Jack Stallard

I’ll try not to make this one of those “I know how Damar Hamlin feels, because I got hurt playing football” columns.

Hamlin, in case you somehow missed it, is a professional football player for the Buffalo Bills. During a Monday night game against the Cincinnati Bengals, he made what looked to be a routine tackle on the Bengals’ Tee Higgins.

After the play, Hamlin stood up for a couple of seconds, fell back down and would have died right there on the field had medical personnel at the game not recognized the severity of his condition and gone to work saving Hamlin’s life.

Hamlin, a finely-tuned, 24-year-old professional athlete, went into cardiac arrest after making a tackle he has probably made a thousand times over the years. It’s too early to know exactly why the cardiac event happened to Hamlin, but as I write this he’s in a hospital in Cincinnati, and it looks like he’ll live.

He’s hooked up to a ventilator and can’t talk, but he woke up Wednesday evening and wrote a note to one of the doctors in the room. He wanted to know if his team won the game Monday.

I’m willing to bet in the very near future, Hamlin will ask when he can put on the pads and play football again. That’s the only part of this entire situation I do understand.

When I was in the third grade, my dad got tired of me whining about having to wait another year to play football in a league designed for grades 4-6, so he talked the coach of my elementary school team into letting me try out for the Evans Patriots.

“He’s built like an oak stump, so you’re not going to hurt him,” dad said. “Let him try out. He’ll probably get tired of it quickly, and that’ll be the end of it.”

By the second day of practice, I was the starting nose guard, and I was hooked on football.

In the sixth grade, I broke my wrist on the playground. I missed that night’s game, but when the coach told me I couldn’t play with a cast on my arm, I “borrowed” some wire cutters from my neighbor next door, removed the cast and was back at practice the next day.

I broke the same arm in the seventh and ninth grades and never missed a game, leading my dad to tell folks I was tougher than a crowbar — and almost as smart.

Then, near the end of spring practice my freshman year, I mangled my hip.

I finished spring practice, ran and lifted weights with my teammates all summer and went to a week-long camp in North Carolina before the pain became unbearable and I told dad I needed to get things checked out.

The doctor scheduled surgery to put my hip back together immediately, and I was OK with that.

“The quicker we get it fixed, the quicker I can play football again, right doc?”

The doctor looked at me like maybe I had also suffered undiagnosed brain damage, turned to my dad and said, “This boy is probably never going to take another pain-free step, and he’s asking if he can play football again?”

I didn’t, and I’m not sure what hurt more — the hip that has been rebuilt a couple of times and finally replaced, or never being able to get back on the field to play the game I loved so much.

Like I said before, I don’t know what Damar Hamlin is going through right now, because I didn’t come close to dying on the football field. My dream of getting my college education paid for through football was over, but my life wasn’t.

I also don’t know if Hamlin will ever play football again, but I hope he listened to the doctor who was in the room when he asked if his team won.

“The answer is yes, Damar — you won the game of life.”