I wasn’t watching the Bengals-Bills football game last night — “Inherit the Wind” was on TCM — but I caught up on the news about Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest on the field in Cincinnati.
I never played football other than the touch games in the backyard with friends. I wasn’t big enough, and I wasn’t interested in getting the shit kicked out of me on a regular basis. I used to watch it on a regular basis on Sundays, and my family even had season tickets to watch the Lions play at Tiger Stadium back in the mid-60’s. I’ve lived in major-league cities — Miami, Minneapolis, and the Denver area — and I used to get excited when “my” teams won. But in the last few years as stories of brain damage and other life-threatening injuries began to emerge, I stopped watching.
As an outsider, I don’t have a say in how the game is played, nor do I have any insight in how to prevent something like what happened last night from happening again. I just hope that Mr. Hamlin has a speedy and uneventful recovery and finds a place in the world off the field where he can live out his life in good health.
The problem with the Monday night games for me is that we get up at 4 a.m., so I never see more than a few minutes before I’m off to bed, so I didn’t see this incident. I did play in high school, sort of; I always described the position I played as “left out.” Partner does enjoy it and I’ve had to learn something about the game as a result. I think I’ve improved quite a bit from the time I asked a question about the “costumes” the two teams were wearing – although I’m not sure that description is really inaccurate.