A cautionary tale of sports medicine

The Domino factor and my aging frame

Sports medicine is an iffy solution to age old conundrum

By Terrance Gavan

You may have heard the story about the big league pitcher who developed a blister on his baby toe playing tennis on one of his off days.

Two starts later his pitching arm was ruined, his promising career was in shambles and his niggling baby toe boo-boo was fingered as the cause.

Now that sounds a bit farfetched you might say. How can a blister down there cause so much chaos so far up the totem? Is this the start of a bad sports joke?

Well no. There’s a very real and logical explanation. The pitcher changed his windup to take pressure off his little toe. He didn’t want to land hard on the blister so he tweaked his knee at the end of his delivery to prevent a hard bump on the offending digit. That caused his hip to joggle, which caused his arm to tweak and that caused his tendon to pleat.

Well you get the picture. It was summed up in that old Spiritual, Dem Dry Bones.

Your toe bone connected to your foot bone, your foot bone connected to your ankle bone, your ankle bone connected to your leg bone, your leg bone connected to your knee bone,
Your knee bone connected to your thigh bone, your thigh bone connected to your hip bone.

And of course the hip bone is connected to the pocketbook and the wallet’s connected to the contract and well, in our poor pitcher’s case his contract connected to the boo-boo. His real boo-boo was pitching with a boo-boo.

My Sports Medicine guy, Dr. Wabash Cannonball, calls it the Domino Effect. He even wrote a widely regarded paper on the subject entitled: The Domino Effect and the Aging Athlete. It was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. It won him a Chair on the Sports Medicine Board at Johns Hopkins.

I was the case study.

A while back I developed a bruise on my right instep while skateboarding. Well let’s back this up. I was actually headed out to the vert ramp when I stepped on a huge pebble.

Angry at not being able to crank some ollies and a few Kamikaze Noggin Knockers I immediately went home to pick up my tennis racket. Halfway through the first set my playing partner John asked why I was walking funny. I told him my Tony Hawke tale of woe.

Into the second set I noticed that I was hitting off my left foot, to protect my instep.

I was now developing a serious throb in the ankle of my left foot.

At about the same time my serve, which usually flows gently, like a butterfly fluttering in a spring zephyr, was slowly devolving into a chaotic spasm. I looked like I was connected to a manic puppeteer in the final throes of a Tennessee Holler religious rite.

I was hitting my serve in an exaggerated tiptoe stance to ease pressure on my ankles and I was twisting my upper body to compensate. Little twinges started shooting up my left side.

On changeover, at 5-4, I noticed that my left arm was hanging lower that my right arm. My neck was convulsed in a spasm that left me looking over my right shoulder. I was limping on my sore left ankle and standing tiptoed on my bruised right instep.

John, who was and still is ten years my junior, then mentioned that we haven’t been rock climbing in a while.

“Great idea John! That might work out a few kinks,” I said.

We arrived at the rock face and as I grabbed the belay ropes I felt a sudden twinge in my lower back.

“Nothing like a little free climb to loosen up the muscles,” I shouted.

About half way up, my left hand, which was lodged in a small crevice, suddenly went numb. At the same time the twinge in my back locked into an uncontrollable spasm.

As I fell from the rockface my crinkled neck gave me a perfect line on John, who, thankfully, was on belay. As the belay rope tightened and caught my weight, I felt my left knee lock up.

As John helped me take off the belay ropes I suggested that we should go for a jog to work out the cricks.

John ignored me and asked for directions to Dr Wabash Cannonball’s Sports Medicine Clinic.

“You, do not, look so hot and I think I heard something go sploooot when the belay ropes caught you.”

“Well, okay, but I’m sure it’s nothing that a few pushups and a good night’s sleep won’t cure,” I said.

I declined John’s kind offer to run in and get me a wheelchair, and I sidled into the clinic.

Wabash was looking out of his corner office window when I arrived.

I was tiptoeing on my right foot, and dragging my left leg with the sprained ankle and locked knee, my left shoulder was now fully 8 inches below the right, and my neck spasm was allowing me to maintain a conversation and eye contact with John who was behind me as I sauntered into the clinic.

