We’ve all heard or read about the vicious Jack Tatum hit on Darryl Stingley back in 1978. One of the biggest tragic stories of the NFL came to a close with Darryl Stingley’s passing.
I find the saddest point about this whole thing is how neither one spoke to the other for almost thirty years. Tatum missed his opportunity to make amends. Of course, in his defense, maybe a 30 year window isn’t long enough to get up the courage to talk to the guy he paralyzed. It takes time to get up the courage to say, “Uh, hey, sorry about that.”
There are people out there in the NFL that say what a great guy Jack Tatum is, how his teammates loved him and he brought everything to the table on game day. That may be great, but if you are a freaking human being, show at least some sort of remorse for destroying another man’s life.
There are those of you out there that will say, “This is football. There will be injuries and some of those will be life-threatening, if not life-changing.” I agree with that statement and those other ones that say these players know what they are getting into. That is not the issue. The fact is that it is just common decency to have at least a modicum of compassion for a fallen human brother, especially when the brother fell by your own hand.
Another thing I don’t get is the people who say Tatum’s full-on hit of Stingley shouldn’t have happened in a “meaningless game.” Excuse me? Anytime someone is paralyzed for life in a sport, to me, it’s a meaningless fucking game.
The last thing I would like to point out is the dichotomic thoughts of both persons involved in this tragedy. They both had written autobiographies.
Jedi Stingley’s book is called Happy to be Alive.
Darth Tatum’s book is called Final Confessions of NFL Assassin Jack Tatum.
I gotta go now. I’m going to dust off my copy of Robert Fulghum’s book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.
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