Jews in Sports: The Tragedy

It’s your worst nightmare. It forces sleepless nights upon you. It’s called: “The Concussion.” While its prevalent nature varies with each sport, this so-called “epidemic” is endemic in many athletic activities.

You’ve heard about it, may have read up on it, or, perhaps, even experienced one for yourself, and, yet, this injury, perhaps, is the one about which we’re least informed.

Be it in ice hockey, football, soccer, baseball, or any other sport, the concussion conundrum has vaulted itself to the forefront of discussion involving sports-related news on a near-daily basis.

Concussions have been sourced as a possible link to the deaths of retired players, as well as those lost to the world while still in their prime.

What baffles me is the knowledge that a head injury can annex itself with even the most evasive athlete faster than an “ouch!” can be registered, and, yet is something that’s been overlooked for so long.

Throughout the sports universe, head-injuries and its after-effects have been linked in some manner to death.

Be it suicide due, in part, to brain damage, or depression as the result from lack of mental clarity, this issue is not going to die with those who’ve suffered, and continue to suffer, from it.

One year ago today, the National Hockey League lost one of its own. Derek Boogaard, an enforcer-type player for the New York Rangers was found dead in his apartment from an apparent overdose from the painkillers he was taking. It was later determined that he suffered from depression; an effect from the repeated head-shots he absorbed throughout his short life. He was 28 years old.

We recently heard the news of a former NFL legend, Junior Seau, who was found in his home with a fatal gunshot wound; an apparent suicide.

Seau was the first high-profile athlete, who many in this generation saw play on both coasts (most notably in San Diego) before retiring, to take his own life.

Many people have discussed the various nuances surrounding his demise, and the possibility that his 1994 Super Bowl team is cursed (eight deaths from that squad to date), so I won’t beat farther on that already-dead horse. However, it’s high time for parents – and athletes themselves – to take heed to what has become the nature of athletics, and to curb the insanity of where it can lead.

Seau’s death comes on the heels of former New Orleans Saints defensive coordinator, Gregg Williams, caught on audio urging his players to injure, for money, opposing athletes by delivering blind-side head shots.

Parents must open their eyes to the damage and hurt that sports, from the elementary to the professional levels, may cause.

Just this past Friday, the New York Times explained in an article how female athletes are more susceptible than their gender counterparts to concussions, and take a longer recovery time; the younger, the more in-danger any child finds him or herself.

I’m not advocating for allowing children to sit on their behinds all day and become couch potatoes, or video-game junkies. What I stress is for care to be taken, and concern noted about the side-effects of a bone-crushing hit, or accidental elbow, delivered to the head of an opponent.

Professional and amateur athletes have much to learn about the lingering effects concussions have on their bodies and brains, as are we, and it will be difficult to change the culture of hits that runs rampant in sports, much as it’s tough to modify a zebra’s stripes.

However, that transformation will go a long way were it to begin at home.

Gone are the days where clubhouse squabbling is at the forefront of baseball – hello Bobby Valentine and Kevin Youkilis – and the in-it-to-win-it mentality of superstar athletes (how’s your head Sidney Crosby?). Precaution is the new vogue. Unless, of course, you’re a member of the NFL’s Cleveland Browns; but I’m not going there.

There are signs of culture change on all levels of sport.

You will not find any team, amateur or professional, that will allow a player to return onto the field of play, without first going through – and passing – a battery of tests, immediately after a possible concussion-inducing collision. The aforementioned Browns, of course, the exception to that rule.

All the change in the world can be taken at the professional level, but unless this pursuit begins at home – where all athletes begin their quest for athletic glory – it will be a wasteful endeavor with many more sleepless nights.