I reached for the door and heard a pop from the vicinity of my right shoulder.

Dr Wabash met me in the lobby, watching as I slowly dragged my form into view.

“Hey, Quasimodo, the Cathedral called. I think it’s your turn on the Bells.”

Did I mention, that Dr Cannonball is a nice guy, but no bedside manner.

As I explained the day’s events, he shook his head.

“How old are you? Idiot!”

And then: “Are you sure you weren’t dropped on a hard cement floor when you were young?”

And then he started to hum “Dem Bones”.

“Hah, I got it… your head bone’s connected to your gluteus maximus. Take two aspirins and call me when you can pick up a phone.”

He did send me a copy of his article before leaving for Johns Hopkins.

Brian Burke - and Biblical Proportion

Brian Burke is not the Messiah
But he does know how to hijack a byline
By Terrance Gavan
And Brian the Burke sayeth unto the multitude:
“Whose is this image and inscription?”
And the gathered throng of Pharisees and ink-stained wretches respondeth unto Burke the Large: “Caesar’s.”
Then Brian the Superfluous sayeth unto them, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”
When they had heard these words, they marveled, they scribbled, they Twittered and they shot great amounts of video footage placing treasured pearls of Brawny the Brian’s blather unto Youeth Tube.
Columnists swooned, the multitude was hushed and the babbling Pharisees then left Brian, Tweeting, texting, and eulogizing along the way.
News spread swift in Toronto, the chosen city, and Leaf Nation rose as one saying:
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty Burke, The everlasting, Brian the Brain, The Prince of Peace.”
Whoa!
Hold on here just a minute.
Prince of Peace?
Brian Burke?
Call St. Peter.
We need a rewrite!
All this verbal detritus is overkill.
He had us at “hello.”
The rest is just trash talk and hyperbole.
I hate to spoil the party.
And pardon me if I am not quite so enamored of the Leaf’s newest savior, Brian the Beloved, the little engine that could. “I think I can!”
Brian Burke is not the Messiah. “I think I am!”
Heck, Brian Burke is not even Punch Imlach, who like Burkey the Lame, was not without his detractors.
I know the Messiah.
He follows me on Twitter.
He too has his doubts about Brian of Blarney’s chances in T Dot.
I tweeted the Messiah just last week, after Burkey’s stellar and stunning (stunned?) season-ending press conference.
I Twittered, “Hey big G … what about this guy Burke, the Leafs new GM and President … People are saying he’s the real deal?”
Back came the big Guy’s Tweet: “Ye shall know me by my deeds. Terrance giveth thy noggin a knocketh. You bag of hammers. Thou shall have no other gods before me.”
Ah, behold, the beauty of Twitter. Succinct, terse, no nonsense.
Almost like Brian the Burke. He of Harvard Law, and Anaheim, with pit stop in Van City.
He wonneth nothing in Van City. He garnered Grail in Anaheim.
No one is convinced that he didn’t gain Grail from the fine auspices of that good Senator, Brian Murray, the Lisp that Roars.
Don’t ever mention this to Brian.
