The Ten Torments of Athletic Hell
Image credit: Joe Daly
I’d like to take this moment to thank Euro-American Air Freight, sponsors of my very first little league team (conveniently known as “Euro-American Air Freight”). Swaddled in the royal blue and white unis of my corporate benefactors, I commenced my sporting life — something that has endured through this very day. I still run most days, play hockey once a week and I exhaustively comb the sporting news sites and a battery of related social media accounts on a daily basis. Because, let’s face it: sports absolutely rip — a chaotic frenzy of sweating, running, throwing, kicking and screaming all in the pursuit of eternal glory or ungodly amounts of wealth and power. In a world where the sane sit behind desks, athletes willingly subject themselves to daily battles of wit, will and pain (“lotsa pain,” in the immortal words of Clubber Lang), often in front of tens, hundreds, thousands and occasionally millions of their fellow humans. Across the endless spectrum of physical endeavor, certain positions emerge as unique citadels of torment. Jobs that most right-thinking people would never attempt in ten lifetimes. But others, for deeply-personal reasons shared only by them and their deity of choice, devote lifetimes to inhabiting these gonzo roles. And so, in no particular order, here are the ten positions that require either the sturdiest of emotional rigging or a complete lack of fear and common sense.
1. Soccer Goalie
These poor bastards. Ninety minutes of waiting, watching and the odd kick downfield, only to be judged by one missed catch. And judged loudly. In professional soccer leagues across the globe, a bad day could lead to ten thousand boozed-up onlookers making up highly-inappropriate songs about your mother — and that’s just coming from your own fans. Each panther-like move requires a divine fusion of reflex, foresight and madness. Succeed, and you’re merely doing your job. Fail, and you're the villain of a Shakespearean tragedy. In certain countries, you might well come home to find your cat missing and your car on fire.
2. Baseball Relief Pitcher
Your job starts with a long, harrowing walk — alone — from the bullpen to the middle of the stadium, with thousands of people jeering at you and others placing all of their wildly-unrealistic hopes, dreams and collective identity upon your shoulders. Stepping out onto the mound with the entire game’s outcome hanging in the balance, the legacy of every other player on your team hinges on your next throws. Pray to whatever god sits highest in your personal pantheon that you didn’t overdo it the night before at the hotel bar. One botched pitch, and you’re the drunken clown who ruined the birthday party for all of eternity.
3. The Long Snapper in American Football
In the twisted carnival of sports, behold the long snapper—swathed in obscurity, performing acrobatic snaps while surrounded by a raging melee between punch-throwing linemen that makes a knife fight look like a game of Uno . It’s not the glitz, but the guts — the sheer lunacy of hurling balls between one's legs whilst fleet-footed demons stacked with three hundred pounds of muscle storm maniacally at you. Your entire career, in those few ephemeral seconds of game time, hinges on the consistent fling of a ball through your legs. The moment someone notices you, it’s usually because you’ve screwed the pooch.
4. The Cycling Domestique
Ever dreamt of being a human shield? This brave soul rides ahead, breaking the wind so the team’s star doesn’t have to. They’re like the Secret Service, jumping in front of bullets while the president waves to the crowd. In the mad world of pedal-pounding zealots, the domestique, that unsung hero, faces a soul-crushing maelstrom of sweat, sacrifice, and uncredited toil. Notable mainly for its abundance of both anonymity and bugs to the face, gratitude is as rare as a sober evening at Burning Man.
5. The Hockey Goaltender
Puck shot at you at 100 mph? Check. Oversized Canadians on steel blades hurtling directly at you from five different directions? Check. Sitting in a frozen hellscape waiting for a vulcanized rubber missile to fly at your face? Welcome to goaltending. In that most violent of professional sports, the hockey goalie stands alone, a solitary gladiator fueled by lunacy, teetering on the edge of madness. One minute he’s the team's savior, the next a hapless fool. A single lapse and he's condemned to ridicule for all of eternity. It's a psyche-fraying sixty minutes, filled with dives, desperation, and dementia. Yes, goalies carry the weight of dreams, nightmares and a few stray pucks on their shoulders. Brave? Insane? Probably both.
6. The Rugby Scrum Half
These are the diplomats stuck between the hulking forwards up front and the prima donnas in the back line. They get trampled by giants wearing studded cleats while being incessantly yelled at by the divas out in the line. It's like being the middle child in a dysfunctional family, where everybody in the living room is a violent sociopath. Emotionally, the scrum-half straddles the void, part gladiator, part philosopher-poet, grappling ceaselessly with the frenetic absurdity of life, one brutal ruck at a time. Most scoring plays in rugby end with the scrum half pulling his battered face from the mud to find out what just happened.
7. The Tennis Doubles Partner
In the mad world of sports, the tennis doubles partner suffers most. Wedged between neon balls and the lunacy of a partner, they endure savage serves and psychic warfare. God's loneliest athlete, indeed. Play brilliantly, and you’re just helping the team. Make a mistake, and it’s like you've shat in the punch bowl. It’s the emotional equivalent of walking on a greased tightrope above a pit of hissing cobras, while a sadistic overlord dressed in white arbitrarily punishes you for breaching the two hundred year old rules of decorum. But at least you can walk safely through the supermarket because, despite a lifetime of sweat, sacrifice and sleepless nights, nobody has any idea who you are.
8. The Boxer's Cornerman
Imagine being the person who has to look into the eyes of a battered and bruised fighter, dabbing at cuts and whispering sweet strategic nothings, knowing that your advice might send them into deeper hell. It's like being Dante's tour guide. Among the glittery trappings of boxing, the cornerman is the quiet whisper in a world of shouts: a half-mad surgeon, part-time therapist and full-time mop artist, drowning in sweat, blood and the weight of broken dreams. Sports' twisted ballet beckons its true maestro.
9. The Rowing Coxswain
The august coxswain – usually a plucky, pint-sized dynamo – steers giants through watery chaos. Their voice, a beacon amidst the storm; their body, unyielding. Endurance? They're Atlas with a megaphone. Forget the muscle-bound rowers; the coxswain's soul weighs more than the rest of the boat combined. Smaller and lighter than the Neptunian oarsmen in the boat, they must scream commands like a crazed general leading troops into war. If the boat loses? The coxswain’s fault. Wins? It was obviously the rowers. The eternal scapegoat in Spandex.
10. The Golf Caddie
People might think it’s the golfer who endures the greatest dimensions of existential terror, but the golf caddie is the most-maligned figure trudging the green battlefield. Lugging iron beasts, they endure sun, rain and the unhinged braying of mad golfers. The ball might rest, but the caddie’s mind never does. Holding clubs, suggesting shots and enduring the existential meltdown of a golfer in crisis. "You recommended the 7-iron!” they'll scream, as if you personally dug the water hazard. And if your man wins, off he goes to the clubhouse while you stand there rubbing dirt out of his irons.
We love sports because they are a wild and exaggerated, high-stakes microcosm of life's struggles, and these positions are the ultimate challenges in mastering chaos, embracing the dread, and facing down those inner demons with a ball, puck, or club. So here's to the unsung heroes and the tormented souls who tackle the toughest jobs in the game.