That is one of the more prominent incidents in my view and a good example of why the “keep your head up” BS is, well, often times just BS. If his head is up Stevens likely doesn’t go for that hit, guys like him look for the vulnerable player and deliberately inflict injury. It’s like Jack Tatum and Atkinson of the 70s Raiders.
Great post.
Once upon a time I lived and died with wins and losses, and I wanted my favorite teams to win at any cost - even if someone on another team had to get hurt. I did not care. They worked for ME. MY money paid their salary. I bought the merch and sat through the commercials that made THEM rich. Without ME and millions of others just like me, they’d all have to get real jobs and likely most of them wouldn’t be as well off as I was.
Then I had a very eye opening experience.
I saw first hand and in person the cost of REAL war.
During the Great Recession I worked out of IBEW Local 60 in San Antonio on a massive expansion of the Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC). It was DOUBLING in size. A new building right alongside the old one.
I never set foot inside the old one, but as we were building this massive new building, we could see very clearly into the patients’ rooms and I noticed a couple of things. The first was that none of the curtains were ever closed. Sunlight staves off depression, and I suppose watching us work was better than staring at the wall. The second thing I noticed was that I never saw a single patient out of his bed. Not one. I certainly didn’t spend a lot of time staring at these poor men, but at least a couple of times a day I’d stop and look over. And I often saw the patients that were awake looking right back at me. The severity of their injuries was horrifying, and I will never forget it.
I’ve always known about the horrors of war. I come from an Army family; seen things on CNN (Somalia, Iraq) that I wish I could unsee; and I’ve read more firsthand accounts than I can recall. But something about my time there really struck home with me. Sometimes the most unfortunate soldiers are the ones who survive.
After that, wins and losses were just a little less important to me, and players on rival teams were just guys trying to make a living like the guys on “my” teams (at least that’s how I saw most of them). It also made me really hate the guys who seem to serve no purpose but to injure others. That made less sense to me than ever. It’s only sport. It’s a GAME. I never once wished for anyone to get hurt after that, and I’ve never reveled in anyone’s injury since, either. No matter who it was or who he played for.
The football and hockey players at all levels who earn their roster spots as headhunters should spend a day at BAMC or a facility just like it to get some perspective on just where they fit into the real scheme of things. With so much trauma and misery in our world, how could they ever willingly add to it by deliberately injuring someone else in a GAME?