I played with because, as the Calgary Stampeder doctor said, it »couldn´t be damaged any more«). Occasional broken or dislocated fingers and toes. Chronically hurt lower back (I still can´t lift with it or change a tire without worrying about folding). Separated right shoulder (as with many other injuries, like badly bruised hips and legs, needled with morphine for the games). And so on. The last pro grame I played – against Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the Western finals – I had a recently dislocated left shoulder, a more recently wrenched right shoulder and a chronic pain center in one leg. I was so tied up with soreness I couldn´t drive my car to the airport. But it never occured to me or anyone else that I miss a play as a corner linebacker.
By the end of my football career, I had learned that physical injury – giving it and taking it – is the real currency of the sport. And that in the final analysis the »winner« is the man who can hit to kill even if only half his limbs are working. In brief, a warrior game with a warrior ethos into which (like almost everyone else I played with) my original boyish enthusiasm had been relentlessly taunted and conditioned.
(John McMurtry)
|
