Flowbear

I am no great Bears fan. In fact, I am a great hater of the Bears. But Mike Brown, their ludicrously talented safety, who was injured all last season, was injured again in the first game of this season, and looks to be done for the year... again. As far as I know, nobody who reads this is a sports fan, but you won't often see this kind of wrecked rhetoric coming from a player in the League, where the program is stoicism and anti-weakness. It's incredibly affecting.

'But as Brown talked about the sprained left knee he suffered against the Chargers on Sunday, his mouth quivered. He broke down. "We're holding out a little hope, but right now it doesn't look too good," Brown said. "It's a sprained knee right now, but it doesn't look too good. It's a shame. It hurts my feelings really bad."'

Which is in no way to diminish the tragedy of the Bills' Kevin Everett, who suffered a "catastrophic" spinal cord injury on Sunday and is unlikely ever to regain full mobility. I just don't have the words. None of them cost me enough to even begin, even presume, even pretend to match that kind of... loss.

You've got to feel for these boys -- because they start as boys -- who become men, who become giants -- sometimes they become giants before they become men -- who spend so much time and sacrifice so much to do this one thing like gods, only to have that one thing snatched away from them by the fact of their own frailty, the fact that they've hid for decades. Hid as part of their occupation.

Tragedies happen every day. Senseless, horrible tragedies. Why are these different? I don't know if they are different. But I know why they ring louder in my ears.

No man deserves to be his own allegory.