Sports Hurt, Its a Jungle and Dark Tales From The East Bay
Play It Again Sam
On a pleasant Sunday afternoon at Candlestick Park near San Francisco, California, Dallas Cowboys Quarterback Tony Romo picked himself up from the ground in obvious pain after a hard sack from the opposing defense. During the second half of the game Romo would return to the field and eventually lead his team to a close victory. The following morning however Romo was informed that not only had he cracked a rib during the game but had also suffered a punctured lung. He had played nearly thirty minutes in a high contact, physically demanding game with a potentially life threatening injury. Football is no stranger to severe injuries and in part it could be why we watch it. No one wants to see a player get hurt, well most of us anyway, but we at the same time want to see that hard hit or tackle and are disgusted when we see a referee throw the personal foul flag. But at the end of the day these players are paid a ridiculous amount of money to perform for us at a high level and with that they are willing to sacrifice their health and take great risks to deliver a competitive game for loyal fans like myself. In recent years however the National Football League has taken measures to protect those very players that they invest millions of dollars into each year. Some say that these protective measures are taking away from the game and I hear announcers grumble when a hard tackle is made and the referee throws the laundry. Sports are what they are, competition, and these guys are incredibly fast, strong, and gifted and at some point in their career each player is going to suffer an injury. But as the sport becomes increasingly competitive and the players become faster and stronger the injuries can become extreme. Trent Green for example suffered a catastrophic concussion that ended his career and even worse there was Chris Simms who suffered a life threatening ruptured spleen. At least four players in NFL history have been paralyzed.
So in any sport that involves competition injury is likely and you will probably witness one at some time unless you are a devoted fan of chess. The only injury possible in a chess match is when an opposing player hurls a Rook at the other player’s forehead. I’ve watched dart tournaments and that is about as much fun as watching a colonoscopy. Cricket? Golf? That crazy, hair-raising sport where they slide the little puck down the ice? I was subjected to these while living in England where I had two television channels to choose from, showing either British sitcoms or lawn bowling and darts. About as enthralling as watching flies mate. But athletes can also pay the ultimate price in the name of competition. Recently Indy racer Danny Wheldon was killed in a massive twelve car accident in Las Vegas.
When you get sent hurtling through the air at two hundred miles per hour nothing good can come of it. Last month Jimmy Leeward, a veteran stunt pilot, died when his plane crashed into a crowd of spectators during an air race in Reno, Nevada killing 10 and injuring 70. Injury and even death are not new to sports and throughout history the risk of death is what drew the crowds. In some sports survival was victory. In ancient Greece for instance marathon runners often died after the race, having no thirst quenching Gatorade to spur them on. Even the ‘Marathon’ itself is derived through death. It heralds from the Greek battle of Marathon where a runner was sent to Athens to warn of a Persian attack and died shortly after delivering his message. We all watch sports not to see a boxer die from a blow to the head but because we want to share in the risk that the athlete takes, albeit from the comfort of our living room. It’s what makes it exciting and worth watching. Danny Wheldons’ death was incredibly tragic, but it won’t keep us away from watching Indy races, sharing in the risk and feeling the elation of victory…and ultimately survival. Gladiators, lions chasing unfortunate criminals around the coliseum, knights fighting knights where to live was a victory, to die was glorious. Good times.
Well it sure beats three hours of poker on ESPN 2.
It’s a Jungle Out There
In Western Australia there has been a slight uptick in Shark attacks, three to be exact, including the tragic death of American spear fisherman George Wainwright of Houston, Texas. The Great White Shark has been singled out for all three attacks and the hunt is on for the killer. A Great White Shark is an apex predator; its whole purpose in life is killing things. Hunting it down and killing it, if you ever find it (it’s not like they leave fin prints or we have a shark DNA database to fall back on) will not prevent future attacks, only not swimming in the water will. As I stated in my previous blog [see “Grandpas economy, a little love for the NBA and PETA strikes again”, October 3rd, 2011] we are in the food chain and not always at the top of it. Having always had an extreme fascination with sharks, I was watching the story on CNN about the tragic loss of the American diver when Jenny turned to me and asked “Why are they going to kill it? Isn’t it what they do?” Yes, predators predate and other species suffer predation. Carnivores are cunning animals and sharks have been honing their craft for 300 million years as well as crocodiles and alligators of which also both evolved from prehistory. Earlier this year a guide was attacked by a large crocodile while guiding tourists down a river in the Congo. The crocodile came out of the water, pulled him out of his kayak and then dragged him underwater. He was never found. The crocodile had apparently figured out over time that kayaks had a soft chewy center.
