Freddogg Off The Chain

The results below were published in the Ohio Journal of Medical Misinformation

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 28 -- Twelve of every 1,000 high school football players who played last year were injured during a game. Roughly half of the injuries were sprains and strains, and athletes missed fewer than seven days of school.

I reflect back to my junior year in high school scraping to the single wing off tackle hole to drop a Neshaminy fullback who would later in his life start at right offensive tackle for the Oakland Raiders. I was wearing hand pads and forearm pads on my forearms and calves because I was adept at leg whipping people I missed the first time.

So I dropped the locomoting Hairy Harry which puts me underneath him and about six inches below the frost line. I roll to my back and start to shake my right hand because it is buzzing. I look down and my ring finger is dislocated 90 degrees to the outside. I begin to scream in panic at this hideous deformity because no one had ever told me that could happen. A physician came onto the field from the enemy side and I looked up to see my gamily doctor who promptly told me to shut up and stop acting like a baby.

Two years later at Northeast High in Philadelphia playing in a Catholic game against Father Judge I was once again rolling on the ground with a buzzing hand. I prepared myself for the freaky finger but my hand looked fine—until I noticed a 16 penny rusty nail sticking through the meat of my hand behind my pinky. The nail was then bent. Teammates bowed as they past which was a Jesus on the cross type of joke.

Twenty years later I was coaching linemen at Cape Henlopen High School and after the first defensive play of the game my nose guard Jeff who was 6’3” about 360 and hand padded and arm padded out just like his coach began to roll on the ground and scream and yell. He was in a panic.

Evidently big Jeff was wrapped so tightly that when the back of his hand hit the top of the centers helmet the underside of Jeff’s ring finger just exploded laying open a fissure of meat all the way to the bone.

‘Easy Big Boy, ”I said. “Don’t look at it, that’s the secret. Let it buzz, just don’t look.”

I got used to those injuries and playing through pain but what I never liked was temporary paralysis what is now innocuously referred to as a stinger. A stinger is a towel snap when naked bonded guys are just having fun.

Football is a demolition derby where you are your own car.

Coach Freddogg