Say you're watching a football game. The quarterback hits the receiver on a flare (or better yet, a Slant Pattern!). The wide receiver gets hit in an awkward way by two of the defensive backs, and is not getting up. After the team doctors huddle over him for several minutes, a stretcher or, worse yet, an ambulance is brought onto the field.
It's inevitable at times like this that one of the announcers will say the excruciating: it's times like this when you realize it's just a game, and not really that important in the grand scheme of things.
Of all the things that go without saying, this one really needs to go without saying. Clichés are an insult to the solemnity of such situations.
Another reason I find this utterance so vile is because they never add this footnote: "Of course, in 10 minutes, or at most a day, I'm going to go right back to treating this game like it's life or death. I'm going to pound out articles on why this player is overpaid, but I'll tell my daughter I'll take her to the zoo some other time. I'll make 3 AM calls to a sports call-in show, but I won't get around to sending my mother a mother's day card. I'll spend $50 on my wife's birthday and the next day, wager $100 on the Bills plus the under."
I'm not trying to scold, and I am certainly just as guilty of misplaced, selfish priorities as anyone. But at least it doesn't take my favorite player breaking his leg for me see the light. I know I'm a selfish jerk. I know sports aren't as important as love, family, religion, what have you. So Mr. Announcer, when the player is laying on the turf, wish him well, encourage the viewers to put their thoughts with him and his family, and if you feel yourself start to say, "It's times like this..." Stop yourself.
So this column is going to be about penance. Giving remembrance, with a little trivia thrown in. Players may break their legs or even become paralyzed, or die, on their field of play, but sometimes masses of athletes die en route to chasing a ball around and entertain us and themselves. That's what I'm thinking about when I note that an Air France flight from Paris to Toronto overran the runway in an attempt to land during a thunderstorm yesterday afternoon. The plane broke into several pieces, and shortly after the last passenger was rescued, the plane disintegrated into flames. It's miraculous no one was killed, but 43 were injured.
As safe as air travel is, and it's only getting safer (the last time a major passenger jet crashed in the U.S. and caused fatalities was November of 2001), I still can't help to think it's just a matter of time before a major pro sports team is torn from us in this fashion. The world of amateur athletics has been hit hard by this phenomenon. Cue the trivia portion: presenting 10 of the worst aviation disasters involving sports teams:
1) 1980: Fourteen out of 17 members of the U.S Olympic Boxing team were wiped out in Poland when one of the engines came apart, severing cables to the rudder. No survivors. Three members of the team, including Bobby Czyz, were not on the flight.
2) 1993: The Zambian national soccer team was killed when their plane crashed off the coast of Gabon.
3) 1961: Most of the U.S. figure skating team were killed due to a mechanical failure as their plane tried to land in Brussels, Belgium.
4) 1949: The Torino soccer team crashed in Turin, Italy, leaving only one non-flying survivor of the squad. At the time, Torino was four-time defending Italian champions. They wouldn't win Serie A again until 1976.
5) 1958: Air disaster has also befallen the most celebrated sports franchise in the world, Manchester United. Eight members died in Munich on their planes third attempt to take off in a blizzard.
6) 1960: Sixteen members of the Cal Poly-SLO football team died when their plane crashed after take off in Toledo. The plane was filled well beyond capacity, contributing to the crash.
7) 1972: Uruguay's Stella Maris Rugby team saw 29 of it's 45 players perish when their plane crashed in the Andes. If you're familiar with the movie "Alive," you know about this one.
8) 1970: This was, without of a doubt, the worst year for sports aviation accidents. The first of three highlighted here is Puerto Rican Women's volleyball team, who passed away when contaminated fuel caused both engines to fail shortly after takeoff from the Dominican Republic.
9) 1970: You have probably heard about this one. Marshall lost most of its football players in an accident in Huntington, West Virginia. The First Officer erred in his landing procedures, causing the plane to touch down short of the runway.
10) 1970: I'm not sure why this one isn't as recalled as often as the Marshall disaster, but Wichita State lost a large part of its football program on a crash in the Rocky Mountains. The pilot descended to give his passengers a better view of the scenery, then came up to mountains that were too tall to fly over in time, or to turn around.
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