Athletes and Red Meat
From High School to World Class
This happened early on in my junior year in high school, before the wrestling season had gotten underway. I was a promising 105 pound wrestler as a sophomore but one day in the school gym, I lost my cool during a game of bombardment, which involves two teams who throw kickballs at each other and whoever is hit, must sit. Well I was hit early on and being the sore sport that I was and embarrassed as well, I stormed over to the padded wall and punched it with all of my might, although I didn’t know the wall wasn’t really padded but that it only had a thin padding covering the brick wall and my hand was broken in three places. It hurt and I went to the totally forgettable PE teacher, whose name has left me many years ago, and the PE teacher took one look at the knuckle of my left hand that was halfway up my wrist and he said “Oh it’s just dislocated” and he yanked it and I yelled out very loudly in great pain to stop, which he did.
So I had x-rays taken and the knuckle was not dislocated and rather the wrist was broken in three places and I had a hard cast put on my arm and was somewhat excited to have my friends sign the cast, which wouldn’t b e removed for a full two months, although I was concerned that when the inevitable itching began that I would be unable to scratch it unless I could straighten a coat hanger and slide it under the cast to the itching area, which I did. But the hard part was yet to come and it involved telling the wrestling coach, a guy they called “Skull” because his head looked like a skull. In my sophomore year, I was a pretty good wrestler, racking up an 8–4 record, and making it to the district semifinals where it was my fate to meet up with the two-time and soon to be three-time state champ from Bergenfield who proceeded to toy with me until he got bored and summarily got me on my back for the pin. Anyway, I beat some pretty good wrestlers that year and the Skull was looking for good things from me as a junior. Skull had an evil smile but he seemed to like me and I even helped him on his part-time job, pre-school, early morning newspaper delivery runs in his car that backed up fumes in the front seat and made me feel sick. I thought I was on Skull’s “A” team so when I called him about my broken wrist and that I would probably be out for the season I was extremely fearful of how he would react. And the friendly guy that Skull was, he slammed the phone down and later told me he had pretty much swallowed the phone when I gave him the bad news. And I felt like rancid old useless meat and that was pretty much the last time Skull talked to me that year although as a senior I was back on the team but by then he had better wrestlers than me and paid more attention to them and made me feel pretty unimportant, something that did further damage to my already, shattered ego.
And that brings me to Simone Biles, not that I was even in the same athletic universe as Biles, but I do know how it feels to be loved one minute and discarded like cow dung the next, it feels lousy. And like Skull treated me after my injury, so have many people berated Biles after she pulled out of the Olympics because of anxiety that made it impossible for her to compete on the level she was used to as the greatest gymnast in history. From what I have read, she came down with a condition known to gymnasts as “the twisties,” a situation where you lose your bearings of what is up and what is down, a particularly hazardous situation for an athlete whose supernatural twists and jumps take her to mind boggling heights. I suppose Biles could have continued competing even with the “twisties” and she just might have landed on her head and suffered a concussion or worse or landed poorly and broke an ankle or a leg and never compete again.
A similar situation occurred at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta when American gymnast Kerri Strug broke her ankle on the vault, but continued to perform a second vault after her injury. It was excruciating to watch as she landed on her good ankle and had to be carried off the mat in obvious agony. The vault helped Team USA win its first-ever team gold medal in women’s gymnastics. Everybody was happy and proud, the TV commentators raved about her bravery but I don’t know if it was worth the suffering that Strug went through but I’m sure she felt the weight of her team and the U.S. on her small shoulders just like Biles. Certainly, had Strug pulled out of the competition because of her injury she would have drawn a starkly different kind of response that would not have been pretty.
But it’s the same old story, just like with Skull, what you did for me yesterday isn’t important, what can you do for me today is the question. And then there is the pressure from all the parasites who are scared to death that they will no longer make tons of money if Biles steps down, from the networks that hype her and get millions in advertising revenues to the mangers, and co-managers, and publicists and co-publicists, etc. It reminds of me of the retinue of blood suckers who ripped off and followed Muhammad Ali wherever he went and answering his every need.
I respect Biles for keeping her world in perspective and realizing that in the end, all that matters is her health and the people who are close to her and that she sees through the illusion of fame and applause. I don’t feel sorry for Biles because she will be fine as I am pretty certain she has made millions in endorsements and will probably be back to competing and winning in the gymnastic world. But if she ever had any illusions that the country loved her because she is such a swell young woman, she can forget all about that. Americans loved Biles because they could vicariously feel victorious and wave their little American flags when Biles was victorious but when the dynamic went away, so did the admiration and the love and adoration. And I know about this in a very tiny way because of Skull and how he wounded me because I was no longer around to make him look good as a coach. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any endorsements to fall back but at least I didn’t have to climb into his fume-filled junk car.