January 3, 2023 Entry

 Hello everyone, except Skip Bayless. I was going to make this entry about something that was mentioned to me on Twitter by a beautiful redhead (no, not that one) about Anti-Bucket Lists, but things that happened on Monday night has forced that topic to take a backseat.

As many of you know by now, Buffalo Bills cornerback Damar Hamlin is in critical condition after making what seemed to be a routine tackle during the Monday Night football game between the Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals. The scene was very reminiscent of one which I'll get into in a bit, but unfortunately (or fortunately, come to think of it), I didn't see what happened live; I went into the kitchen to grab a snack after the Bills had kicked a field goal make it a 7-3 game and I dimwittedly had flipped my TV to "Raw." When I flipped back to the game it was in commercial, and when they got back, the MNF crew of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman were telling viewers about the injury and went to another commercial break. It wasn't until they came back from THAT break that I realized something was very wrong just by looking at Josh Allen's expression:

The look on his face says it all: disbelief and sheer horror. The cameras at the Monday night game kept their focus as far away as possible to what was actually happening on the field, because they knew something major was up. Then I saw a replay of what happened, and it reminded me of a tragic incident that took place in 1990. Hank Gathers collapsing on the court for Loyola Marymount University during a conference tournament game in California, and eventually dying due to a cardiac event.

We seem to take for granted that these premier athletes not only push themselves to the absolute limit when performing these feats of their talents, but they also put their lives on the line. Especially in a contact sport such as football. Deaths at sporting events are somewhat rare, but they do happen, it almost happened in the NHL once in my lifetime, when an errant skate blade came close to severing the carotid artery of Buffalo Sabres goalie Clint Malarchuk in 1989. Bill Masterson, for whom an award is named after, died after hitting his head on the ice after being checked by two skaters. Fortunately, the only death in NHL history. In baseball, only one has died during a major league game, Ray Chapman over a century ago. In the NFL, only one has lost his life during a game, Chuck Hughes, who suffered from an undiagnosed heart condition.

In recent years, we think of the sport that is the most closely associated with death as auto racing, and within the last twenty, there have only been a handful of these thanks to advancements in driver safety. The most heartbreaking of all of course had to be Dale Earnhardt, who on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500, crashed into the turn four wall head-on. Even though the accident looked pretty innocuous, it was anything but. I can still see Kenny Schrader frantically waving for help when he peered into Dale's vehicle.

Dale wasn't the first auto racing death I saw on television, JD McDuffie was one I did see in 1991. Greg Moore was another in 1999. In both those cases the races they were involved with went on. Recently however, one incident caused an entire race to be cancelled, and that was the tragic death of Dan Wheldon in 2011. 

There have been other deaths in auto racing as well, Gilles Villeneuve and the grisly one involving Gordon Smiley come to mind, from some forty years ago, but thankfully safety of the driver in auto racing has advanced so far, we usually expect these drivers to walk away; but incidents like what happened at the end of the 2020 Daytona 500 gives us a stark reality check in that nothing is 100% safe in that sport.

And that should be the attitude we as fans should take whenever we watch ANY sporting event, that safety, as well as human life, isn't guaranteed nor should be taken for granted. That's why we pay sometimes exorbitant amounts to see these athletes perform, they are literally putting their lives on the line, and for our (somewhat depraved) entertainment.

As for the game, and any playoff implications it may have. Seriously, Skip Bayless, who gives a shit?

More to come

CT