Steel Baby!

By Kevin Flinn

Growing up in a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA, I played soccer from the time I was five until I graduated High School. I'm sure we all have our own wonderful sports stories, but I was just reminded of this one the other day, and I thought that the world would be a better place if it was out there for all to enjoy. Ahem...

It was a cool, crisp, Autumn day. I was around sixteen years old and playing right defensive back for my club soccer team. The other teams left wing was dribbling the ball towards me and reared back to shoot the ball. Like any good defender, I raised my foot in the air to try to block the shot, but unfortunately, I had, at the time, very poor judgement on the path of the ball. My left leg was sticking straight out of my hip, and the ball connected with all three components of my crotch.

I'd like to take a moment here to explain something. Guys, I am sure you all know what this entails, but not being a woman, I'm not sure if the females do. When a man gets hit in the crotch, there is something that happens that I like to refer too as the "Elmer Fudd" effect. In many old Looney Tunes cartoons, Bugs Bunny would lure Elmer to the edge of a cliff, and whether it was using a log for him to run through, or blindfolding him somehow, Bugs would make Elmer run off that cliff. Elmer would run and run even though there was no ground beneath him. He would slowly realize he was merely hovering in the air and try to run back, but it was too late. In relation to groin hits, when a man is hit, there is a few seconds of nothingness, no pain, nothing. This is followed by an intense pain in the affected area, that is followed with a slow stomach ache type feeling that, depending on the severity of the hit, can travel as far up as the top of your head. so for the SAT question Groin is to Elmer as Pain is to Gravity. This being said...

The ball bounce off of me and out of bounds. The opposing player looked at me, shocked as a gasp rose from the crowd. A hush fell over the entire field. No one moved, no one spoke. I guess the adrenaline flowing in my blood stream added to the seconds of no pain, so I thought, maybe, just maybe, I had gotten away with it. I looked him in the eye, pointed at him and said, "STEEL BABY! STE-". Before I could get out the last part of the word, I felt it. It wasn't really the pain that stopped the words from coming out as much as it was the vomit. That's right, I got hit in the crotch so hard that it made me vomit all over the soccer field. I was helped off the field by some of my fellow players as I heard the stifled laughter of everyone in the stands. Everyone except my father. He was the one laughing out loud.