Golf and table tennis: World's deadliest games

When I was a kid, new in the world, I had a different view of things compared to my grown-up life.

There were sports that, as a kid, I thought were quite deadly: Golf and paddle tennis.

Oh, and department store dress racks were deadly things too.

I’ll explain.

When I was a kid my dad took a job managing a hotel in Hawai’i.

Among the tunes my dad would play on his hi-fi stereo would be those by Alfred Apaka, the great Hawai’ian singer.

I knew he was a great Hawai’ian singer because my dad said he was a great Hawai’ian singer.

“Who is this?” I asked my dad as Apaka music wafted through our home. “You play him a lot.”

“That’s Alfred Apaka,” Dad said. “The great Hawai’ian singer. He died not too long ago.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“He had a heart attack after playing paddle tennis.”

“What’s paddle tennis?”

“It’s kind of like tennis but you don’t use a racquet, you use paddles,” he said.

That didn’t sound like much fun. Hitting a tennis ball with a racquet was tough enough. And why would you play it if it could give you a heart attack?

I could relate to heart attacks. My Dad had one of those a few years earlier. I may have been a kid but I knew heart attacks could kill you.

So if Alfred Apaka died from a heart attack after playing paddle tennis, well, paddle tennis surely must be deadly.

Then there was golf.

Every now and then when I was a kid my dad would come back home looking sad.

“Fred dropped dead at the Jefferson Club,” he told my mom one time. “He just finished 18 holes and he was at the 19th hole, had a heart attack and died right there.”

Over time I heard my dad mention other fellows he knew dropping dead on the golf course from heart attacks, often at that 19th hole.

Later I would find the 19th hole wasn’t a hole on the golf course at all. It was a hole of sorts, a watering hole.

It wouldn’t be until I was grown that I realized these dudes were probably out of shape or had undiagnosed high cholesterol or whatever and over-exerted themselves. But that was as an adult … when you’re a grown up a lot of the mystery of life vaporizes like so much morning fog in the sunlight of the day.

Now about those department store dress racks.

When I was a kid I had three grandparents. The fourth, my mom’s mom, died when I was itty-bitty, before I knew anything.

One day, I asked my mom about her mom.

“She was in a department store in Toledo, a clerk wasn’t looking and pushed a dress rack into your grandmother. She died later,” Mom said.

That’s all Mom told me.

I had a vision of my grandma minding her own business, shopping at a Toledo, Ohio, department store and along comes this dress rack and just rolls over her like some poor ol’ critter on the highway.

It would be many years later that I came to realize that the dress rack encounter caused a blood clot that resulted in deep vein thrombosis and that’s what killed her.

For years, whenever I was in a big store as a kid I would watch out for those clothes racks.

I didn’t want one rolling over me and squishing me like a bug.

Grant McGee writes for The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him:

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