Pains

I work for a software company and work in an office so I don’t do any physical work, unless you call carrying my laptop to a meeting physical work. I can also work from home and connect to the office, so if I’m not feeling so great, I can still work. I don’t get sick too often anyway, so I don’t miss many days from work. Add to all that the fact that no one in the media is following me around or analyzing every move I make and I’d say I have a pretty cushy work life. 

Sometimes I feel bad for professional athletes, especially in sports-obsessed cities like Boston. As a former wannabe athlete, I can tell you that no one wants to get hurt and they don’t want anyone to know they got hurt. So these guys play when they’re hurt (hello Patrice Bergeron of the Boston Bruins) and don’t let on as to how bad they really are. At times, they’re not playing well and we find out later that they’ve been battling a serious injury for days or weeks. Then in cases where someone is hurt and they’re perceived as not toughing it out and still playing, they’re ripped in the media and on every sports talk show by every know-it-all “expert” alive (hello pretty much all the major league baseball players).

When I was in high school I hurt my throwing arm at the beginning of the baseball season but I didn’t tell the coach because I wanted to play. When I couldn’t throw the ball from shortstop to first base anymore the coach finally asked me what the heck was wrong with me. When I told him my arm was killing me he wanted to know why I hadn’t told him earlier. I told him that it hadn’t been that bad until the last couple of days and that I wanted to play. What I didn’t tell him was that I had a childhood incident that haunted me and wouldn’t let me say I was hurt.

We were having one of our neighborhood softball games in our backyard on a nice sunny day. We had about five guys on each team, including three of my older brothers. We had been playing for a while and we took a break to get some water. In those days we didn’t go in the house to get a drink of water, we drank the water right out of the hose. There was nothing like a cold drink out of the hose on a hot summer day. Plus, you could soak your hat or your shirt and stay cooler longer. Mom wouldn’t have let us do that at the kitchen sink.

We all got our drinks and went back to the game. However, I think that I drank too much water because when I started running around again I got a really bad stomach ache. When it was my team’s turn in the field, I couldn’t even stand up straight so I lay down on a picnic bench. I guess no one on my team noticed because the inning started and the first batter hit an easy ground ball right to the spot I should have been in. Needless to say, my brother that was pitching was not happy when he saw me laying on the bench.

When he asked me what I was doing over there laying on the bench, I didn’t quite know what to say so I responded in a pitiful voice “I’ve got pains!” When everyone stopped laughing five minutes later, the mocking began. For the next few minutes after that, I was treated to “I’ve got pains” being said in high pitched voices or like a 3-year old. I was just a kid myself, but I was humiliated. I think I heard that wonderful phrase from my brothers for the next five years whenever I felt sick or got hurt doing something.

So when my coach asked me why I hadn’t told him I was hurt it was kind of a matter of pride. I guess in some small way, I didn’t want him to make fun of me for having a sore arm. In retrospect, I probably humiliated myself by not being able to reach first base from shortstop. I don’t know, maybe some professional athletes had similar situations to mine when they were kids and as adults their pride kicks in, too, and they play hurt.

I’m glad that I don’t get sick much and I can take a day off when I need to without being made fun of or mocked. I just hope that as I head into my senior years I don’t have to lie down on a bench somewhere because “I’ve got pains.” 

Outdoor Hockey

I’m a life-long hockey fan so on New Year’s Day I watched the NHL Winter Classic. For those of you who don’t know what the Winter Classic is, it is a professional hockey game played outdoors, either in a football or baseball stadium. The games have been played in Buffalo, Chicago, Boston and this year’s game was in Pittsburgh. There’s been snow (in Buffalo, of course), cold (Chicago and Boston) and now rain. Maybe it was the rain, maybe it was the teams involved, but in my opinion this year’s game was the least entertaining of the four.

I usually don’t watch the pregame shows for sporting events as I find them a little a boring, but I have watched the pregame show for the Winter Classic in previous years. If nothing else, they always run a time lapse video of getting the rink ready to play. In a geeky way, I find it very interesting. They also interview players from each team about playing outside and most of them look back to their childhood, reminiscing about simpler times when it was still just a game. Their thoughts and memories brought back a lot of memories for me, too.

Growing up in Massachusetts in the late 60’s and 70’s, spurred on by Bobby Orr and the Big, Bad Bruins, the men in my family were huge hockey fans. We watched hockey, talked about hockey and played hockey. As soon as the ponds froze over, we were there playing hockey. During the week, a group of us would run home from school, grab our skates, sticks, gloves and a puck, and hustle to the closest pond to get in an hour or so of hockey before darkness set in and we reluctantly went home. As far as we were concerned, the game was on and the homework could wait.

The only thing better was the weekends. Me and my brothers had chores to do before we could go out on Saturdays (mine was to wash the kitchen or dining room floor), but then it was off to the ponds. We’d get there by 9:30 or 10:00, skate until about 1:00, go home for a short lunch and then skate until it was too dark to see a foot in front of you. Then, and only then, we’d begrudgingly trudge home, tired and hungry (again). We might have had a few bumps, bruises or nicks, and we were usually numb from the cold, but we were a happy bunch of kids! If we were lucky, the Bruins were on TV that night and we’d watch the game, imagining ourselves out there on the Garden ice.

One of my all-time, favorite memories of those times was when my friend Bruce decided to go to the pond with us. Now Bruce played street hockey with us, but he wasn’t much of an ice hockey player. So Bruce showed up with his stick with a plastic street hockey blade (using a baseball metaphor, Strike One) and since he didn’t have hockey skates yet, put on his figure skates (Strike Two) and went out on the pond. I think it was one of my older brothers who, noticing the plastic street hockey blade, told Bruce that his stick was going to break because it was so cold. Bruce, however, would hear nothing of it. We started the game and the first time someone passed the puck to Bruce, you guessed it, the plastic blade snapped right off his stick (Strike Three, yer out)! After a few minutes of uproarious laughter and some I-told-you-so’s, the game went on, with Bruce borrowing someone’s spare stick.

That was about the biggest problem we faced back then, broken sticks or dull blades. I can see why the pros had that little twinkle in their eyes when they talked about it. I probably have that twinkle right now, too.