Current Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully once eulogized a dying Dodger rally with the observation "The saddest words of tongue and pen are these: What might have been."

Sports are full of such mournful speculation, and so we say "You shoulda seen the one that got away" or "I coulda been a contender." Woulda. Shoulda. Coulda. If only.

Life, the joke goes, is a microcosm of athletics. And so, too, is life a game of inches. If only fate were recalibrated by a fraction, we wouldn't have to wonder what might have been in the alluring but abbreviated ending to the 135-pound final at the 34th annual Pulaski Wrestling Invitational on Saturday.

In two-seconds, Pulaski's Steve Adamski went from his feet - where he was locked in a double arm bar throw with Luxemburg-Casco's Travis Bouchonville - to his back. It was a move numerous wrestlers before Saturday have tried and succeeded without injury to either participant.

Nonetheless, when Bouchonville drove him into the mat in the waning seconds of the second period, Adamski never got back up.

A chilling hush came over the crowd while coaches, trainers and doctors attended to the motionless junior. Then fate intervened and showed the 4000-plus in attendance the fickle world of wrestling. Competitive fires went out and severe remorse set in on all.

Adamski was 24-4 and one of the top wrestlers in the state at his weight class when he entered the championship match. All four of his loses came to state ranked wrestlers - two of whom were ranked No. 1. I point that out not to impress you, but to impress upon you that he indeed was championship caliber.

Two-seconds, however, ended any dream of standing on the medal stand in Madison's Kohl Center later this month. "If he could have fought Bouchonville off for just two more seconds " people kept saying.

He didn't, though, and Adamski hit the mat hard, knocking him out cold and causing him to suffer a concussion that will keep him from finishing this season.

While nothing is minor when you're talking about the head, Adamski's concussion was a little different than most.

And Bouchonville, who did nothing illegal, felt the worst.

"Tell him I'm sorry," Bouchonville kept saying after the tournament. "Tell him that I didn't mean it."

His family sent along Bouchonvilles message, only to have Adamski reply, "Travis who?" "Who is Travis?" as he laid in the emergency room with a neck brace on. Adamski has known Bouchonville since middle school and on any other day, he would have known who Travis was.

Just not this day.

He couldn't remember a single element about the tournament. He was scared, told his parents that numerous times during the trip to the hospital and while he was getting X-Rays to his neck, back and chest; along with two different cat scans.

A calming sensation came over him, though, as he pointed to a cross above his bed and said, "There is God and over there is Kyle." He told his parents later that he again could see Kyle - his brother who passed away 17 years ago this August. 

What happened to him was a fresh wake-up call, a harsh reminder just how brutal high school wrestling can be.

Forget that he wont be in the lineup Friday when his team wrestles Seymour for the Bay Conference title or that he will not be able to win his third consecutive regional crown later this month. Adamski can't drive a car for two weeks or do much of anything for five. Wrestling is the farthest thing from his mind.

He has witnessed injuries on the wrestling mat before, but Saturday was his first taste of such hard luck.

In 1999, he observed his oldest brother shatter his elbow in the state championships, forcing him to injury default to fourth place. That was hard for Steve to watch, but what happened to his brother Dan was the even worse.

When Dan was a freshman at Lawrence University in 2001, Steve watched again in agony, as Dan was knocked out in similar fashion during a tournament in Stevens Point. The injury forced him to have brain surgery, which ended his wrestling career.

Such thoughts went through his families mind as they saw Steve motionless on the mat Saturday night. Tests showed no need for similar surgery, but many of the same signs that haunted his brother, have shown up in Steve.

Nonetheless, Adamski was released from the hospital around 1 pm Sunday and returned home. There wasn't any talk about how Pulaski could beat Seymour, who he was going to have to get past to get his state medal or how his Red Raiders could beat Bay Port for a WIAA Division 1 regional title.

Just two days before his first wrestling injury ever, those topics were commonplace in a household that bleeds Red Raider wrestling.

Common topics between family members instead focused on getting Adamski to remember the recent past. Everybody present started slow, telling him how well he wrestled. Hours went by when he finally asked who got his medal that everybody was talking about. His brothers girlfriend said she had, invoking Steve to ask if she stood on the medal stand to receive it.

It got a laugh from a room that didn't have much to laugh about.

Then reality stepped in, because the day after the thunderous crowd went silent, there was a baseball size lump under his right eye, he spoke softly and muttered the same six words "You know I can't wrestle again."

He still doesn't really remember anything about Saturday, just the parts his parents keep telling him. He doesn't remember that he beat two more state caliber wrestlers, that he finally got to walk in the parade of champions - something he has dreamed about since he was a youngster -, not even that he wrestled or that he was a wrestler.

"Woulda, coulda, if only EXACTLY!

By Paul Adamski (Spring 2003)