The violence that we seem to wholeheartedly celebrate in an earlier generation was curbed for a reason. It wasnâ??t The Punch. The Punch was simply the abscess that revealed the rot. This isnâ??t a â??it looks really bad for the leagueâ? type rot. Itâ??s a rot that made clears clear the league was headed for a full-on cave-in if it was not rectified. Most terrifyingly, Rudy Tomjanovich nearly became that cave in. Terrifying in the sense that Tomjanovich could have died. This is not exaggeration. This is not hypersensitivity.
Eleven pages into the opening chapter of Feinsteinâ??s book, Dr. Paul Toffel is standing in the Emergency Room at Centinela Hospital in Los Angeles, talking to Rudy Tomjanovich, then a 29-year-old All-Star who very much wanted to return to the game. Toffel asks Rudy a question. Toffel is a head trauma expert called in the aftermath of the punch. The question at first seems odd, and then a feeling of dread passes over you, the way a sharp twist in a horror novel or film makes the hair on your arms stand up. Itâ??s a simple question.
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