I’ve always had mixed emotions about Lacrosse. Of course I’m absolutely thrilled that our lads have done so well and are so exhilaratingly close to winning the championship. No, it’s not the players that disconcert me, it’s the nature of the sport itself. Sure, it has a good French name; and that name was given to the game by French missionaries, but not the good kind. It was named by the Jesuits (barely suppressed convulsion).
I shouldn’t go on about these particular Jesuits, because they were the good kind. Once upon a time, long, long ago, before the Company turned into the Coven, there were good Jesuits. Not the “expelled from every country in Europe” kind, or the “suppressed by the Pope” kind, or the “thinly disguised Freemasons” kind, but truly good, holy Frenchmen who spent their lives as missionaries in the New World (barely suppressed sob).
It was these benevolent Black Robes who first watched the Iroquois play a game with sticks, nets, and balls and called it Lacrosse. Unfortunately for the missionaries, “Lacrosse” must have sounded like some exquisitely vulgar maternal insult to the Iroquois ear, because the Lacrosse players butchered the missionaries like hogs.
Believe me, those thoughts were not far from my mind when I arrived in untamed Northern Indiana, to minister to the native people as a French Catholic Missionary wearing a Black Robe. But unlike the Iroquois, the Potawatomi were a welcoming and generous people. Unfortunately they had no games to teach me and my fellow Holy Cross missionaries (though I hear tell of Potawatomi gaming bazaars somewhere, though no one will explain to me what they are). Lacking any unique local, ethnic games to learn, we turned to football–but that’s a different story.
The other thing about Lacrosse that makes me a little queasy is the aspect of the game that looks like the lads are using broadswords with baskets on the end. I will quote the wisdom of our esteemed Professor Rockne, “Note Dame will never endorse any game that puts a club in the hands of an Irishman.” And he was talking about hockey, where you’re not even supposed to bring said club above your shoulders and the club is thin and flat and wood. In Lacrosse the club is long and metal and wielded like a battle mace from any direction and all heights. That quaint macrame baggie on the top does not save the Lacrosse stick from looking like a Spanish bastinado. And we’re letting–nay, lustily cheering our Irishmen as they use them with terrifying zeal.
And their uniforms make them look like they forgot to put on pants before taking the field. But at least they’re wearing more than the Iroquois.
Another, deeper, more philosophical problem I have with Lacrosse is its abbreviation: LAX. Let’s do this right, it should be LA+ because that’s a proper cross. And our lads have been anything but lax this whole season (heartily unsuppressed roar)!
So I’m putting aside my misgivings about the game and focusing all my prayers, energy, and lung capacity on encouraging our Lacrosse lads as they play!
The Jesuits…why’d it have to be the Jesuits.
Sitting in that stadium, it will be awfully hard to distinguish between the Lacrosse players’ sticks and the brooms the Jesuits will be riding to get to the game.
EFC CSC
- Good Fridays w/Padre: WORTHY! - November 30, 2018
- Good Fridays w/Padre: The Horror - October 26, 2018
- Good Fridays w/Padre: BALLS! - September 7, 2018
GB
I love the football but your column is always so well written and tongue in cheek.
kyndfan
There are many, so called, sports I do not care for…. until the Irish suit up and play them.
Mark G.
In law school we studied the enforceability of contracts that violated public policy. One case involved the will of a wealthy Englishman. His will established and funded a trust. The tricky part is that the will required the trustee, once a year on the anniversary of the Englishman’s death, to buy a case of wiskey and a club and place them on the Englishman’s grave. The Englishman’s theory was that Irishmen would be attracted by the free wiskey, show up in droves and get drunk, inevitably get into a fight and ultimately club each other to death. His hope was that over the course of many years the Irish would exterminate each other, ridding the English speaking world of their drunken brawling.
To this day I cannot remember if the will was held by the (English) court to be unenforceable as against public policy. I do know, however, that there are no institutions of higher learning in the US named after the English.