He will pick you up and shake you like a Terrier on a rat.
He did just that with a few of his front office staffers and many of the existing Leaf players at his season-ending rant.
The words literally flew from the Brian of Brawn’s motivational maw at that presser.
Concerned with the nonchalance of “certain people” in the Leaf’s front office, Burkey dropped the hammer on D-Day.
“That should be a day of infamy. ... That should be a day when everyone is pissed off.”
Burkey may always be just a juke and a jive from despondency, but he sure knows how to hijack a headline.
On a day when North America was girding for the playoffs and Leafs’ players were busy shopping for new Taylor Made drivers - and a patch of green in the Muskokas - Brian was busy writing the Gospel according to Burke.
“A player's here long enough, he starts thinking, ‘I’m special, because there’s 20 people who want to talk to me,’ ” said Burke, a face-wash with a stinky ReeBok glove aimed at some of the Leaf’s overindulgent underachievers.
“No. They're there to talk to whoever comes off the ice with a Maple Leafs uniform on. And I think players confuse their role on a team that's struggling with being a good hockey player. ‘Oh, I'm on the second power-play unit. I must be a good hockey player.’ No. We don't have a very good team, and so you get that ice time.”
They don’t teach this lovey-dovey rhetoric at Dr. Phil’s School of Piety and Good Karma.
They teach this stuff third year at Harvard Law, in Moot Court.
Moot in this case referring also to the Leaf underachievers, who better shut up and lie low, lest the axe fall on their apparently swelled melons.
More time on the bike and less time on the links for the Boys in Blue this summer.
“This group has to aspire to higher levels of achievement or we need different athletes,” said Burke. “That's how pro sports are supposed to work. That's why these guys make the big bucks. And yes, there's been a culture of entitlement here, and we're trying to change that, and we will change it.”
Yoicks!
Culture of entitlement?
A nice little rhetorical twist. “Don’t paaark yah caaar in Haavaaaarrd Yaaaard!”
And ironic coming from the man who for years has been the poster child for entitlement.
He’s used his bully pulpit in Anaheim to initiate a Jihad against Oiler GM Kevin Lowe, for presumed egregious poaching of Anaheim players.
And now he’s run a Panzer phalanx up to the front door of Islander GM Garth Snow, shocking many by offering hidden goodies for a shot at presumed number one pick John Tavares. (See an article on Matt Duchene in this issue for a surprising gander at Tavares’s sliding fortunes.)
“We’re going to talk to everyone between us and the first pick and see what the landscape is,” sayeth Burke. “We’re going to see what it costs, and we’re going to try and move up.”
There is a presumption here that John Tavares is the panacea; the cure; the solution.
Me. I’m waiting for the wedding feast, when Burke the Bland cranks that huge jug of Evian water into 17 large carafes of Beaujolais.
Until then, I’m sitting on the sidelines watching the show.
With my good friend, Doubting Thomas.

A Lazy Boy rises at dawn

Languid Landon takes a flyer
A Lazy Boy excursion run amok
By Terrance Gavan
In the town of Halcyon and beyond he was known mostly as Languid Landy.
His real name was Landon Jeans-Jacques Thoreau and he migrated to Halcyon, Manitoba after one stint in the Vietnam War back in 1968. He was a former pilot.
My first assignment with the Halcyon Packet and Times back in 1985 was an interview with Languid Landy who had something up his sleeve for July 1st weekend.
I arrived at his ranch on a sunny day mid-June. “Follow me,” said Landy, steering me toward a brown leather Lazy Boy recliner sitting just behind the shed in the back of his Ford pickup.
The truck was surrounded by a wide assortment of large balloons.
“What’s this?” I smiled, looking closer at the Lazy Boy. It was on a pedestal and on the platform were several impeccably soldered weld joints with hooks attached.
“This is my Canada Day project,” said Landy. “I bought 50 weather balloons and I’ll be filling them with helium and attaching them to the Lazy Boy on July 1st. I’ll be up there for most of the day with my camera, snapping pictures of the parade, the pancake breakfast and the ball tournament at Halcyon Field.”
“How do you know how high this thing will go?” I asked.
“High enough,” laughed Landy. “Oh I figure about 100 feet. I’ll have a cooler of beer, sandwiches a two-way radio and my pellet gun for the return to terra firma. Besides, I used to pilot jet fighters for the US Navy, so I think I can handle a Lazy Boy at 100 feet.”
Languid Landy’s launch proceeded on point, and at 6 am on Saturday July 1st, about 500 interested onlookers had gathered at the Halcyon baseball diamond.
Tommy Sigfusson was busy at a bank of four helium tanks, filling the balloons and attaching them to the central tether. The Jonasson twins were hard at it, checking the grounding straps that held the Lazy Boy to the bed of Landy’s Ford pickup. Landy was tying down his cooler, camera, and radio to the pedestal. The pellet gun was tucked alongside.
As the balloons were added, I noticed the suspension on the anchored truck lifting. It looked ominous to my untrained eye.
I approached Languid Landy. “Are you sure you did the math on this?” I asked.
“Hah, math, schmath,” laughed Landy. “I did some rough figuring on a napkin. No problem, 33 cubic feet of helium each should get me up to 100 feet. I’m a former top gun pilot … remember?”
Halcyon Mayor Sigmur Peturson was on hand to perform the countdown
“See you all at 4 pm,” said Languid Landy, strapping himself into his Lazy Boy. Ragnur Sigmundson was ready in the bed of the pickup with a machete in hand; ready to cut the tethering rope.
“Three, two, one … liftoff!” yelled Mayor Peturson.
And Languid Landy lifted off. An understatement.
It was visually stunning. Landy and his Lazy Boy rocketed toward near space at what I can only assume to be mach one.
“Holy crap,” screamed Ragnur who was thrown from the back of the still shuddering Ford pickup.
Five hundred heads snapped heavenward as one - some of the older residents later complained about whiplash.
Up and up Landy went. Up past the 100-foot target; he passed 5,000 at a clip; soared past 10,000 in a wink; and finally leveled off at 15,000 feet. It was beautiful, I swear to god. It was like he was shot from a gun.
Details get a little shaky after that. Because his only safety net, the pellet gun, shook loose 50 feet into his upward journey. I ran to the radio in the truck cab.
“Larry, where are you?” I screamed into the mike. “I’m leveled at about 15,130 feet according to my altimeter, and I think my gun is missing,” said Landy. “Get me the hell down, it’s cold up here.”
We scrambled four Cessnas from Halcyon field and Thor Gudmundson was the first to spot Languid Landy. Fortunately, Thor had gone up with a rifle.
Unfortunately for Languid Landy it was a twelve gauge double-barreled shotgun with double aught magnum loads.
Thor leveled off, took aim, and let loose with both barrels at the weather balloons holding Languid Landy and his Lazy Boy aloft.
The spread of buckshot popped 43 of the 50 balloons.
Languid Landy had gone up in a hurry. He headed down at about twice the speed.
Miraculously, Languid Landy’s Lazy Boy slowed down and leveled off at about 400 feet. Three of the remaining seven balloons seemed to have suffered collateral damage and were drooping.
He was floating just above Halberston’s Pond when 15 town sharpshooters arrived with the small caliber arms.
Anxious to get poor Landy back to earth the marksmen took aim. Unfortunately no care was taken to organize the firing sequence, and all 15 shooters opened fire at once.
All, save one, of the remaining 7 balloons went pop and Languid Landy and his Lazy Boy succumbed to gravity dropping quickly into the middle of Halberston’s Pond where he was quickly retrieved by the Halcyon Fire and Rescue squad.
The North American Air Defense (NORAD) scrambled four fighters to Halcyon on Canada Day 1985, responding to UFO reports given by two Japan Air pilots who, on approach to Winnipeg International, had to veer to avoid Landy and his Lazy Boy.
Languid Landy was a celebrity for about a week.
He became a local hero, and went on to become the Mayor of Halcyon, a position he still holds.
He presides over the meetings from an old battered and weather-beaten brown Lazy Boy recliner.
On the desk of his office sits a plaque with a picture – one I took – of his Lazy Boy rocketing skyward.
On the plaque, the simple inscription with arrow pointing to the weather balloons:
“The Buckshot Stops Here.”

