I play racquetball. Not competitively, of course. I, after all, suck at racquetball. But it’s a fun game and I do it so as to avoid becoming a fat slob requiring a separate love seat for each butt cheek. It’s a legitimate concern.

For those who are unfamiliar, racquetball is played in a medium-sized room with high concrete walls, one smooth-surfaced door and a small rubber ball that has a bit more bounce than a tennis ball. The eponymous racquets are a bit smaller than tennis rackets with shorter handles and perhaps slightly wider heads.

The idea of the game is sort of like playing tennis against a wall: Hit it before it bounces twice back at the wall, taking turns with your opponent, until someone misses the front wall or lets it bounce too many times. Often there are open spaces in the courts high up on the back wall for spectators and those who suffer from claustrophobia. Hitting it out of play is also cause for losing the rally.

Where the game gets tricky is that for the most part a well positioned player can get to more or less anywhere on the court because they aren’t that big. Also, bounces off of walls other than the front wall don’t count against a player who is receiving a hit, which means often you can use the back wall to reduce the distance you have to move to get to a hard-hit ball. The key is to get your opponent to commit to one thing and then do another or force him to move one place to return a hit and then use his less than ideal position to finish the point with your second hit.

It’s harder than it sounds.

Now, racquetball isn’t exactly a dangerous sport. Your biggest problems come from the occasional serve return that wings off the back of your neck or smacks you in the leg. Nasty welt aside, it only stings for a second or two. You have to wear protective glasses, but these are a formality since most people probably don’t come close to their eyes with anything very often, if at all. The only other factor is those concrete walls, which you can avoid if you simply choose not to sacrifice your body by diving face-first into them to chase a ball.

Danger or no, rest assured that if there is a way to injure yourself in spectacularly clumsy fashion—no matter how unlikely—I find it and test it out.

So here’s the scene: I’m playing Doza in a pretty close game. He’s far, far better than I am but on occasion I can keep it interesting and I’ve even won a game or two. It’s game two of three in the match, he’s already up by one. The score is close, but getting a bit out of hand as he serves: 8-6 and he’s scored four in a row, coming from behind. All day my hits have been flying out of the court so I’m trying to stay back. Usually when you hit a ball too hard too close to the front wall is when they sail out of play.

Doza serves to the right side, and I easily handle it, but since it was fast moving and a bit out of reach I have to stretch and settle for a soft lob back to the wall with no hope of aim or direction. Doza fights the return a bit, but lobs it up high toward the ceiling so it bounces up and over my head. I back-peddal quickly and catch it before it gets to that nasty low spot off the back wall where you can’t get underneath or behind it. By necessity, my return is high but Doza waits for this hit off the back wall and cuts in behind it, accelerating it forward and higher. It swings back into the right corner and I hit it high but soft, so it floats casually back to Doza as I find myself badly out of position.

At this point he has many things he can do. If he ropes it to the left corner, I might overcommit to getting it before it comes off the back wall and miss it completely. But that’s a high-risk proposition because if I do get there or judge it correctly, I have a chance to get a medium strength backhand in that hugs the left wall. Those are hard to hit without jamming the racquet into the wall. He could also try to dink it low and force me to sprint for it, but I’m already moving and I have a tendency to dive for low ones. I make it about half the time, too (even if I end up lying down and unable to get up in time for the next hit). So Doza does the right thing, he hits is firmly but high into the back left corner. I can make it, but if he did it right I’ll still be out of position and giving him another chance for an aimed shot.

He misses the hit a little long, so it doesn’t fall short back to the court. That gives me enough time to bank it off the back wall with a hard hit that will fly all the way back to the front wall. I had moved up to the middle of the court as the ball flew, so I’m running toward the back wall as it comes down, rebounds toward my swinging racquet for the necessarily solid contact.

Here’s the point where things get a bit hazy. One thing that is true about hitting off the back wall is that if you do that but hit it too soft, it won’t make it. The other thing that is true about hitting off the back wall is that you have to get the shot straight or else it banks too much, looses too much speed, and won’t make it. So I reach back and belt it. I mean I give it a good wollop.

Only I’m still running toward the back wall. And now the ball that I just hit straight into the wall as hard as possible is coming right back at me.

The way the next two seconds unfolded in my mind are thus: A blur of blue goes from small to immense in my field of vision with such rapidity that I don’t even react. A slap of stinging pain strikes me as the ball rebounds off my face. Instinct kicks in, and I reach up for my face, spinning away from the impact. Then a blossom of agony erupts in my skull as my forehead connects with something very, very hard and extremely unforgiving: The concrete wall.

I collapsed to the hardwood floor, clutching my head, hearing nothing, seeing only black with flecks of white. I thought, insanely, “I wonder if this is what they mean by ‘seeing stars’?” Doza tried to ascertain if I was in serious trouble or just needing to writhe for a while. It crossed my mind that I had heard my safety glasses skitter across the floor just after I bashed my noggin into a very unyielding wall. Or had the ball knocked them off when I smacked it into my own face?

Eventually I was able to open my eyes to a cloudy world. I staggered up and off the court, in search of a water fountain. I kept checking my head for blood, but my fingers came back drenched only in sweat from the game. Good news, except that a bloody mess is for whatever reason something that I consider easier to explain than a random bruise on one’s dome. Indeed, minutes after my altercation with the wall, Doza noted that I was developing a significant knot over my left eye and it had developed a crisp purple hue.

Since then the purple coloration has faded into a disgruntled-looking pink, but the swelling hasn’t gone down in the least. And I’ve had a headache ever since.

Plus, I lost the game. I’m not exactly competitive in the traditional sense, but if I’m going to suffer a near concussion, don’t you think for no other reason than dramatic impact that I should have won?