Broomball Bafoonery
Have you ever wondered how certain sports came to be? I mean, one day you're just tossing around rocks as a caveman and then eventually, someone decides to create a "ball" and well, eventually you get to this day and age and multi-million dollar contracts for wearing a shoe with a swoosh and drinking orange liquid.
I consider myself a B+ athlete and an A+ enthusiast. I don't mean sports enthusiast, I just mean that I'm enthusiastic about certain things for no apparent reason. Broomball is one of those things. When I started working at Amazon.com in 1997, I had no idea that it would eventually lead to me becoming a career broomball player. It started off gradually, kind of like an alcoholic taking that first drink, I guess. When I attended my first company picnic almost a year after I had been working at the company and admiring snapshots taped to the walls of this weird "game" I was just another player. I ran around the field, I hit at the ball, I may have even scored but more than that, I got hooked.
Getting hooked meant that the next year, I somehow became in charge of organizing the game which meant doing a lot of PR work internally to get people and departments riled up against each other so that a year of corporate pent-uppedness could be released on the field. Let me describe broomball like this: take a big bouncy ball, throw a pile of people with duct-tape modified brooms onto the field with the only real rule being to get the ball over the opposite goal line...then have at it.
What you end up with is a strange mix of lacrosse, field hockey, full contact football, soccer and WWF. Isn't it a bit dangerous? Yea, and I think that's where some of the appeal comes in. Plenty of broken bones occur but somehow, breaking a bone during broomball elevates a player to a godlike status among his broomball peers. But enough about the sport, let's get back to my addiction, here. As the years went on and I eventually decided to try the next thing in life, I was about to part ways with my beloved Amazon.com. I was tired of Seattle, a bit tired of a windowless cubicle, but I wasn't in any way tired of the people I worked with and most of all, I would never be tired of broomball at each summer picnic. Over the years, I had place 2nd, 1st, 5th and then my team had spent the next two years losing in the finals in sudden death overtime to rack up two more 2nd places in consecutive years. Worse yet Jeff Bezos, esteemed president of Amazon.com, had joined our team that last year in order to break the Bezos curse. In 6 years, he had yet to be on a winning team. Try as we might, we failed him.
But all hope was not lost...in a move that I can only describe as one of the most bittersweet moments in a person's life, Jeff brought me out on stage at my last all-hands meeting and gave me an award - namely, a "Broomball In Perpetuity" award which meant that I could come back and play at the picnic each summer despite not being a full-time employee (translation: covered by the amazon.com insurance policy). I was touched beyond belief as I don't think the company could have given someone with my broomball fervor anything more meaningful than that simple certificate in a frame.
A year passes, it's 2003 and the moment of truth arrives. It's Friday afternoon at about 3:55 p.m. Many of my former teammates are waiting to hear from me. Will I make it back up from San Francisco to Seattle to play? The answer? Yes! I pull the plug at the last minute, cash in some air miles, bomb my way to SFO and hop an Alaskan Airlines flight. The next morning at 10:30 a.m. I step onto the freshly mowed turf where the world's greatest ballet of violence is about to be danced. I've just flown 880 miles and cashed out 20,000 Alaska Air Miles to be here and drink victory beer from the chalice of the broom.
Josh Muhlfelder, captain extraordinaire had somehow pulled together enough people for a team which included Jeff Bezos who was trusting us yet again to try and break his curse. For the last two years, our team name had been based on summer movie titles: "Broombraider" from "Tomb Raider" and "The Royal Tenenbrooms" from "The Royal Tenenbaums." This year was no different: we were "S.W.E.E.P.," gently bastardized from the movie "S.W.A.T." Our team uniform was simple: all-black, no logos, no custom printing...we weren't there to look good, we were there to take care of business. And take care of business we did. We mowed down our first two opponents with ease and went into the finals a bit tired, but more worried than anything. We had been here for the last two years only to lose in overtime.
The ball was thrown in and we began to play with aggression and fury and no holds barred. We scored early and then again making it 2-0. Then they scored despite being short-handed over a penalty that benched one of their players. It was looking grim for us even at 2-1. It didn't take much to blow a lead in this game. I panicked and plowed and went on a run of desperation and determination not to let history repeat itself a third time. I drove with the ball toward a corner, went down, rolled up, ran around an opposing player and picked up the hat trick to score our third goal. Whistle! Half-time!!!
Breathing time, strategy time, pump up the volume time. We were tired physically but not spiritually. We came out hard and aggressive unlike the last two years where we went on the defensive. This time we stayed all-out on the offensive. Brooms flew, the ball rolled, bodies collided and they scored again making it 3-2. Our lead was razor thin and then we went ape-sh*t on them. I don't know where it came from but we started but all of our players got some crazed look in their eyes and purpose in their every muscle fiber. We got into "the zone" mentally and gelled as a team. We scored again, then again making it 5-2. Meanwhile Eric Docktor, our goalie, continued to stymie their efforts. There was a scrum in center field and bodies and brooms were a jumbled mayhem, naturally the whistle blew loudly...signalling a penalty. We were about to have a player benched.
I screamed in protest that it wasn't a "high-stick" call but then someone shook me - it wasn't a penalty - it was the end of the game...we had WON!!! I fell on the ground in disbelief, I wanted to cry with joy but I was too busy laughing the insane laugh of the disbelieving victor...we had broken a 7 year Bezos' Curse, we had broken a two year drought in the finals. We went nuts, we screamed, we jumped, we yelled, we whooped, we danced, we posed for a team photo. Victory has never tasted quite so sweet.
Two weeks have gone by. I can now walk again on legs that were nearly too sore to move. The small scars are healing where I took hits and pops from brooms and cleats that day. I find myself smiling as I daydream, replaying bits of the game over and over in my mind. I get lost in the memory of the victory................huh? wha?? ....where am I? Oh, right...
Okay...um, so as days go by and as football season begins, I ponder. What it would take to make broomball a bit bigger than just a once per summer company picnic deal? What if I went to a local field somewhere with a few brooms and just started knocking a ball about until someone showed up who wished to knock about as well? Could we eventually form a league of sorts? I have no idea, but neither did the first cavemen throwing rocks about for fun. Who knows, with a few more B+ athletes who are A+ enthusiasts, all sorts of things could happen, especially if we wear shoes with swooshes and drink orange liquid.