EX? WHY, ZIDANE, WHAT'S ALL THE WORLD CUP COMMOTIO?

Take a close look at the picture. I don't often depart from my self-imposed confines of humor columning, but this one won't lie down and die, and if the pictured head butt had been applied one or more centimeters this way or that, or delivered one millisecond sooner or later, that might have been the fate of the recipient.

When France's Zinedine Zidane delivered this blow to Italy's Marco Materazzi in the World Cup Soccer final --- he could've killed him. It's happened before.

In medicine, this trauma is called "commotio cordis," or a blunt impact to the chest resulting in cardiac arrest. Just as a "precordial thump," or a calculated strike to the sternum is used to jumpstart an interrupted heart, this same blow, when applied to a normal beating heart, can stop it.

These cases are well-documented in sports events, where athletes have succumbed after being so-struck by a football helmet, boxing glove, baseball, hockey puck, or karate chop. One boy perished from this trauma after being poked in the chest by his father.

Seems that Mr. Zidane took exception to Mr. Materazzi's verbal taunting insults of his family during the match. "Hey, Z ... your mother wears tennis shoes!" or "Your sister couldn't spike a ball with stiletto heels!" or some such. For this, the Z-Man pummeled Materazzi with his cranium, knocking him to the ground.

For this, Zidane was also later given the Golden Ball Award for best player at the World Cup, and today, nearly two-thirds of all those polled, including the President of France, "still admire and love him." Swell. He physically assaults an opponent who was verbally insulting him (the oldest sucker bait in the game) with enough targeted and potential force to kill him, and this is still considered grounds for hero worship.

Now, before the grandstands empty into this column with frothy, fingering sports fans, NO, I'm NOT saying we should ban contact sports, or equip every player with head-to-toe Nerf suits, or encase exposed skulls in bubble wrap (though the latter would add a much needed snap & crackle to a protracted chess match.)

NO, I'm not saying that we should substitute whiffleballs for hardballs, or that boxers should pull punches, or that karate matches should pre-empt the use of hands and feet, or that hockey should be played underwater.

If we did that, we'd have to ban every other activity which could possibly, even remotely, result in an impact to the chest. That would pretty much cover everything that could happen to us after getting out of bed. And, even in bed --- what if that ceiling fan shook loose as we lay sleeping, slamming into our breastbones?

Thus, either we all decide to remain forever unmoving on our stomachs in bed, or we accept the risk of commotio cordis, at work, at play, at idle innocence, and as an always lurking consequence of moving from there to here.

Fortunately, Zidane's foe was not seriously hurt, and the only damage he ultimately did was to himself and his team, when he was pulled from the match. This might have made the difference in the ensuing free kick shoot-out. Who knows.

In the aftermath, he said, "My act is not forgivable," but added: "I don't regret anything that happened; I accept it. I tell myself that if things happened this way, it's because somewhere up there it was decided that way."

Up there? Where? The Press box? The stadium rafters? It certainly wasn't up there being rightly decided where it should've been --- in his head --- which brings us to the inevitable humor part of the column, where I'm duty-bound to leave you:

I've had it with these guys who can't face their receding hairlines and balding pates. In lieu of displaying their thinning evidence of a self-perceived emasculinity, they shave their heads, known commonly as BWS (Bruce Willis Syndrome.)

Mr. Zidane, if you check his shaved head stubble-shadow, suffers from this, and I'll blame his "abrupt, violent act of aggression" on BWS.

My waning head-crop is going its own way, but I'll not interfere with a destinate scalp whose hairscape chronology was long ago written "up there."

Were I to shave off my remaining and fast-retreating topside keratin tonight, by tomorrow morning I'd be head-butting everything in sight, just to test my new mettle, because men who are naturally bald and balding do not have the same temperament as those whose tegumentary summits have been artificially defoliated, and the latters probably should remain ex-soccer players.

Machismo ain't follicular; it's vehicular.

I'd suggest, Mr. Zidane, that you instead take up humor-columning, where eruptive head butts are confined to one's own chest.

Copyright 2006 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved.

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