DUI Always trumps ERA - Drunk Driving dumb

Angels Pitcher’s promising career ends with chalk line on the road
In life off the diamond DUI always trumps ERA
By Terrance Gavan
Following a stunning pitching performance last Wednesday, a game in which he pitched six shutout innings against the Oakland As, young Nick Adenhart was understandably excited.
After the game the 22-year old rookie, touted as the Los Angeles Angels top-pitching prospect, sought out his pitching coach Mike Butcher.
He was thrilled, wide-eyed and wound tight as the game ball, locked into a special moment that few athletes ever experience.
Games come and games go in the course of a career. This particular game was special for young Nick Adenhart. Not for the six shutout innings, but for a moment.
A moment when clarity fairly clattered off the stands, rambling like an echo off the bleacher seats before finally stuttering to impact inside this young pitcher’s soul. The soul of a ballplayer is a mumbled place, where heart and mind meet, and moments of clarity meld as fleeting touchstones, marking the path.
“At the end of the game I asked him, ‘How do you feel?’ And he goes, ‘Butch, I got it,’ ” Butcher said (From the NY Times). “And that was a pretty special moment. Ahh. To see a kid figure it out that early and understand it and own it.”
If there is an upside to the paltry denouement of life that followed, perhaps it is here, in these words gleaned from a pitching coach, who saw for a second, the sparkle of inspiration reflected in those young eyes.
The sparkle that says: “Yeah, it’s all beginning to make sense.” An ‘aha’ moment, that passes from the ken so quickly, but remains locked there in that jumble of life’s lessons learned. In the soul of the bearer. Nick Adenhart was ready, says Butcher, to take that eureka moment into the season.
Some plans never come together, balanced so precariously on a stacked deck, a card totem that crumbles inexorably but sometimes too quick.
Butcher got the call at 2 a.m. Thursday and saw that the caller was listed as Nick Adenhart. “So I was thinking, ‘OK, I’m going to have to go get Nick somewhere, in a good way.’ And I heard his father speaking and he said Nick had been in a car accident.”
Butcher drove immediately to the hospital and stood vigil at the University of California-Irvine Medical Center. Butcher said he would hold on to Nick Adenhart’s delight in his strong outing against the Athletics.
That’s all he has now. Memory of Nick Adenhart. Nick Adenhart died early Thursday morning after a drunk driver ran a red light.
On Friday, the Orange County district attorney, filed charges, including three counts of murder, against Andrew Gallo. Gallo, 22, has been identified as the driver of the minivan that ran a red light at an estimated 70 miles an hour, twice the posted limit, and broadsided the Mitsubishi in which Adenhart was a passenger. Courtney Frances Stewart, 20, the driver of the Mitsubishi, and Henry Pearson, 25, a law student, died instantly in the crash, the police said. The fourth person in the car, Jon Wilhite, 24, remained in critical condition last weekend.
Two 22-year olds and a chance meeting on a road last Thursday. And if we’re lucky, a lesson here.
Usually, when talk drifts to DUI and professional sports, the circumstances are different. In most cases it’s about self-indulgent young millionaires, with lucrative contracts, specious attitudes, and way too much money to spend on nights’ out and expensive cars.
To wit: Cleveland Browns receiver Donte Stallworth, a recent recipient of a $4.5 million contract bonus. Stallworth like Mr. Gallo has been charged with vehicular manslaughter, after a regrettable night out on the town.
The Browns receiver’s indictment in relation to an accident in Miami March 14 that claimed the life of Florida resident Mario Reyes.
Mr. Reyes was a crane operator who was walking home after a night shift. Stallworth said he flashed his lights just prior to running the pedestrian over.
Stallworth blew twice the legal limit. Mr. Stallworth can get anywhere from 5 to 14 years according to Florida law. His lawyers are already greasing the pan, and the rumor mill is chugging. Snippets are surfacing on blogs and in news reports saying that Mr. Reyes was jaywalking, and that he hadn’t crossed the street in the designated crosswalk area.
Poppycock. Offering the death penalty for jaywalking might be seen as a little too presumptuous, even for Florida.
Sad fact remains that Donte Stallworth has the wherewithal to pay some high-priced flacks to deflect blame. Rumors are rife that his NFL career is over. Don’t bet on it.
We the people, life’s paying pundits, are blessed with a short term and very selective memory when it comes to drunk driving and death. Every day of the week, someone takes that long shot gamble, grabs the car keys, and makes that sudden, swift decision.
“No, nooooo … I’m okay to drive … really.”
Really?
The national stats don’t bear it out folks.
Drunk driving is one of the largest causes of alcohol-related death in Canada and other developed countries, and in Canada is the largest criminal cause of death.
In the last ten years, around 250,000 people died in alcohol related car accidents in the United States. Figures show that 16,000 people were killed in the year 2000, due to alcohol related accidents. In 2004, that figured climbed to 25,000.
Yes, you probably figured, like me, that with the abundance of campaigns and ads extant on television and radio and the increase in RIDE programs offered, that drinking-related fatalities must be on the wane. We’d be wrong. DUI-related fatalities are rising worldwide.
You don’t have to tell that to Nick Adenhart’s mom and dad. Who were there in the hospital last Thursday morning.
With a pitching coach and Nick’s Angels’ teammates.
Standing vigil as Nick Adenhart lost his grip on the ball.
Next time someone offers you a drive home.
Why not lose your grip on those keys.
And take one ride … for the team.

