I’ve been meaning to post for a while now, but life has a funny way of intervening. I have torn my ACL. After playing rugby for four weeks, I blew my ACL in ten minute of playing flag football. I was running a stop & go pattern, and I was pissed off that we were […]
I’ve been meaning to post for a while now, but life has a funny way of intervening.
I have torn my ACL. After playing rugby for four weeks, I blew my ACL in ten minute of playing flag football. I was running a stop & go pattern, and I was pissed off that we were down by three scores on account of two interceptions taken back for six. I wanted to score, and I was pretty sure the DB would bite on the stop and I’d be clear for six. Instead, as I planted, my leg slipped a little bit on the wet ground before the cleat caught, and I went down screaming and clutching my knee like Alvin Mack in The Program.
The hallmark of this blog- if there is such a thing- has been honesty, I think. When Savigny canned me, I told you how it felt (awful) and why it happened (because I wasn’t good enough). So I’m not going to lie here; it’s depressing. It’s depressing to feel like your body has betrayed you, to think that in all likelihood, I’ve played my last game of pickup basketball or tackle football. This is my second torn ACL, if you remember, on different legs (blew the right one in 2000 as the tree). I mean, to a certain extent, the party’s over.
I’ll never stop playing baseball. I know that. I would just go insane. But for the rest of my life, some sort of risk/reward calculus is going to come into play, and frankly, that’s a real drag. I’m not good at basketball, I don’t really enjoy it, and it poses a high risk of knee injury, so it’s gone. It’s sad to realize that a part of my life- albeit the tiny one that involved pickup basketball at the gym in order to mix up my warmup routine- is gone. It’s out of my life forever. The tougher decisions come from things like rugby, or tackle football. I *love* playing tackle football. I *love* breaking and making tackles… but the risk is huge. Is it worth it?
I don’t have a good answer at this point. I’ll have surgery, rehab it like hell, and then figure it out. In the meantime, though, I thought that this column from Bob Ryan is worth reading.
Cheers,
Ev
p.s. Suddenly, my elbow feels great!!!!