Question:
Now, Edwards is leading an effort to end a fundamental part of the game of soccer in Massachusetts. "I have a message for all soccer players out there," said Edwards, who has suffered three traumatic head injuries during his life. "Use your foot, not your head." Edwards said he suffered his injuries when he was dropped as a child. He was also hit with a baseball as a child. As a teen, he said, he was pushed off a truck. He has never played soccer, but said his nephew does. Blumer's bill would impose a $100 fine for any player who heads the soccer ball, to be enforced by the referee and paid for by the school of the player. All fines collected would be distributed to the Metrowest Medical Center for Rehabilitation for the treatment of head injuries. Neither branch has admitted the bill.

Edwards said he believes lawmakers will quickly disregard the legislation and is now pushing an alternative petition, to be filed by Sen. David Magnani, D-Framingham, in early January, Magnani's aides confirmed. In addition to banning heading by all soccer players and imposing a $100 fine, Magnani's bill would distribute the money collected to all hospitals for brain injury treatment and direct the Legislature to establish a commission to study sports-related head injuries. "All brain injuries can be prevented, especially in the game of soccer," Edwards said. The effect of heading in soccer has been heavily studied since a Norwegian report in the early 1990s claimed a link between continuously heading the soccer ball and sustaining cognitive brain damage. Soon after the study's release, researchers successfully disproved the findings and said the conclusions were "without merit," said Dr. Catherine O'Connor, chairman of the Massachusetts Medical Society's Committee on Student Health and Sports Medicine. O'Connor called the report a "bad study."

"Everybody gets all worried and bothered about it, but there's no research for it and no data to support it," said O'Connor. "Most concussions are caused by head-to-head contact." According to a 2001 study conducted by the US Soccer Federation and the Department of Orthopedics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 15 percent of all injuries in soccer are head injuries and all "were due to player-player or player-ground contact." "If you're going to ban heading in soccer, then you have to say you can't run over the catcher in baseball," O'Connor said. "It's unsubstantiated." I thought I would just bring it up to see what people had to say. The brain damage apparently comes from getting hit in the head by the ball so many times - is a helmet needed in soccer to protect the players?

Answer: This isn't funny, except in a kinda dark way, but... as a child he was dropped on his head, chased by people hitting baseballs at him and was pushed off a truck. Maybe the lesson he should take with him isn't "Head injuries are bad, avoid them" but "stop pestering people". We can tell he suffered a head injury as a child by his actions as an adult...