Fr Don Gavan and his unique take on golf

Loopy rules and my love affair with golf
Rev Donald Francis Gavan and the provisional ball
By Terrance Gavan
“Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots - but you have to play the ball where it lies.”
Golfing legend Bobby Jones said that. Bobby Jones was a pretty good golfer.
Now I agree with most of the things the good Mr. Jones had to say about golf. But he’s dead wrong here.
You don’t have to play the ball where it lies.
There are always extenuating circumstances.
In Canada we have spring and fall rules. We have snow rules.
Rules that fly in the face of the Jones dictum. Rules that allow us to move the ball, willy-nilly, and chock a block, dependant on temperature fluctuations, poor grass, bad course maintenance, and the seasonal flux and flow.
On some courses in the Canadian Rockies we have the Grizzly Bear Conditional Rule.
The Grizzly Bear Provisional Drop: Rule 10 – Section VII (part d) states:
“If your ball comes to rest on the big toe of a 900 kilogram male Grizzly, just risen from winter’s slumber, you may of course take a drop and provisional lie exactly 2.5 club lengths from said Grizzly’s right toe. The ball will be played to the right, left or behind the point of progress and not closer to the hole. If the bear eats the ball, you may drop another without penalty. You may not advance the ball closer to the pin, even if the bear is very angry and threatening mayhem. You are golfers not wimps. Suck it up, you whiny pink-plaid-wearing pussies.”
When I golf in the Rockies I also like to travel with a high powered rifle loaded with hypodermic darts laced with about 2000 milligrams of Demerol.
After popping one or two Demerols into the Grizzly’s rump, it’s wise to prod his inert form with your longest club – the Driver – before measuring those 2.5 club lengths. Drop the ball in a place that ensures a good sight line to the resting Grizzly, just so an errant snore or twitch won’t interfere with your backswing.
You should of course note that most golf courses frown upon the carrying of high-powered firearms, so I like to plop the rifle in my bag covered with one of those cool Tiger head covers. I remove my one iron to make room for the Winchester.
Everyone knows even God can’t hit a one iron. Well, he can, but it’s always a wide ducking hook. Then he throws a huge hissy fit and Haliburton gets hit with another bloody snowstorm in April, or a dormant volcano suddenly gurgles to life in Alaska.
I learned golf from my uncle, the Reverend Donald Francis Gavan.
He taught me the value of the provisional ball, spring, summer and autumn rules, and the Footjoy wedge.
People have told me that I don’t really play golf at all.
“You can’t tee up a ball in the fairway for chrissakes!” yells my good friend Mortimer Gas, who is a scratch golfer with a golfing library that required the construction of a 500 square foot addition to his country home. “Who taught you to play golf anyway?” Mortimer is a bit of a pedant when it comes to golf.
“The Reverend Donald Francis Gavan,” I tell Mortimer. “And yes you can tee up a ball in the fairway, if your ball just happens to land on a piece of crappy green-tinged concrete masquerading as a lush fairway. It’s the ugly summer heat and poor grass management rule, and besides, I’m not good with the three wood off a flat lie.”
Mortimer also gets quite perturbed at my habit of playing three balls off every tee.
“You can’t just play three balls for the hell of it!” screams Mortimer. “Who taught you to play golf?”
Mortimer is really an easy-going guy, but get him on a patch of green fairway and he just loses it.
“They’re called provisional balls, Mortimer. And it was Father Gavan. Remember?”
“Geez, I don’t want to hear that name again,” screams Mortimer. “And by definition you play a provisional ball when you think your first ball is lost, not whenever you feel like it. And how do we know which ball you’re scoring?”
And here’s where you can really drive a playing partner nuts.
“Well, Mortimer, what’s a score anyway, in the grand scheme of Zen and green acres? But since you’re asking, I always count the lowest of the three-ball parlay. I’m eccentric, but I’m not crazy.”
Mortimer Gas will then turn the color of Tiger Wood’s final round red jersey.
I have been, of late, experimenting with the Happy Gilmour running drive, a method that requires a 10 yard running start from the back of the teebox to the ball.
“That’s downright embarrassing, and it looks awful,” sighs the Gas man.
I smile at Mortimer.
“Reverend Donald Francis Gavan hit his drives lefty and cross-handed, his irons righty and he putted ambidextrous, and he often quoted Sam Snead: ‘Nobody asked how you looked, just what you shot,’ said slammin Sammy.”
“Okay,” says Mortimer, smiling, “what did you shoot yesterday?”
“Accounting for three provisionals, and best ball parlay, and allowing for the two brand new Srixons I found in the woods on 12, I was about a three under 68.”
“You don’t even mark your scorecard!” screams Mortimer.
“Right on. Father gavan never kept score,” I reply.
Mortimer’s face assumes the glowering countenance of Jack Nicholson in the final act of The Shining, and he’s reaching for a club/weapon from his bag.
I gallop quickly toward my third ball on the first tee in my best Happy Gilmour and clobber a beautiful screaming faded rainbow that travels at least 310 yards out into the lake.
“Lucky thing I still have those two provisional balls in the fairway, eh Mortimer?” I shout over my shoulder in full sprint mode.
I look back at Mortimer Gas who is chasing me down the fairway, a hybrid club raised menacingly over his head. I’m running, golf bag jangling on my shoulder, and laughing. And I’m thinking: “Geez, what a great game. God I love golf.”
I’m sure that Fr. Donald Francis is watching from heavenly perch, with new partner, St Peter, from the back nine of some cloudy country club, where Amen Corner is a mindset and not a nickname.
And I’m sure that, like me, he’s smiling.
“See that Peter. Look at my nephew run. I taught him everything he knows. Now look out, third ball comin’ at ya’ … Fore!”

