FOXBORO, Massachusetts. New England Patriots wide receiver Reche Caldwell was cleared to play in this week's game against the Miami Dolphins after taking a vicious hit to the head last Sunday against the Cincinnati Bengals.
Caldwell: "You don't know jack about Bloomsbury, man!"
"He's fully recovered," said Dr. Harry Wernick who examined Caldwell at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital yesterday. Wernick led a "dream team" of neurologists and other physicians who administered a battery of tests to Caldwell.
Dr. Harry Wernick and his "dream team" colleagues.
"We started out in the traditional way, asking Reche who was president, who's the vice president and so on," said Wernick. "He named the entire Bush cabinet, the current justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, the original members of the Shirelles and all of Elvis's number one records. Then he named the principal dancers of the American Ballet Theatre for the past thirty years in inverse order of height starting with Mikhail Baryshnikov."
The Shirelles
Caldwell's remarkable mental feats did not surprise fellow Patriot Rodney Harrison, who is also known for his hard tackling. "Sometimes a hit like that can clear your head," Harrison said. "I came up to him to make sure he was all right and he said 'Harrison, William Henry--Old Tippecanoe--right?' I said no, I'm Rodney--your teammate. He says 'I know--I'm just messin' with ya.'" The ninth President of the United States, William Henry Harrison died after just thirty days in office, but was picked up on waivers by the San Diego Chargers.
President William Henry Harrison
Bengals' safety Kevin Kaesviharn made the hit that brought Caldwell down, but he was the one left shaking his head. "He bet me I couldn't name five members of the Bloomsbury Group. I rattled off Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strachey pretty quick, then I was stuck. He starts in with Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, Dora Carrington, Roger Fry and David Garnett. I had to get back to the huddle but he just kept goin' with Duncan Grant, John Maynard Keynes, Desmond MacCarthy and Leonard Woolf."
Virginia Woolf
The Bloomsbury Group began as an informal social assembly of Cambridge University graduates in the late 19th century who mingled at events held by the Apostles secret society. After the merger of the NFL into the AFL in 1969, the group became known as the Kansas City Chiefs.
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
