Somers: Damar Hamlin's health emergency brought out the best in football fans
It’s always been easy to allow pessimism to narrow our vision so much that we only see the worst in others, but maybe never more so than today. Social media has given us more ways than ever to show our backsides to the world.
But the good in us is there to see, too, if we pause, put our phones down and look. That was apparent Monday night when Bills safety Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest after a hit in the first quarter against the Bengals.
Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati went silent. So did living rooms and dens across the country. As we watched players from both teams cry and pray, the importance of the game became unimportant. We didn’t care about playoff seedings, division titles, fantasy league championships or betting parlays.
Read more: Cardinals show support for hospitalized Bills safety Hamlin
Most of us still don’t. Hamlin, whose heartbeat was restored on the field, is in critical condition in a Cincinnati hospital. That’s what matters to us.
No, I didn’t commission a poll to come to reach that conclusion. But from watching the scene in Cincinnati and reading social media posts, it was clear that hardly anyone was interested in playing or watching football when a 24-year-old man was fighting for his life.
The best in us came out. Bills and Bengals fans hugged and prayed together in the stadium, then filed out quietly and peacefully. An online fundraiser started by Hamlin to buy toys for kids in his hometown of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, was flooded with donations. Hamlin’s goal was to raise $2,500. By noon Tuesday, there was $4.3 million in the account.
“We are deeply moved by the prayers, the kind words and donations from fans around the country,” Hamlin’s family wrote in a statement released Tuesday morning.
More:Hamlin charity draws overwhelming support
A considerable amount of those donations likely came from people who, like me, knew little to nothing about Hamlin before Monday night. But we know people like him, and if you’ve lived long enough, you know the devastation that comes with the sudden illness or death of someone so young.
A writing instructor in college often lectured about getting to that kind of shared experience in our work. What we think is most personal, he said, is actually most common.
Sadly, those shared experiences can result from tragedy. Watching players gather around Hamlin around the field, then seeing the ambulance leave the stadium Monday night, I thought of friends and family who died too soon: Ed and Valerie and Lloyd and Steve and Judy and Jon and Steve and Preston and Doyle and Brian and Pedro. And the awful phone calls delivering that news.
No one is immune from that experience. Live long enough and you know what it’s like to cry like the players and coaches we saw on our screens Monday night.
Maybe your mind went there, too, to the losses you’ve suffered. Maybe that’s why so many of us stopped caring about football for a little while Monday night, implored the NFL to do likewise and suspend play and donated more than $4 million to Hamlin’s foundation.
That didn't restore my faith in humanity. But it did reassure it.
(Reach Kent Somers at Kent.Somers@gannett.com. Follow him on twitter @kentsomers. )
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Football ceased to matter Monday night after Damar Hamlin collapsed
