Date: Fri 28-Jul-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: KIMH

Illustration: I

Quick Words:

Harmon-Column-Poonderizers

Full Text:

Poon-der-rizers

Kim Harmon/On Sports

There's a lot of things you can learn when you sit and listen to a

five-year-old. We were in the tub the other day, my daughter Melissa and I,

when she frowned (like I thought only a mother could) at the rusty-brown

scrapes and purplish bruises on the inside of my right knee and the outside of

my left knee.

" You know what we call those at my work, daddy? " she said, ready to impart

on me much of the wisdom she has gained from her imaginary friends at her

imaginary office. " Poon-der-rizers. That's, like, scratches . . . bumps . . .

anything! "

I remember saying, " Ah, poonderizers, " knowing it was foolish to ask, " why?

" mainly because I knew she would have an answer.

But instead of ahhh-ing like I did, I should have sat there and told her about

all the poonderizers I have gotten in my life since my older brother pulled a

tooth right out of my head when we were playing a game in the backyard about

25 years ago.

Playing sports is not all fun and games (no, not a very fresh insight).

Sometimes sports hurts. Broken ankles, dislocated shoulders, twisted knees . .

. it's the price an athlete has to pay.

I haven't been much of an athlete. Playing wiffle ball and touch football does

not an athlete make. But I haven't been impervious to pain, mind you. It's

just been in little annoying doses.

Real pain found me a couple Saturdays ago when I was doing something an actual

athlete might do - play tournament softball. In my second at-bat of the game,

on a day that had to be 200 degrees in the shade, I tapped a slow roller to

shortstop. I dug hard for first, but a couple steps short of the bag I felt an

explosion in my head and then saw nothing but black.

The shortstop had drilled me in the back of the head with his throw over to

first. Apparently I folded up like a wet bag of cement, missing the bag and

rolling across the dusty ground like a Death Valley tumbleweed . . .  which is

when I got the poonderizers on my knees.

It took me a little while to retrieve some of my senses and open my eyes.

I think the first thing I said was, " Do I get a hit for that? " I probably

should have asked if my ear was still attached to my body.

I knew that playing sports would lead to injuries. From tendonitis in Farm

League baseball and the shredded hamstring in touch football, to the

hyper-extended knee in wiffle ball and the hip displacement in golf, these

poonderizers are bound to happen.

But while I lay on the blazing hot Woodbury field for what seemed like five

million years, I somehow, for whatever reason, thought about all the times I

had been hurt when I wasn't even playing.

The first time, I was covering a field hockey game for The Daily Campus at the

University of Connecticut. I was sitting about 10 yards off the sidelines of

the football field, where all the big field hockey games were played, when a

UConn player tried to send a rocket downfield. Only, the ball deflected off

the defender's stick and (this is an argument for always keeping your head up)

richocheted like a cannon off my shoulder.

It just kind of went on from there. While at the Town Times in Watertown, I

was drilled in the leg by a baseball (imagine focussing a camera on the

batter, watching, through the viewfinder, as the ball reached the plate and

rebounded off the aluminum bat right at you ), knocked in the back of the head

with a soccer ball, tackled (twice) in a crush of football players, drilled in

the back with a soccer ball, knocked off the top of the head with a

volleyball, hit in the arm (hard) with a bat, smacked in the head and shoulder

and chest and legs with three hockey pucks and a stick, and whacked in the

face with a basketball.

But I've been in Newtown now for almost two years now and I can't recall being

damaged or nicked for simply covering a game, but all the hits I have taken

(with that softball one still echoing inside the knot on my skull) may have

dulled my senses.

But, hey, I didn't say I wasn't having fun.

I'll take a couple soccer balls in the back anyday if it means covering sports

for a living.