But why do we refer to animals that attack humans as ‘rogues’ (no, not Sarah Palin) or ‘killers’? A Killer Whale drags its trainer to her violent deat
h underwater at SeaWorld and yet it still performs. So who are we to judge or decide what should be protected and what should be destroyed? Not in the history of the planet has there been a more destructive or deadly a predator as Homo sapiens. Hell, we even kill each other and not just out of survival either. 40,000 killed in Mexico’s drug war since 2006. 7,000 killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. There is an average of 520,000 murders globally each year. Here also are some startling consumption numbers. Each year we kill around 90 billion marine animals, 42 billion chickens, 1.3 billion pigs and 290 million cows. On the flip side about 73 people were attacked by sharks last year whereas 70 million sharks were killed. So I would say that things are unbalanced and in our favor. While we find stories of crocodiles eating fisherman in Uganda or partially eaten hikers in Alaska gruesome and tragic, we certainly do our part to even the odds.
So the next time you are running for your life through Yellowstone Park while being chased by an 800 pound Grizzly Bear take a moment to find some solace in the fact that you were chosen to give a little back.
We thank you for taking one for the team. 
Release The Kraken!
In a very remote area of Kansas lies a fossil site that was once part of a deep mid-continental ocean. Researchers over the past half century however have been puzzled over the arrangement of certain bones that lay in a peculiar pattern within the fossil record. The bones belong to the ancient Plesiosaur, a long necked, thick bodied reptile that plies the darkened waters of Loch Ness posing for blurry pictures and generally sneaking around undetected. Well long before the Plesiosaur gained mythical status at Loch Ness they prowled the seas of what is now the American Midwest. But as large as these monsters were there may have been something much larger and incredibly, almost psychotically, intelligent. It would be a giant squid or octopus or at least a member of the family of Cephalopods. The fossils it has been hypothesized are part of cleverly arranged pattern of Plesiosaur vertebrae, where the giant squid or octopus killed Plesiosaurs either for 
sport or protection and then arranged the trophy bones in a geometric pattern. This behavior has been noted with modern octopuses and I recall going to an aquarium where an octopus was fed a crab, yet the crab was inside a jar. The Octopus was puzzled but began solving the problem and eventually unscrewed the lid and killed and ate the crab. Imagine something with that intelligence but nearly 100 feet long? In a Seattle aquarium an octopus was caught killing a shark after a number of mysterious shark deaths in the tank prompted investigation. I find this fascinating. What a fascinating mystery to solve. It’s almost as if the scientists are trying to solve a crime, a murder in the natural world by an enormous and cunning criminal who left its clues in the form of a prehistoric tentacle print.
The theory being presented is a long shot at being accepted. But until scientists come up with a better explanation for an arrangement of bones in a geometric pattern I’m going to go with a 100 million year old murder mystery. Killer Calamari. Yikes.
Crazy Guy Update #1 and Hometown Tales of Lore
My children and I live in a very interesting to say the least, town east of San Francisco. The town is predominately poor, with high crime and a notorious reputation for drug related shootings and killings. A store clerk was murdered just two blocks from our complex. The nightly chorus of sirens serve as a backdrop to often noisy, rap filled nights. But all that being said it is one of the greatest people watching areas I have ever known and the best place to watch is either the local grocery store or the apartment complex where the kids and I live. The 7-11 up the street however is off limits. Driving around my town was exciting at first but now their disdain for traffic laws just annoys me. Red lights here are merely just a suggestion.
The apartment complex has a number of baffling residents like for instance the people upstairs who at around 9:45 PM every single night start dropping things on the floor. You could almost set your watch to it. One night the kids and I were baffled where for at least five or so minutes we heard something like a table being drug around on the kitchen floor in a small circular pattern, like they couldn’t decide where in a circumference of about three where it should reside. But one of the more fascinating residents is a very personable man in his fifties that the kids and I simply refer to as “Crazy Guy.” Crazy guy, I have never learned his name, is one of those guys that speaks in only one decibel range, he does not have voice volume control, and that decibel range is high. I once learned of his love for pasta from the comfort of my living room while he stood on the pathway behind the apartment. Although I enjoy my chats with crazy guy about his cats or about his cats, or once offering to throw away the stuff on my patio which means he was looking into my patio or his cats, I do not enjoy seeing him nearly naked. I understand that crazy guy is challenged, but it does not make seeing him prancing around in tight shorts and nothing else any less painful. Yesterday morning however was the cake. Walking to my car to go to work there stood crazy guy, naked, in his bathroom with the window open and of course one of his cats, yelling a salutatory “GOOD MORNING!!!!!! HAVE A GREAT DAY!!!” to me as I walked to my car. But at this point now, with nothing really shocking me anymore, I just returned his good morning and left for work.
Next week: I tell a tale of the woman at the grocery store who drove her motorized shopping cart into the eggs while chatting (loudly) on her cell phone. She continued to chat (loudly) as egg cartons fell to the floor and dangled precariously from the case!
Goodnight to you all
Goodnight to you Jenny
