OLD POSTS: July 07 / Aug 07 / Sept 07 / Oct 07 / Nov 07 / Dec 07

Yachting

Yachting has a rule book called The Deed of Gift. I don’t know what it says in there but I’m told it is very complicated.

In yachting, extremely rich people get other people to sail their boats. It is called “America’s Cup.” Rich American people hate it when rich non-American people win America’s Cup, in the same way rich Bulgarian people probably hate it when rich non-Bulgarian people win Powerball, especially when the rich Bulgarian people couldn’t get to 7-Eleven on time.

That’s yachting as I know it.

I do know about boats.

When my son Connor was in the hospital, my wife, Laura, and I would talk about how one day he’d be able to start talking. When he did, we imagined, he’d open with some of those simple one-syllable words, “boat” being our favorite.

“Boat!” became something of a family-and close-friends-only inside tribute to Connor. “Boat!” could be uttered at any time, with any meaning. But mostly, it was a word to bring cheer, particularly in that Connor never had his shot to say “Boat!”

Boat!

My first boat was a four-foot-long blue plastic craft given to me by my father as a get-well present after I had to have a tooth extracted. I was five years old. I thought I was a badass, rowing around that blue four-foot-long plastic boat on Star Lake. For you other five-year-olds about to have a tooth extracted, let me point out that I did wear an orange life vest for safety.


My dad used to give us presents when we were sick. If he heard one of us had stayed home from school, he’d show up after work with some kind of kid toy, something to cheer. I think my sister Carolee missed two years of K–12 schooling.

Boat!

My dad was onto something with that four-foot-long blue plastic boat. Years later, when he saw my son in the hospital in Maine for the first time, he looked at Connor, who weighed in at about two pounds that day, and Dad said, “Maybe he can be a jockey.”

That was my dad. Looking to the positive. Looking at things in a way that suggested tomorrow would be a better day than today.

Sure, my tooth had been extracted. But I’ll be damned if I wasn’t the happiest kid on Star Lake. I had a four-foot-long blue plastic boat. I couldn’t have cared less about America’s Cup or how the Bulgarians felt about Powerball or 7-Elevens. I owned that lake.

And Connor would have owned any body of water.

Boat.

Boat!

Tackle Football

Tackle football is the greatest sport in the world and everyone knows it.

Tackle football was invented in the 1800s, or a long time ago, by a man who thought it would be cool if one man with a ball struggled to move toward a white line painted on some grass while a bunch of men (Team B) tried to throw him to the ground. The man with the ball had a bunch of other men (Team A) trying to help him avoid being thrown to the ground by the bunch of men trying to throw him to the ground (Team B). The man with the ball would begin the play without the ball. Another man on his team (Team A) would bend over and pass the ball between his legs to the man who would eventually have the ball and try to avoid being thrown to the ground. The sight of a man passing the ball between his legs to a man who wanted to run the ball while avoiding being thrown to the ground made the men who wanted to throw the man with the ball to the ground (Team B) laugh hysterically. Later, when the method of starting a play was changed and a man without the ball stuck his hands between the legs of the man who had the ball and who was bending over, the players on Team B laughed even more hysterically.

This is why the running game in football got off to such a successful start.

When the men on the team that wanted to throw the man with the ball to the ground stopped laughing so much at the same joke, over and over, the running game didn’t work as well.

At that point somebody on the team with the guy who didn’t want to be thrown to the ground had somebody kick the ball between metal uprights and over a metal bar.

It is the greatest sport in the world and everyone knows it.

Everyone except the four billion or so people who believe soccer is the greatest game in the world. Most of them call soccer football. They call our football crap.

In America, there are eleven men on each side. Sometimes, in rare cases, some of the eleven men are women. There are actually a whole bunch more men and possibly a few women on each side. They stand on the sidelines, often in oversize parkas.

Each team has a head coach whose job it is to yell at the players.

Even the players who are just wearing oversize parkas get yelled at. This happens when they get too close to the field. Coaches hate it when the players who aren’t supposed to be in the game get too close to the field. They’re supposed to know they aren’t as good as the players on the field and stay the hell out of the way. Some teams even employ special coaches whose only job is to say, “Get back.” They are the “get back” coaches. A referee can call a penalty if too many players are on the field, even if the extra player doesn’t think he’s not as good as the players who are on the field.

Head coaches at the highest level of tackle football, the National Football League, sometimes hold press conferences. The members of the media who attend are usually scared of the coaches and defer to them as though they were great heads of state. I didn’t mean anything by that. Please don’t yell at me. I’m wearing a parka. I’m way back of the sideline. Not even close to it. You are a very important man, sir. Coach. Big guy.

In Canada, they use twelve players on each side, exclusive of the players who aren’t very good who wear parkas. They use twelve players in Canada because Canada has so much undeveloped land. It has so much undeveloped land that the United States used to use some of it to practice firing cruise missiles.

