Mar 13, 2021
Der Alte Fußballer: Falling Down Scares My Opponents More Than Me
This is a sequel to my essay about returning to soccer after 30 years at age 66.
If life taught me anything before 2020, it’s that you don’t accomplish anything if you don’t try. One new thing I’m learning since then, in a dubious golden year of COVID-19, divorce, retirement, and America’s time-lapse suicide, it’s that if I accomplish something, I suddenly and mistakenly believe I can do anything. This has been perhaps the most painful lesson of my current comeback/farewell tour as a senior citizen cum soccer player.
When the world closed in March 2020, I resolved to mitigate the negative impacts of self-incarceration. Among my solutions, including cooking and avoiding Facebook, was launching a physical fitness renaissance with the goal of playing competitive soccer for the first time since surviving a near-fatal accident during a league match in 1980. Never mind I was now a pensioner, more likely to drop my dentures on the pitch than net a 25-meter free kick.
After two months of practicing and studying soccer games on TV, I broke my ban on social media and found my first pickup game. I wasn’t ready. My muscles ached, my joints crackled, some toenails were dead, parts of me I hadn’t seen since the ‘90s sported large, vivid yellow and purple bruises. But as new parents will tell you, you’re never truly ready. So I told myself, just do it (full disclosure: I wear Nikes ©).
I’ve been just doing it for a year now. But I won’t describe in this article all my memorable experiences. Instead, I’ll tell you about a phenomenon: A medical or maybe metaphysical mystery which, after all my training and preparation, I didn’t anticipate. Sometimes, I simply fall down.
The first time it happened, I was running after a loose ball when my legs tripped a circuit breaker and gave out. After defacing my pristine, white, 2010 USA team jersey with brilliant green and brown skid marks, I scrambled to my still-wobbly feet as quickly as I could hoping no one had witnessed my unprecipitated collapse.
An opposing player ran up, visibly concerned, and asked if I was alright. I nodded, then looked around. Everyone on the field, and possibly several passing motorists and dog-walking neighbors, were staring at the elderly gentleman who’d just face-planted like a seven-year-old in a potato sack race.
Blaming nerves or 67-year-old knees, I continued playing and mercifully didn’t fall again. But a few weeks later, I was practicing before a match, passing the ball with other players. As I stood without the ball, my lower body, without warning, unplugged again. Fortunately, I wasn’t running at the time. From my knees, I tried to rise as fast as I could so, like the first incident, no one would think anything was wrong.
A player walked up tentatively and asked innocently “Did you JUST fall?”, meaning “Was that all you?”. As I rose, my eyes fixed on the distant mountains, maybe seeking an answer to her question. “Yes”, I said. “I guess it was.” Realizing she was probably more concerned than I was, I laughed, and told her I was alright — which I was starting to question.
Over the months since the first two incidents, I’ve trained and played more, concentrating on improving my balance. I didn’t have any more unprovoked falls — until the other day. I was dribbling the ball in open field: No one near me. Then I dropped in a heap like a puppet whose strings snapped.
Some players laughed. Others gasped. But defying my fears, my self-humiliation lasted only seconds. By the time I got to my feet, I saw the others looking at me, not mockingly, but more in bewilderment bordering or worry. I said nothing and resumed dribbling upfield as if nothing had happened. But we all knew something did.
My first instinct had been to run home. Arguably, it was a religious experience: The choice between resurrection or returning to the cave and rolling the rock back over the opening. But then, my epiphany sparked a more earthly concern. Was it age? Senior citizens routinely suffer balance problems. They’re caused by numerous different medical complications. As I dribbled on, I determined that I needed to bench my pride and figure out what I was doing wrong — or more frightening, what was going wrong.
My mother was diagnosed in her 40s with an inner ear problem which caused her serious balance problems. She got dizzy walking up stairs, nauseous sitting in bleachers. She couldn’t fly in an airplane. She once simply turned in the kitchen, fell and suffered a serious ankle injury. I had terrible ear aches when I was a child but no test has shown I had a problem like Mom’s.
I’ve had low blood pressure my whole life. It’s caused me to often feel light-headed, occasionally pass out and, when I get into high-stress situations, I feel like going to sleep. Were undiagnosed labyrinthitis or 90/60 ruining my “30 for 30” moment and condemning me to the couch until I resembled Pelé, now in a wheelchair, or George Best in his alcoholic death throes?
After recovering from worst-case scenariosis, I recalled that my spills playing soccer were more accurately comparable to those I had skiing, running, and during other activities, even when I was in my 60s. The worst injury I’d ever suffered, outside of the soccer accident in 1980 which broke three ribs and collapsed a lung, was a broken finger when I was 12.
So my current self-diagnosis is overreacteria. I haven’t seen a doctor because I don’t think it’s an age-related problem — yet. Just in case, I’ve added some simple, non-sports-related, balance-improving exercises I can do anywhere. FYI: Balance is emphasized in the Silver Sneaker program at gyms and rec centers nationwide, and online which Medicare pays for.
But as I embark on these new “corrections”, I’m also wondering if I can use my scary, sudden, unprovoked falling strategically: Deceiving my opponents into believing I’m just a doddering fogey. In the same game in which I last fell, I’d earlier made the best play of my year-long comeback: A 15-meter, curving pass over the opposing defense to a speeding teammate in stride who stopped it with his chest, turned and scored (I’ve confirmed that it was not just a dream I had, though it has been ever since).
If I knew then what I learned minutes later, I might’ve started the match by collapsing prostrate and motionless until my shocked and horrified opponents and teammates alike slowly crept up to check if I was dead. When they got close, I’d spring up and dribble past them for an easy score.
OK, maybe that’s not sportsmanlike or even legal. But I’m an active senior with a mysterious medical issue trying to escape oppressive government health restrictions, have a little fun, and stay in shape. Where’s the harm? I’ll tell you. That might work once. But the next time, when you’ve finally picked yourself up, they’ve stolen your kit bag, keyed your car, and robbed you of your dignity and your faith in humanity. Damn kids these days.
Hmm. Wait, maybe that’s my problem. Fogeyoid dodderingus.
