Peyton Manning never had to face us

A white surgical glove, blown up and tied off with a hint of purple and red around the wrist and top of the hand.

That's what my foot looks like. Five little piggies, wigglinging, attached to an over-inflated balloon. I'm pretty sure an ankle shouldn't resemble a purple-and-red tinged Rorschach test. On the plus side, I see Salma Hayek in the bruise, and with that the case I won't need to spend four bucks this week at Blockbuster to rent one of her movies to glimpse her beauty. You have to look at the bright side in these situations.

Right now, I have the bad wheel bandaged up mid calf and raised because that's what you do when you have a flat tire I guess. Doctor Wife has railed on me to stay off it, keep it elevated and pump enough drugs into my system so that if she has to amputate I won't feel a damn thing. And I'm not the best patient, either. I'm more stubborn than a constipated mule. Wife tells me to stay off it, not to do any work around the house, and what I hear is, "Go rearrange the furniture in the living room and then landscape the back yard." It's a character flaw, I know, but I don't want to be perceived as milking an injury to skirt household chores. If she's working, I should be slaving, too. Then again, if Wife is telling me to sit, well, dammit, I better listen. (And while you're at it, dear, my pina colada need freshening and can you head up to Lake Pleasant and catch some fish for dinner? I have a hankering for rainbow trout.)

OK, maybe I can milk this sprain a bit then.

A group of inmates from the Sweat Shop decided playing two-hand touch football at a local park would be a fun way to expend the pent up energy, frustration, anger, depression (take your pick) from the work week. I gathered 12 or 13 folks the first time around in early November, and the game was met with critical acclaim. Despite everyone walking like they were holding in a long-overdue poop for nearly a week, they all wanted more and kept on me to set up another game.

That second outing came yesterday.

The first game ended relatively injury free. There were bumps, bruises, abrasions, and a knot on Brittany's noggin' that made me think she was a unicorn (thanks to Spaz, or as he likes to be called, Jared, who decided what she needed was an elbow to the cranium) , but the inmates could walk away from the park under their own power. That's the real victory.

This game ended with everyone walking upright, and any pain coursing through our rapidly aging bodies was doused with a good dose of beer. Who needs a first aid kit when you have a 12er of Keystone Light (nothing but the best for us journalists)?

My team started the game with the ball, but we were severely handicapped as I was quarterback and I tend to throw the ball to anyone in t-shirts and short/pants, no matter the team.

The other team's vaunted defense stopped us and we were forced to punt. They move the ball forward against our swiss cheese pass defense - short pass here, quick run for a first down there. The opponent was everywhere. There must have been 55 of them running in every direction.

This is where the tale gets gruesome.

The opponents were set up about 20 yards from the end zone. Marc cuts in on an end zone route and Stuart, the quarterback, sees the move. So do I. Reading Stuart's mind, I run toward the middle of the end zone and pick off the pass in front of a charging Marc. His only recourse is to push me down to save any sort of run back, and that's when I became an incapacitated slave to the ace bandage.

Imagine Rice Krispies after milk is added. That's what my left ankle sounded like as I came down. I used the side of my foot to break my fall, and in retrospect, that wasn't a good idea. When I landed, my body thought it would be fun to roll the foot under a 160 pounds of pressure and see if it could handle that stress.

I'm here to say it cannot.

But the important thing is I held on to the ball and kept playing. Some may say that's the idiotic thing in this experience. But for us weekend warriors, that little piece of glory is worth the 7-10 days it will take for the swelling to go down and the foot to look less like a weather balloon with toes.

It could be worse. I could have ripped open my sack like Spazz, who did his best Mary Lou Retton impersonation by doing the splits at the 50-yard line. "I didn't think having kids were that important any way," he said before retrieving his dislodged testicles and walking back to the line scrimmage.

Why do we do this to ourselves? We're not getting paid to launch our bodies in a 10-foot dive for a two yard gain only to land on dirt that feels more like concrete than earth. We don't cash a check for sprawling after a reciever hoping to lay some fingers on the ball carrier so we can shout, "You're down, Ass Monkey!"

Then again, when you catch that pass in the end zone to put your team of misfit athletes ahead of the other misfit athletes, you feel like you just conquered Mount Everest, or the very least, Sun City, Arizona.