tasers and why I peed on an electrified fence

The Taser factor and investigative journalism
And my early meanders with accidental shock therapy
By Terrance Harry Joseph Gavan
The RCMP is taking a pummeling at the ongoing inquiry into the death of Polish traveler Robert Dziekanski.
Remember poor Mr. Dziekanski? He was issued quick judgment and a summary conviction for the egregious crime of being lost, confused, and unilingually Polish in Vancouver airport.
Four RCMP officers, responding to reports of imminent mayhem, Tasered poor Robert five times in about a minute. They say they had no choice. He came at them with a Bosco stapler, armed, dangerous and allegedly ready to inflict office product mayhem.
He went down with the first pzzzzzzzt. The officer wielding the Taser said he had to hit him a few more times. He said he wasn’t sure the damn thing was working properly.
Wow. I saw the tape. Mr. Dziekanski went down on the first muzzled crack like a pole-axed steer. What was this RCMP Constable expecting? The flash, flare and flickering crescendo of a blazing laser light finale from an Ozzie Osbourne concert?
Do you think this incident might impact negatively on future immigration?
“Well, hello! And greetings from Canada Robert. We’re from Welcome Wagon. Please note that non-English speaking immigrants wielding plastic workstation accoutrements are viewed with suspicion. Now put the stapler down and back away from that pencil sharpener. Do you understand me?”
An important question that; considering that he didn’t. Understand them, that is.
And surely the Mounties just did what we all do in Canada when faced with an insurmountable language barricade. THEY TALKED LOUDER! Ever been to a foreign country Constable Ludicrous? And how did that talk louder in English thing work out for you?
Taser International takes umbrage whenever their product comes under judicial scrutiny.
Mr. Robert Oppenheimer, spokesman for Taser International recently said that no deaths had ever been attributed to a Taser attack.
“Read my lips. No Taser deaths! Sure, people die of heart attacks or massive strokes. Happens all the time,” said Oppenheimer. “The North American diet has gone to hell. Diabetes, obesity, alcoholism, and substance abuse are rampant. Tasers don’t kill people … sudden onset atrial fibrulations kill people. If any of you whiny pundits have any doubts, see me after the press conference in the lobby. I’m packin’ 85,123 volts of mean heat baby!”
I should just take Mr. Oppenheimer at his word. He’s armed with the facts – and that Taser.
But as an investigative journalist, well, I feel compelled to dig a little deeper, what with mounting toll of coincident coronary fatalities surrounding the 321 or so Taser-related deaths in Canada and the US over the past few years.
So I called our local OPP media guru Sgt Clark McBlaster to ask if I could set up a Taser demo, y’know, just to set my mind at ease.
McBlaster, a terse, succinct, and competent officer reached out politely from the phone.
“Are you out of your cotton pickin’ mind?” asked Sgt McBlaster. “Haven’t you been watching the news?”
“C’mon Clarky,” I laughed, “Oppenheimer says it’s perfectly safe.”
