In my dental career, I have had the opportunity to help two individuals who knocked their teeth out during sporting events. The first one was during a soccer match. I was watching a buddy of mine play in an adult soccer league when all of a sudden with a couple of minutes left in the game, a fight broke out near the far sideline. Once that was broken up, they completed the game. Afterwards, I noticed that all of the players from both teams were over by that sideline looking on the ground. I thought that someone had lost a contact lens. At that time, my friend, knowing that I am a dentist, came over and told me that a player had had a tooth knocked out during the fight and was wondering if I could help. As I walked across the field, the player came over holding his tooth in his hand. Since we were standing in the middle of the field with no water available (the field was only serviced by Port-A-Potties), I had him roll the tooth around in his mouth to clean the dirt off of it. Then, crunch time came. I took the tooth and firmly inserted it back into the socket. I could tell that it smarted quite a bit but I don’t normally carry a syringe full of Novocaine with me. There certainly weren’t any tears. There was no way that he was going to let his teammates think he wasn’t tough. I instructed him to see his dentist the next day. When I checked with him later in the week, he was doing just fine. His dentist did a root canal for the tooth.  A year later, I asked my buddy how his teammate was doing and he said that his tooth was doing just fine. Happy endings are always nice.