WHO PUT THE SOCCER BALL-BALL IN JOHN MADDEN'S PING-PONG MELEE?

A reader wrote to sharply suggest I have been remiss in my duties.

Why,” he impaled, “don’t you write something about the greatest game ever played?”

My first reaction was, “Because Naked Co-Ed Ping-Pong has been done to death.” Reading on, however, my offhand assumption was bluntly corrected. He added:

Sure, you’ve got the guts to write about soccer. How about taking on football? The season’s here, and I’d like to see you try it. You probably won’t, because you---”

The rest of the letter is unprintable.

Let’s just say its author went on to add challenges to the origins of my primogenitors, offer bold assumptions of my mother’s choice of footwear, and suggest the likelihood that my sexual preferences had been influenced by open trenchcoats and clandestine outings in low-lying shrubs.

The letter was from, “Forever@Pigskin.com.” (Not his true e-mail, but close, and you get the idea.)

Never let it be said that I’m not sensitive to the accolades of my readership:

Dear Mr. Pigskin:

Thanks for reading. I’m glad you wrote. Obviously, those two tasks don’t come easy for you, and I appreciate your efforts.

One quick correction: For much of the world, soccer IS football, and (American) football is just plain silly. I say this at the risk of offending hordes of face-painted half-naked males in multi-colored clown wigs waving giant Styrofoam fingers. But, humor is a dangerous business.

For the purposes of this column only, and for reasons I'll try to clarify, let's just call American football "Ball-Ball."

I’m assuming you’re male. A female might question my ancestral heraldry as suspect, though I doubt she’d use maternal slander as a vehicle of critique. Thus, it seems you’re not in touch with your mystiquely feminine side, and I commend you for this. Please, keep me posted on your advancing regression.

Matter of fact, I’d been looking for a place to insert a quote I overheard as I was Sunday afternoon channel-surfing, pausing long enough at a Ball-Ball game-in-progress to hear this remark:

"Nothing beats a good melee.”

The commentator was John Madden. A former pro Ball-Ball coach turned hardware store spokesman and sportscaster, he was referring to a post-play brouhaha that had just occurred. I think it started when some player took exception with an opposing player’s attempt to use his jaw for a catapult.

Pardon me, but nothing beats an exercise in comic futility like Ball-Ball players, with every group of their soft and bony prominences covered with enough padding to divert an Amtrak, pounding on each other in attempts to exact vengeance for a teammate’s crunched mandible.

Besides, anyone knows there are only three rules in Ball-Ball:

1. Score touchdowns.

2. Crunch the other guy’s mandible when he attempts Rule #1.

3. Carry out Rule #2 without drawing a penalty flag.

As for outweighing the profits of a good melee, if I were given the choice between a brawl and a bare-butt Ping-Pong volley --- well, it’s her serve and she's gotta win by two.

I like John Madden. His Ace Hardware hucksterism always gives me the impression that if I don’t buy my pipe wrench from his helpful hardware man, he’ll personally come and crunch the catapult musculature in my mandible with said wrench.

But, as we all know, Mr. Madden suffers from a pathological fear of flying, and because he limits himself to land travel, I’d have time to grab my trenchcoat and hide in the juniper bushes.

Time now for a little vocational perspective, Mr. Pigskin. Here are some new stats for you:

The game of Ball-Ball and the art of humor columning have a great deal in common. Consider this:

It was recently revealed on a national radio talk show that very few, if any, professional Ball-Ball players today wears a protective cup. Speed and quickness, it was said, have become the centerpiece of the game, and having one’s groin encapsulated in its own helmet tends to compromise one’s ability to escape the clutches of the mandible dancers.

For your information, I too have given up wearing my cup when I write, despite the lingering risks of being double-teamed by a rushing entendre, sacked by a subordinate clause, late-hit by an expletive-deleted, and run over by a split-end infinitive.

For example: “Sitting at my computer, Mr. Pigskin’s mad missive arrived in my e-mail.”

You see? Right there, as I was scrambling for the sideline, a dangling participle blitzed and dropped me for a loss.

Next, there are four fifteen-minute periods of play in Ball-Ball. Out of that one hour, less than three minutes is actual playing time (the time between the hike and the spike) and it takes three hours to get there. The rest is spent huddling, spotting, motioning, showboating, lining up and pulling the cleats out of a teammate’s jaw.

Much the same here. In the last hour sitting at this terminal, maybe ten minutes have been devoted to the words you’re reading. But, it’s taken fifty minutes of caffeining, dog-petting, daydreaming, hyperlinking, cutting up and pasting the muse to accomplish this, and that clock’s been running for two days.

A professional Ball-Ball player’s goal is getting to the Superbowl. I know I’ve reached the pinnacle of my cogitations when I achieve my goal and post it, e.g.: “I’d give my two right arms for one good Pigskin metaphor.”

A gridiron Ball-Baller constantly runs the risk of injuries. And, to be fair, there’s nothing funny about a crunchy jaw or having one’s uncupped bell rung.

But, try to find the humor in living with the constant perils of a crashing hard drive, unresponsive network servers, downloaded viruses, incorrect parameters, fatal system errors, invalid dynamic links, failed authentications, undetected peripherals, and being disconnected by remote devices in the face of a charging deadline and no time-outs.

Right now, I’d trade one good kick in the chin for these multi-tasking personal fouls.

There is one occupational hazard, however, that often serves to put me back on the enabled list. It keeps me off the bench and on the field of play:

Whenever the Ball-Ball is snapped and I have to hit hard on-line?

Any moment I could be e-mailed without warning by a fumbling Ping-Pong Pigskin.

Huddle up, F.P.

Copyright 2006 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved.