Taking Myself Out Of The Game

As I mentioned in my 12/15/11 blog entry, I have been playing soccer since about the 3^rd grade, both outdoor and indoor.  I have been injured and had to leave the game many times with sprained ankles, a broken nose, tweaked knees, pulled hamstrings, etc, but only once have I had to pull myself out of a game for a non-injury related reason.  It was in the mid-1990’s while living in Madison, WI when I was on a cool indoor coed team called the Sharpshooters. 

We were all close friends who got along great both on and off the field, plus we were pretty good.  We were short on players one week though and needed a body so I invited my friend Mitch Manson (who had never played soccer in his entire life) to sit in and play with our team that night.  Since Mitch had no idea how to play the game we decided to make it doubly interesting by cooking up a strong batch of mushroom tea over at our friends Bonnie and Clyde’s apartment about an hour before game time.  Mitch and I, along with a few friends who wanted to come watch us play, slurped down the gloppy mess and then we headed over to the indoor soccer arena.

When we got there I gave Mitch a quick crash-course lesson on how to play soccer, but by game-time things were starting to get weird and the hallucinations were setting in.  Mitch and I out on the field (as well as our shrooming friends watching from the sidelines) were all giggling in anticipation to see how this was going to go down.  As a forward I was the guy whose job was to do a lot of the scoring, but before long reality had deteriorated to the point where the soccer ball had become a living, breathing mass of energy with a mind of its own.  It always seemed to be traveling at high speeds, just over the ground, and always out of my reach.  My confused teammates who were not aware of the ‘situation’ would pass it to me and as it would go whizzing by I could not seem to stop it…much less control it, dribble, pass it, or take a shot on goal.

I was just running around out there on this huge, beautiful sea of fake green grass laughing helplessly and watching everyone else running around kicking this living laser.  I would poke my leg out and take a stab at the ball as it would come careening towards me but I could never seem to make contact with the actual ball, just the visible trail of balls it left behind which was fun too.  The one time I did manage to get a foot on the ball, I kicked it so hard that it rocketed straight up into the ceiling and hit one of the huge sodium pressure light-bulbs 50 feet above us, causing it to explode in a loud shower of sparks.  “Did you SEE that?!” I yelled out to nobody in particular while I stood there and watched the electrical shower in awe.  I could tell my now extremely puzzled teammates were staring at me while I ran around melting with laughter, but it didn’t matter.  We were all close friends, we were winning, and I was having a blast.

The final straw though was towards the end of the game when we were awarded a penalty shot.  “Let Mitch take it!  Let Mitch take it!” I screamed.  Mitch smiled and nodded in agreement, not having the slightest idea of what a penalty shot was.  Through my tears of laughter, he listened intently as I explained to him that the ball is placed in front of the opposing goalie at the penalty shot mark, and then he gets to run up and try to kick it past the goalie into the net.  He thinks about it for a second, surveys the field, and then leans in close and whispers:  “Watch me juke him.”  Um, okay. 

So the referee places the ball on the penalty mark and Mitch walks up to it and stops.  He is concentrating intensely now as he eyes the ball…eyes the goalie…eyes the ball…and then he backs up 10 yards.  He pauses in thought for a second, and then backs up another 10 yards…pauses and backs up another 10 yards…then 10 more…then 10 more until after awhile he is all the way back on our end of the field by our mystified goalie.  Everybody in the building is watching now and thinking he has completely lost his mind.  Finally he stops his retreat, looks over at me, smiles, winks, and then starts a loooong slow weaving path back up the field towards the ball.  Left, right, left, right in a huge snaking S-curve while their goalie is just standing there with his hands on his hips in bewilderment.  Also, and this is important, Mitch’s body kind of resembles the Grinch…skinny arms and legs with a big round buddha-belly, and when he runs his arms and legs pump up and down but his head remains perfectly stationary with his eyes on the prize.  By now everybody is pointing and laughing and I’m crying and when Mitch finally reaches the ball he actually gets a really good smack on it, but alas it misses just wide left.

At this point I was done for the night.  I could deal with the fact that everything was melting around me, but my stomach and face hurt so bad from laughing that I could not have possibly attempted any more soccer and I took myself out of the game with an ‘ankle injury’.  I joined my friends on the sidelines and had a beer and enjoyed the rest of the game.  As per usual the team went out to the bar for post-game drinks where we came clean and revealed the reason for our condition.  Our coach wasn’t mad and actually just wanted to know if we had some more shrooms.  Lesson learned:  psychedelic drugs and competitive sports do not mix (if you want to actually be competitive).  Unless of course you are Doc Ellis, who pitched a no-hitter for the Pittsburgh Pirates on 6/12/70…while on LSD.