| | Here it is, the best or worst (depending on your perspective) athletic injury ever inflicted on my body. But before I relate my story of woe, I will let you in on my favorite runner up injury that just happened to occur on a softball field. I would like to say that I busted a rib diving for a screamer. I would like to say that I pulled a hammy while getting caught in a rundown between third and home, yet eventually scoring. There are a lot of things I would like to say that would make me look more athletic. Lying is one option. Church softball is great. More than getting a clutch hit or making a great defensive play, the love I have of playing softball with fellow pew sitters can be found in the camaraderie between us extremely minor leaguers. Ripping and making fun of a teammate immediately after he bobbles a grounder is great fun. One summer we had a college football player on our team. The fullback was short, muscular, and could run like the wind. It reminded me of me before the accident. Anyway, our fullback Brian played rover in the outfield and he was so fast we called him "Wheels." I said, "Well, if he is 'wheels' then I must be 'meals on wheels.'" Ha. Thereafter I was called "meals" by a few of my ruthless, cutthroat teammates. One game the coach put me in the outfield. It was either me or the guy using the walker. Good choice. A guy who had arms the size of my legs crushed the ball. Unfortunately, I must have had a GPS tracker in my sweats because the stupid ball was headed right at me. Or was it? I could've turned around and sprinted toward the fence. I mean, I should've turned and sprinted for the fence. Instead I started slowly backpedaling and in a way, I must have resembled one of the dancers from the Lawrence Welk Show. I looked up in time to notice the ball was moving much faster forward than I was backwards. I threw myself into reverse and quickened the pace. Bad move on my part. While shifting from third to fourth gear I accidentally crossed my left foot over my right. I not only crossed my feet but I happened to hook them together. It looked like someone had tied my shoelaces together while I was watching the batter take his swing. With my feet crossed, I had nowhere to go but down. Fast. "Wham!" My head hit the ground before the ball did and I thought I'd knocked myself out. My head hit the hard outfield grass so hard that it bounced straight up and with that view I could see the slugger circling the bases. At this time, Brian came hustling over, picked up the ball, and gunned it to third. "Slugger" was busy rounding third and heading home when their third base coach saw Brian unload the missile from the outfield. "Get back!" Too late. By the time "Slugger" retraced his steps, the ball had beaten him back to the bag and our third baseman Ed tagged him out. Whoo-hoo! Me? I was still laying there in deep left-center flat on my back with a Flintstone type lump poking out the back of my noggin. "You okay Mr. Ehm?" I looked up and there stood the hero of the game--Brian. "Yea, I'm good." He helped me up and I staggered back to our bench. "Hey, nice wheels Meals." The comments began and never seemed to end. It was cutting, it was brutal, and I loved every minute of it.
Unfortunately, this was not my worst athletic injury. The next one will be.
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| | Posted 6/30/2009 7:59 AM - 15 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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