I went to see one polo match in the upscale Chicago suburb of Oak Brook back in the 1980s: an American team vs. a Mexican team. The winning Mexican team of four guys consisted of three brothers and somebody else. I presume the brothers were incredibly rich. But they were also really brave and good.
As a spectator sport, it was incredibly thrilling when the horses pounded by right near us spectators. Most of the time, however, the horses were off near the horizon hundreds of yards away from the grandstand. So, it was mostly dull, except when it was galvanizing.
One of the players was nearly killed when another player swung his mallet and missed the ball and his mallet hit the other guy under the chin, lifting him off his horse. He was out cold for a long time. Maybe he was dead. I don’t know.
All in all, polo struck me as an aristocratic game that must be hugely exciting to play if you are completely fearless about winding up in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.
Winston Churchill, for example, loved playing polo. On the other hand, he wasn’t as brave as his fellow officers in the cavalry charge at Omduran, Sudan against the Mahdi’s army in 1898. They foreswore taking pistols, saying they expected their traditional sabres to suffice against the Musselmen. Churchill, however, explained that he’d dislocated his shoulder playing polo so he was going to instead rely upon his trusty Luger.
As it turned out, the Sudanese, having much experience fighting Ethiopian cavalry, were expert at fighting horsemen. So Churchill, unlike many of his colleagues, only survived because he shot his enemies a second before they could slash his horse and bring him down.
Granted, Churchill’s fellow officers were more sporting in their approach. But, if you stop and think about it, they were dead and he wasn’t.
Personally, I’m extremely bourgeois about risk aversion. Then again, the idea of being killed in a polo accident strikes me as more desirable than being run over by a drunk driver because the police have stopped pulling over perpetual drunks who have their driver’s licenses lifted because George Floyd.
It’s kind of like the death of actor Julian Sands on 10,064′ Mt. Baldy in Los Angeles County in January. Local authorities have given up the search with forecasts of 6 to 9 feet of new snow.
Back in 1985 Sands appeared to be the movie world’s Next Big Thing after his appearance in the Merchant-Ivory film A Room With a View. But that didn’t happen for him.
A few people respond well to that kind of disappointment, such as Ronald Reagan. Many, however, don’t.
I hiked to the top of Mt. Baldy in July, 1977 when I was 18. It doesn’t require technical climbing in mid-summer, but it must be awfully steep and slippery in January.
If you were told that this disappointed star died at age 65 38 years later, would you guess the cause of death was:
The last is obviously an impressive way to go.
