| | Steve Young has been fencing with the idea of retirement for several
months now, the price of accumulated head injuries plus the relentless
nagging of medioids who know the danger of his continuing to play because
their decades of medical experience.
|  | | Eric Lindros in uniform: is anybody concerned about it? |
Hey, some of us are just smarter than everybody else. The rest of us are
just insufferable nags.
But while our footprints have been found all over Young's brainpan,
there has been remarkably little hue and cry about Eric Lindros' repeatedly
outraged noggin.
We mention this (a) because Lindros received another head injury in a
workout with the Flyers' American Hockey League farm team Thursday, and (b)
because concussions aren't just for quarterbacks any more.
Lindros collided with Philadelphia Phantom player Francis Lessard
Thursday morning. Lessard's helmet struck Lindros in the jaw, opening up 20
stitches worth of cuts on Lindros' lips and giving him another nasty
headache.
So the question must at least be offered. Should Lindros continue to do
this?
First of all, we recognize that the choice is ultimately his, just as
the choice for Young is his. By all accounts, the idea of retirement has
never occurred to him, nor as near as anyone can surmise, to anyone else.
Still, just as Young is being ushered toward Easy-Chair-And-Gold-Watch
City by a nervous 49er administration, Lindros' long-term prognosis is, or
ought to be, just as sketchy.
In other words, it's about time that he be hounded to distraction the
way Young has been in San Francisco. Why? Because fair is fair.
The problem with Lindros, of course, is that his long-running feud with
Flyers' general manager Bobby Clarke obscures any tedious and premature
discussions of his health. On the one hand, Clarke has used Lindros'
concussions to exile him to the farthest reaches of the franchise, their
animosity having reached such breadth and depth as to make kissing and making
up a metaphysical impossibility.
Thus, Lindros' future with the Flyers is in doubt, which would be easy
enough to comprehend were it not for the fact that Clarke is sitting on a hot
plate of his own because the Flyers are Cupless in his tenure as the team's
leading suit.
It's a good circus, one that has so far obscured the real circus that
lies ahead.
His head has taken a series of rude jolts over the past couple of years,
and knowing as we do that accumulated concussions make the next one more
serious than the last, and knowing that hockey is already a rough game, and
knowing that hockey players, like football players, have no ethical issues
about using another player's injuries in the most cynical of ways ... well,
you see where this is going.
| |
“ |
His head has taken a series of rude jolts over the past couple of years,
and knowing as we do that accumulated concussions make the next one more
serious than the last, and knowing that hockey is already a rough game, and
knowing that hockey players, like football players, have no ethical issues
about using another player's injuries in the most cynical of ways ... well,
you see where this is going.
” |
Lindros has much more hockey ahead of him than Young, true. Unlike
Young, though, Lindros has not known the joy of winning a ring, and it is
plainly easier to give up an athletic career at 37 than at 27.
Not to mention the more mundane matters of money, cash, and earnings.
Young has no more huge contracts to sign, unless Mike Shanahan has a grand
scheme at the ready for Pat Bowlen's money, while Lindros is a year away from
his next deal, which will either eat up a fair chunk of Ed Snider's Flyer
money, or someone else's.
Thus, the idea of Lindros' retirement seems so much more ridiculous than
Young's. He has so much to play for, right?
True, it is a great soap opera --- it has lasted a long time, there has
been public recrimination and bitterness, mutual disgust and good-natured
pettiness on both sides. It couldn't get any better until CourtTV gets to air
the trial, and we surely wouldn't want them to avoid that last bit of
degradation if at all possible.
At some point, though, the topic will be breached, and at that point the
good people of Philadelphia will be treated to interviews with doctors who
have never examined Lindros, cross-sections of the human replete with boxes,
lines and arrows showing where brains live, and of course, phone-in polls
with readers and viewers casting all-seeing, all-knowing judgments on
Lindros' future -- because, after all, who knows more about physiology than
a tolltaker?
While the decision should be his, with proper consultation with his
family and physicians, of course, we in the J-biz can't help ourselves. We
give out unwanted advice the way perfume guerrillas spray scent on
unsuspecting customers in department stores. And we can give it for months on
end. Our scent, you see, lingers on and on and on ...
We suspect Lindros will ignore all this, and might even take some
offense. But he needs to know that this is how his career is going to play
out in the public prints, and by being warned now, in the syndrome's early
stages, he can spare himself a phone call to Young.
That is, of course, unless they want to swap symptoms: "You know that
dull ringing in your ear? Mine's five years old this August."
Ray Ratto, a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. | |
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