Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals recently suffered a fractured arm. Ouch. A couple of trainers eventually helped him off the field. I had a broken wing years ago. It turned this rather nasty shade of dark purple right away and it hurt pretty bad, so I looked up a bone doctor in the Yellow Pages, made the call, and drove myself there to get it reset and casted. Thankfully, I'd grown out of my youthful penchant of 4-speed transmissions by then and had an automatic. Regardless of how smooth the linkage may have been, shifting with a broken right arm might have been a problem which would have forced me to Plan B -- call a friend -- or even a cab. But it wasn't that big a deal. So since when does a fractured arm mean you can't walk? I guess when you're a major league baseball player. He didn't man up.
(It's the little things that get annoying. Like buttons and zippers, or tying your shoes. Learning how to write with the other hand. Holding one arm out of the shower. And that toilet paper thing got a little messy the first few times until I got the hang of it.)
Hockey players aren't like that. An NHLer might get a really bad cut, requiring a lot of stitches -- and they'll skate off. They can be hit by a high speed puck, or a devastating check that knocks them into la-la land, and they'll try to skate off, or even crawl off -- but they don't want anybody helping them. They man up.
Years ago, NFLers not only played with arm casts, but liked them, the better to club an opponent with. I don't know who got the worst of that. For the first couple weeks I had mine on, every time I accidentally bumped into something with it, it was an attention grabber. If I'd have clubbed somebody with it, I'm not at all sure who would have suffered more. But those dudes were out there. Finally the NFL made them start padding the casts. This was probably a good thing for both clubber and clubbee. Regardless, they were manning up.
Jack Youngblood, a defensive end on the old LA Rams, once finished a play-off game on a broken leg. He was slamming bodies with offensive linemen, trying to rush the quarterback, and bring down ball carriers until the final whistle. That has to be the all-time record for manning up. If you have a better one -- lay it on me.
Then there's the NBA. The bigger the stars, the bigger the crybabies. I don't need to name names. You know who they are. If they accidentally get a hand to their face, and God forbid if it results in a, HORRORS, scratch, or an elbow to the body, they'll start screaming, go down, and writhe in pain, like they -- well -- just got clubbed with a cast or had a broken leg. Funny thing is -- after a couple minutes of being coddled, knowing the TV cameras will be all over them, they'll pop up and be just fine. They couldn't even SPELL "man up".
I drove to the doctor's office. Hockey players handle it. Football players handle it. Albert Pujols didn't grade out so well.
And basketball players? If they really want people to believe it's a "contact" sport, then 2 words----
Man up.
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