Folk Medicine is the Cure For What Ails Ilijevski
By Arnold Irish (5/12/1984)St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Better give me some tomatoes and onions," a Steamers player will say as he moves across the club's dressing room with an exaggerated limp.
"Hold the mayo," a teammate will respond.
Is one of the athletes moonlighting in the short-order business?
No, its just the Steamers' way of ribbing goalkeeper Slobo Ilijevski about his legendary use of folk medicine and home cures.
Ilijevski, the Major Indoor Soccer League's leading goalie, is in many respects a member of the high-tech generation.
but he still believes in the oldtime cures.
"All of my life, I treat a bruise or soreness the old way," Ilijevski said.
"Slice a tomato in half, or an onion, and press it to the skin. It helps the
injury to heal.
"Back home, in Yugoslavia, many use nature's cures. Sometimes it is
hard to find a doctor. In each family, usually there is one woman who
knows remedies.
When someone is sick or hurt, they call that woman."
Doctors aren't difficult to find in today's society, what with every day
bringing another miracle of modern medicine, but Ilijevski still has faith in
folk remedies.
Slobo lowered his own MISL goals-against average to 3.67 this season and
became the first keeper in league history to win 20 or more games for
the fourth consecutive year, so he must be doing something right.
"A lot of the guys kid me about my tomatoes and onions, but that's OK,"
Ilijevski said. "I don't say they work for everybody. I say only they work
for me."
Hand-me-down medicine is conspicuous by its absence in
metropolitan areas, but one needn't go very far into the Ozarks to find old-
timers who treat colos by drinking a tea made by boiling mint leaves, or by
swallowing a spoon of sugar soaked by juice extracted from a minced onion,
and attack a cough with a mixture of moistened of black pepper and
sugared water. Along those lines, one cup of milk sweetened by two
tablespoons of honey is supposed to cure insomnia.
The Steamers had never heard of tomatoes-and-onion recoveries until
Iiijevski came on the scene in 1980-81.
"Slobo had twisted his knee, but stayed in the game," Steamers trainer
Bill Jennings remembered. "After the game, I iced him down and Doc
Burdge (Steamers physician Dr. Robert F. Burdge) told him to keep ice
on it at home.
"But Slobo told me he couldn't do that. He had to put an onion on it. Cut
an onion in half, put one half in the refrigerator and massage the injury
with the other onion half for 30 minutes. After that, then put ice on it.
"Then rest. Then cut a tomato in half. Place the cut half against the
injury. Then sleep with the tomato on it."
Jennings had been stumped at that time, he remembered.
"There I was, just a year out of college, listening to Slobo, who didn't
speak English very well at the time, explaining to me (the team's trainer)
how to treat injuries with tomatoes and onions.
We finally reached an agreement. Slobo could use his tomatoes and
onions if he used my ice. When he left that day, I still didn't know whether he
was putting me on or not. But when he came in the next morning, and I
unwrapped the elastic from around his leg, onion and tomato seeds fell
out. And when we'd go on the road, and I'd do room check, there were always tomatoes
and onions in his room."
Ever since he joined the club, Slobo has been the Steamers' oldest player. Now 35,
he has been one of their most durable as well. Several years ago, Slobo was conducting a
home-medicine seminar at the whirlpool. A young teammate, who had been slowed
by a nagging leg injury, seemed unusually attentive.
When he returned the next morning, the athlete(who must remain forever nameless) appeared
to have made a miraculous recovery overnight.
"Did you try Slobo's tomatoes?" Jennings asked, suspiciously.
"What? Hey, man, you don't think I'd rub those squishy darned tomatoes on my leg,
do you?"
"Well, maybe not," Jennings said.
The athlete's face flushed, though, and he came clean.
"I'd try the onions, though."
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