First, be advised that Carl is in good health and finished Saturday's game
playing hard with that coast-to-coast panache we so admire. It is because of
his well-being that I can dash off this flippant email concerning his incident.
Many of us from the Ballard days will remember Larry, Moe, and Curly: those
three tether ball poles in the SW corner of the Ballard roller hockey pitch, so
named because they routinely slapped, whacked, poked, tripped, or otherwise
injured any player foolish enough to get too close to them while skating with
head down. Even after all these years I'm sure that a CSI team could easily
find copious amounts of all four blood groups on those damned things. Those
poles delivered to many of us by far the most solid body checks of our careers.
I tried to fight one once, and was only prevented with the utmost effort of
friends when I was spotted much later that evening heading north from the
tractor tavern with a hacksaw. Back to Carl. While he never played in Ballard,
he
is now a Ballard roller hockey player in spirit. He has nothing to be ashamed
of -- who could have guessed that, like the Ballard poles, the Olympic view
tether ball poles also had aspirations to get into the game. I was looking the
other way when he hit one. I only heard the collision. What I saw was
everyone else's face tighten up, and a few expletives of shocked concern were
uttered. I turned around to see Carl on the ground at the foot of the middle
pole,
moving his legs ever so slightly. A certain reaction typifies roller hockey
players when bad wrecks occurs: everyone stops in their tracks and then slowly
skates towards the downed player to form a circle around him about the same
distance away that you would stand from the hospital bed of a dying relative --
nobody talks much -- and we all silently wonder what we are going to tell the
family. Fortunately, Carl took it in the chest and not the head. But we've
never seen him down so long before. It is a credit to his good conditioning
that he was able to get up at all, much less finish the game. Carl is an auto
mechanic; and sore though he may be on Monday, I'll bet he can still work a
hacksaw.