Scary side of sports resurfaces

By David Mullen

In honor of a Halloween that is devoid of wild costume parties and, in many cases, trick or treaters going door-to-door, there is a scary side of sports worth noting. Let’s avoid the obvious coronavirus pandemic references, although cases can be made that live sport without fans and with cardboard cutouts or seeing Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy on the sideline wearing a mask are both eerie.

Between the mini-Snickers bars, rolls of Smarties and, God forbid, a Halloween Peeps lab experiment, we look through a bagful of items in sports that causes the body to go numb and creates an unsettling feeling.

Football injuries in slow motion. Technological advances in sport broadcasting cannot be denied. Old, one-color graphics on an older broadcast are reminiscent of a child writing the ABCs in crayon on a Big Chief pad. But with the good comes the bad.

It was scary to watch Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott’s ankle turn in a way that it is not supposed to turn. Comparisons were immediately made to Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor’s brutal hit on Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann and Los Angeles Raiders running back Napoleon McCallum’s knee dislocation caused by a tackle from then-San Francisco 49er Ken Norton, Jr. on “Monday Night Football.”

Steven A. Smith, Skip Bayless and others. These TV talking heads spout venom with every breath. Their points are not validated nor confirmed and often created to simply gain ratings and evoke hatred. To Smith, every single coach hired must be a person of color, period. Bayless will always take the contrarian side, like questioning the basketball prowess of LeBron James and is hardly qualified to comment, given his disdain for even attending sporting events. Watching them is the equivalent of throwing away a piece of Halloween candy. They are the Peeps of professional sports pundits.       

Using a baseball as a weapon. There are these unwritten rules in baseball called “the unwritten rules in baseball.” They are stupid, petty and must stop. If a player is deemed to do something that shows up the competing team, like flipping a bat or lollygagging around the bases after a home run, it is overlooked when the player is thrown at by an opposing pitcher in his next at bat. This is a tradition that needs to come to an end. Pitchers throw near 100 mph. A blow to the head with a rocketing sphere is not sending a message. It is career, and possibly, life-threatening ruse.

e-Games. It is bad enough that today’s younger generation stare down at their handheld devices like they are holding the Hope Diamond. Now, many don’t even see the light of day, locked in a dark room trying to master games like League of Legends and Fortnite. Kids should not be trying to unlock skins; they should be on the playground engaged in a game of “Shirts and Skins.” And what makes matters worse, a 13-year old can make millions of dollars virtually shooting the enemy. CS: GO (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) has awarded more than $8 million in prize money this year alone.

Parents seem content with allowing a video console to serve as a counselor or babysitter. I knew years ago, when schools started making physical education an elective class, that we were going down the wrong path. We are raising a group of soft, computer game Zombies.   

Monochromatic uniforms. Talk about a bad costume. The roots of the all-one-color uniform can be traced back to the NFL in the early 1930s, when the Cincinnati Reds (yes, they were a football team) came out in a red jerseys and pants. The Green Bay Packers, Pittsburgh Steelers and Brooklyn Dodgers (yes, they were also a football team) soon followed suit. Today, the probably best (or worst) example of the bad uniform are the Seattle Seahawks’ neon greens that are the color of the eyes of a possessed werewolf.

The Cleveland Browns have followed suit, making their numbers and names unreadable, which in previous seasons was probably a good thing. Not only are they hideous looking, they are an eyesore. No adjustment of your TV set is necessary.

Hockey fights and injuries. In hockey. beat the pulp out of an opponent on the ice and you are subject to a five-minute penalty for fighting. In Texas, beat the pulp out of an opponent and you can get five to 99 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. 

Hockey purists claim that fighting is part of the game, like a fiery crash is in auto racing. But is the game really better because one goon faces off, metaphorically, against another?

Injuries are unavoidable. These are 6-foot 2, 210-pound men on a one-half-inch blade of sharpened metal speeding around on a thick sheet of ice. Major injuries caused by skates are rare, but can be grotesque. 

In 1989, Buffalo Sabres goalie Clint Malarchuk had the carotid artery of his throat slit by a blade, causing him to lose nearly one-third of his entire body’s blood. 

Mararchuk miraculously survived and played after recovering, but the scene on the ice was shocking.

Sports can be scary, like a well-appointed haunted house or a presidential debate. Use caution this Halloween. You may not be able to believe what you are seeing.