An Open Letter To Soccer Player Charlie Davies (With Afternoon Update)

Charlie, What the fuck are you doing? Listen, more than most people, I get how surviving near-death incidents involving cars can change a person. It makes you grateful each morning when you wake up.

Here's what I don't get: Driving like Jerome Brown almost a year to the day after an SUV you were in got ripped in half. It killed the woman with whom you were riding. It left you with a lacerated bladder, fractured right tibia and femur, a fractured elbow and a brain bleeding.

It sucks that the accident cost you a shot at the World Cup team. Truly.

So why exactly are you clocking 125 mph on a French highway in your Audi Q7? Did you not learn the lesson that prevents me from doing The Worm across two-lane South Jersey roadways? You may feel like you're invincible sometimes, but drawing the lucky bounce does not a David Dunn make. If the Audi Q7 decides to spin out of control, you're worse off than Elijah Price rolling down that subway stairwell. Because you're dead.

Charlie, you have a responsibility to the people who put you back together, and to those who willed you back from the life/death line. Having a death wish is so '74.

You need to grow the fuck up, and you need to grow the fuck up now.

Sincerely,

Brian Hickey #9, Haddon Township Soccer (1989-91) Oct. 7: U.S. forward Charlie Davies talks about his recovery [ ESPN.com]

Oct. 8: Davies caught at 201 kph one year after crash-report [ Reuters]

UPDATE From 1 p.m. est...

Doesn't make it any less troubling.