Walhalla, 0; Emerald, 2

Estocrates considers lobotomies for several of his players

The idea of brain surgery as a means of improving mental health got started around 1890, when Friederich Golz, a German researcher, removed portions of his dogs’ temporal lobes, and found them to be calmer, less aggressive. It was swiftly followed by Gottlieb Burkhardt, the head of a Swiss mental institution, who attempted similar surgeries on six of his schizophrenic patients. Some were indeed calmer. Two died.
One would think that that would be the end of the idea. But in 1935, Carlyle Jacobsen of Yale University tried frontal and prefrontal lobotomies on chimps, and found them to be calmer afterwards. But it took a certain Antonio Egaz Moniz of the University of Lisbon Medical School to really put lobotomy on the map. He found that cutting the nerves that run from the frontal cortex to the thalamus in psychotic patients who suffered from repetitive thoughts (like: I have the ball...must dribble now...) “short-circuited” the problem. Together with his colleague Almeida Lima, he devised a technique involving drilling two small holes on either side of the forehead, inserting a special surgical knife, and severing the prefrontal cortex from the rest of the brain. He called it leukotomy, but it would come to be known as lobotomy.
Some of his patients became calmer, some did not. Moniz advised extreme caution in using lobotomy, and felt it should only be used in cases where everything else had been tried. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on lobotomy in 1949. He retired early after a former patient paralyzed him by shooting him in the back.

After losing to Emerald's J.V. football team, which substituted for their soccer team, which had been suspended on allegations of rampant steroid use, 2 - 0 on Monday night, Estocrates did what any good coach would do: he stayed up all night googling medical procedures that could help reverse group psychotic behavior. After all, he had tried everything in his huge bag of tricks to get his team to play the unselfish brand of soccer they are capable of playing on a consistent basis. The conclusion he finally came to after way to many colloidal silver, acai berry shakes was that what the team was suffering from must be due to an over-active frontal cortex, and that lobotomizing them would be the only option left that could bring them not only the coveted state title, but help them reach the ultimate goal of finding and capturing the key to all that exists.

Finding a good out-patient lobotomist was no easy task, but Tuesday, while hunting ginseng root in the Elicott's Rock area near the Chatooga river, Estocrates came upon an old mountain man sitting cross-legged on an enormous rock. The man introduced himself as Cephus. "I know wha yer here bosse," he said, exposing a wise, toothless grin. "Yer cawt twixt a rock n' a hard plice. Ah think ah may be able ta hep yuns out. Does the word 'lobotomy' rang eny bayells?"

"How is it you know such a thing?"

"Ah'll aks da queshtiuns 'round here bosse? Be here wit dem boweez 'round midnaght tanaght and ah'll git her done fer yuns. Allz ah waunt fer tride is some a dem hot to-malees Miss Veevaldo makes. An ah wan 'em fraysh, hear! Ah love me sum to-malees."

And with that he disappeared into the dense foliage. As coach drove down the mountain, back to civilization, he pondered what he had just seen and heard. Then, as his eye caught some of the ginseng root he had found just peaking out of the old burlap sack he always used to carry it in, he had an epiphany. "Ginseng," he said quietly to himself as if it was a secret no one could know. Then louder, "Ginseng. Ginseng! That's it. They're suffering from a Ginseng deficiency which has caused they're eyes to go directly down to the ground when they receive the ball, which then eliminates all options but dribbling wildly like a headless chicken right into the teeth of opposing defenses, which subsequently gums up the whole works and makes us look like a bunch of idiots. Man, I can't believe I was thinking about giving half the team lobotomies when I've got Ginseng!"

Was Cephus real, or a figment of Estocrates fertile subconscious which had obviously been over-saturated with colloidal silver and a case of googlitis? We'll never know now, since the great coach came to his senses and found the solution to getting us back on the journey to discover the key to all that exists which coincides somehow with the state title. Now to figure out how to market his new Ginseng shakes so we can raise money for our new team plane which we will use next year for all away games.

Come to Pendleton Friday to see if Ginseng really is the answer as your purple pigs of Walhalla get back to what they do best: melting people's faces with their mind-blowing brand of soccer.