“You’re an idiot,” said McBlaster. “If you’re that curious, go stick your finger in a light socket.”
Hah. I received my investigative training from a very wise old editor, Lorne Bjornson, who once told me: “Go to the mattresses.” Something to do with Brando and the Godfather, I think.
So last Saturday, I donned a pink tutu, hopped on a skateboard and rolled the length of Highland Street in Haliburton swinging a desk-size paper shredder over my head. I glared at the tourists, and stuck my tongue out at well-meaning passers-by. And I shouted in my best faux Euro accent: “Nyet, Nyet, damn Canooskies! I no spikka’ English.” I’ve done the research. I know what it takes to generate a little Taser action in Canada.
Right on time, about two minutes into my ride, the OPP cruiser loomed into view. In the driver’s seat the aforementioned Clarky McBlaster. He glared at my pink tutu, grabbed my shredder, and pulled the cord out of my hand. He then took out his baton and proceeded to beat my beautiful stainless steel paper mangler to a pulp. “Now go home, take a shower, bring the shredder, and plug it in,” said McBlaster, tucking that nightstick back in the cruiser.
And just when I thought I was out of ideas, a sudden eureka moment. I don’t need a Taser. I have my own high voltage, low amp teenage memory to draw from.
From grade five to the end of high school, I traveled every summer from my Ottawa home to work on my uncle’s ranch in Manitoba’s Interlake. In the summer of 1970, my friend Arnthor Jonasson replaced the enclosure on his home pasture with single strand electric fence. I knew nothing about this new technology. I had just arrived in early June for the summer haying season.
Arnthor grabbed a few of his mom’s butter tarts, put them in a knapsack and suggested we take a walk to check out his new Simmental bull. As we passed the single strand barbed wire fence he stopped suddenly.
“First one to piss on the barbed wire fence gets the last butter tart,” said Arnthor. Too good to pass up.
I watched Art’s vain attempts to hit the wire – he was missing by a laughably wide margin. I prepared, took a deep breath, accounted for the 20 mph crosswind, and directed a laser stream right onto the wire.
“Yowwwwwwww! Jeeeeeppppeeers! And I fell to the ground like the aforementioned pole-axed steer.
Art joined me, but for another reason. He had tears in his eyes. He was holding his heaving sides, and he was gasping for air.
“Dammit Jonasson. That’s not funny,” I screamed.
“Wanna bet?” sputtered Art, rolling round and round in the alfalfa.
The pain was so significant and mind-numbing that to this day I can’t relieve myself within 100 yards of a barbed wire fence.
And, considering that the standard issue Taser delivers about 20,000 more volts than your average electric fence I’m beginning to have some lingering doubts about the efficacy of Mr. Oppenheimer’s and Taser International’s bold claims that this is still the most viable alternative to deadly force and the semi-automatic, nine-millimeter Glock.
My mind suddenly rebounds to that illuminating confrontation with Sgt Clark McBlaster.
An authoritarian stare, succinct communication, and the proficient use of a common nightstick.
Old fashioned? Surely.
Effective? You bet.