The Pitch of Dreams

Yesterday, I made a trip down to Western Chester County to watch some rugby. Dumb me, I made the mistake of heading down Route 30 through the very heart of what makes Lancaster County distasteful. Outlet shopping malls adorned with logos of Amish Buggies (Rockvale) and Grain Silos (Tanger). Odd mixing of crass commercialism and the rural nature of the county. I had thought of going another route, but in the end, it would have taken me the same amount of time however East I went, due to lower speed limits on less traveled roads and the like.

I played rugby for a club in West Chester back in the day called Brandywine. It is the 30th anniversary of the team so I thought it would be fun to catch up with any of the guys still around from two decades ago. Old rugby players never die, they just can't walk after a while. The game is very punishing physically, and the half-life for participation should be about two to three years. As it was, I played six seasons. Three for Brandywine and three for the Red Roses up here in Lancaster. The Brandywine boys were quite the miscreants. The Roses looked like choirboys in comparison. But on both teams, there was a loyalty and camaraderie that I greatly miss.   

I had big dreams of becoming a somebody in rugby. After dealing with a knee injury that essentially ended my basketball career, two surgeries later I had the second chance to become an athletic star in rugby. I found that my size and athleticism gave me a huge edge. Some big guys are not good athletes, they are just big, slow, and doughy. Some athletes aren't big, they are just athletic--wiry, thin, and puny. I had both the size and athletic attributes, and my bum knee was not as much a factor in playing rugby, which tends to be a horizontal game versus basketball--which is vertical.

Alas, my dreams of becoming a rugby phenom ended on a Pitch (in rugby, the field is called a Pitch) up around Harrisburg somewhere in the Old Gaelic tourney.

An opposing player was ready to touch the ball down to score a Try (hence the word "touchdown" which has been adopted to rugby's cousin, or perhaps child would be better lineage, since rugby was first). One of my teams player's was desperately tugging on the guy's shirt--and rugby shirts are made to stretch, so the opposing player was inches away from touching the ball on the ground in the Try zone. So, I came out of the back of the Try zone and blasted him like a shotgun does to a clay pigeon. I knocked the dude out and prevented the Try but the momentum of the hit carried me squarely into my own man, where we had a head-to-head collision--and I knocked both of us out.

When I came to, I was being asked by one of my other team member's, who was a Physical Therapist and the closest thing to a Dr., where I was. I said "a rugby field." He asked more specifically which rugby field, as in location, and I had no idea. Soon, an ambulance was taking me to Holy Spirit Hospital where it was concluded that I had a double-concussion and a gash above my right eye (on the eyebrow bone) requiring 15 stitches. The other player I knocked out from my team had a split forehead but refused medical treatment, I found out decades later. That was the end of my rugby career.

BTW, I am pretty certain I suffered another concussion last week from a mountain biking spill. I have had the suspicious ache of a concussion all week (I know the feeling well as I have had five or six prior concussions). I had more evidence of the concussion when I put my bike helmet on the other night before a ride and saw that I had a split and dent in the hard shell in the back of the helmet from the fall. I am going to keep riding--I need the risk to get the reward. I am just wondering how many times I can ring the bell without cracking it. Maybe it is already cracked???     

A couple of days after the rugby collision, I was in a Grad School class and all of the blood from the gash was bleeding internally into my eye which caused a great deal of concern among my classmates. I called the Dr.'s office and the Nurse said it was nothing to worry about, that such drainage was normal. But, it freaked me out to say the least. There is an additional back story here. One of the reasons that I hung up my high-top aluminum rugby cleats was that I have a neurologically-based near blindness in my visual field (left eye/right brain) from being born 7 weeks prematurely in 1963 with double pneumonia, where I was starved for oxygen, and some of the neurological hardware in my right hemisphere was damaged beyond repair. The left eye itself is fine. Glasses do nothing to help. The visual field is essentially gone, somewhat akin to a movie screen that has been torn up and the wires from the projector to the screen have been frayed or cut.

I was taking the risk of losing my only good eye where if it were damaged by rugby, I would essentially be close to being blind practically (where) I could not work in a job requiring reading, driving a car, etc.  So, it was with a good deal of sadness that I retired from rugby. I went out with a bang but before I could establish fully my legend as a rugby immortal. My second coming of athletic fame fizzled like a dud firecracker. Some sparks, but no explosion and colorful array. A field of dreams scarred by physical disability yet again.

It was a melancholic experience yesterday at the Pitch. I briefly toyed around with the idea of playing in the Old Boys game but decided instead to work on my book until around 1:00 and then head down to the game an hour away. Which wound up being 1.5 hours. I knew very few of the people there. I vaguely recognized a guy that I thought had played for Brandywine and I was correct. And, then met a couple of other guys who had also played two decades ago--and some still do. Rugby players live hard and many of the men really looked as if they had taken a beating, and were no longer the young Turks they had been. Older, grayer, fatter. By virtue of leaving the game in my prime, I had escaped the punishing physical toll a lot of the others guys had taken. Plus, the hard-drinking and hard-living. Not a great wellness combination.

One particularly beat-up guy retold a sweet story about finding one of the rugby balls of Brandywine's 1989 Championship game against Philly-Whitemarsh RFC in Fairmont Park in Philly at a Flea Market in Pottstown or Reading, where a team member had written down a the final score. He thought I had played in the game. I had not. I was on the sidelines, being kept off the field by some inner circle of players for some reason, for good or ill. I just recall being really disappointed. So, that was some salt in the wound even though we won the game. I tried to not let my painful memory show too overtly. Soon after that game, and into the new season, I became a starter on the A Team, displacing other players who were veterans. I was better.     

As I drove back home on the back roads, beautiful 741 West escaping the gaudiness of the faux farming motif for the real thing, I reflected on the road that life has taken me. It was a beautiful Fall day, drenched in sunshine and a cooling wind. I had some regrets about rugby which morphed into a general reflection on regrets on the whole. I got to a point in my internal conversation where I concluded that it was never a good thing to hold onto past defeats. Instead, cling to the good of the past and consider the victories that came. I started to chalk up things that I considered great victories: Writing a book, earning a Ph.D., having a cool career where I have worked with some of society's most needy students, being perhaps the only man alive who visited 40 Pennsylvania Microbreweries in 40 Days, and I see that I am way ahead of my defeats and downers.

Above all, I am grateful to God for calling me off of a floor or field of a life that was empty but full of suffering, to one where I am forgiven and exist in a state of grace, despite the adversities. That is a Pitch of Dreams where the play has been for my good. And, that is all that really matters anyway.