One time, the Raiders won a Super Bowl, and afterward, as I remember, President Reagan phoned the locker room (where did he get the phone number?) and ended up telling MVP Marcus Allen, “You are my cruise missile.” Marcus didn’t know what President Reagan was talking about. But President Reagan was somewhat prescient, if that’s how you spell that word. It turned out Marcus Allen’s brother, Damon, would play many years over Canada’s still-undeveloped cruise-missile-testing land. In fact, hemay still be playing up there.

I don’t know if I used "prescient" the right way in that section on Canada. I was just trying to say that the Allens, Canada, Reagan, and cruise missiles were all related for some time. As great a man as President Reagan was, his funeral sure went on for a long time, didn’t it? But enough about Canada.

In Canada there used to be two teams called the Rough Riders, though one of them may have been called the Roughriders. That was back when Canada had so many teams they ran out of names to call them. These days, there are about four or five CFL teams. They play each other ten or twelve times each during a season. I think they also play prison teams and college freshman teams, much like the schedules of junior college teams in the United States except that the junior college teams don’t have to face Marcus Allen. He would absolutely crush my alma mater Wenatchee Valley Community College, he’s so experienced.

He would except there is no tackle football team any longer at Wenatchee Valley Community College. There is no team at any junior or community college in Washington. None in Oregon either. The nonÐtackle football students got tired of seeing $49 of their $344 quarterly tuition go to a small minority of eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds who hadn’t yet gotten tackle football completely out of their systems back in high school.

But it’s too bad some alternative source of funding hasn’t been found to keep junior or community college tackle football going. For some kids, tackle football is the only thing that keeps them going to school, even if it is just junior college. Many famous tackle football players played junior college tackle football. There’s Hall of Fame tackle football quarterback Warren Moon, there’s one of my best friends, receiver Jimmy Sandusky, and there’s me.

My storied tackle football career began in my fifth-grade year. I tried to sign up in fourth grade but I wasn’t old enough (nine instead of ten) and they told me to leave. I played soccer that season and gave up about eleven goals one day as the keeper. Somebody’s mom gave us orange wedges afterward. Did she really think I could be bought off with orange wedges when it was tackle football I wanted to play? By the way, lady, the orange wedges had lots of seeds in them and weren’t all that ripe. Make me some pudding.

Anyway, I had matured a lot by age ten and was accepted into the league. I weighed about forty-seven pounds. I had a very low body fat percentage.

I sucked and they never gave me the ball even though I was a running back. I was supposed to block people so the guy they kept giving the ball to, Mike Nelson, Susan Nelson’s older brother, could run for glory. He wasn’t getting much glory when he ran to my side of the formation, because I sucked at blocking too.

My goodness I loved tackle football.

I got to wear cool shoulder pads and a helmet and when my uniform got dirty that was great.

The next year I had filled out quite a bit. I weighed around fiftyseven pounds now. Wiry.

That’s the year I had my femur snapped in half like a fresh carrot the day I tackled Keith Simons, who must have weighed about a gram under the weight limit for the “lightweight” (110-pound) division. Keith was carrying the ball in practice and I was coming up from my safety position to lay a big hit on him, just like Herb Adderly would have for my Packers. (They were my Packers because Seattle didn’t have a team back then and Green Bay had won a couple of Super Bowls and what the hell, may as well back a winner, right?) Keith outweighed me about two to one and he also got lower than I did at the time of impact. His helmet drove my scrawny left leg over my head and I ended up on my back with my left leg in the position of my left arm had my left arm been asking a question. My question at that point was “How are we doing in this neighborhood as far as enhanced 911 goes?” I may not have really had that question in mind, for I was in shock. One of the coaches readjusted my left leg so that it was merely broken at the femur and no longer asking a question. They put me on some kind of wooden board stretcher and carried me to the back of coach Lyle Foltz’s pickup truck. The other players piled their winter coats on top of me so I wouldn’t go into shock even though I already had. So I was in shock, but fairly warm. Somebody stayed with me so I wouldn’t feel lonely, I guess, while the rest of the players continued with practice. Somebody else got into a car because cell phones didn’t exist. They were trying to find my parents so they could tell them I had tackled Keith Simons. Apparently they thought the people who lived across the street from the field where we were holding practice wouldn’t let them use the phone. That would be asking a lot.

All I know is it started getting dark, practice ended, and a bunch of sixth-grade kids wanted their coats backÑwho cares if their teammate is going into shock? The little dorks starting pulling their coats off me and from under me, arguing about who had the black coat, who had the gray coat. I was bumped around in the back of Lyle Foltz’s truck, in pain and in shock.

Did I mention I tackled Keith Simons?

Somebody finally located my parents, who immediately made a worse decision than the one I’d made in not letting Keith Simons run free, and worse than the one to not call 911 or even an operator. And worse than the decision to not borrow a neighbor’s phone. My parents had Lyle Foltz drive me to a local doctor’s office instead of to a hospital. What the hell was he going to do for me? Give me a sticker?

I think he gave me morphine after making the incredibly astute observation that I’d broken my femur. Of course you break your femur when you weigh half as much as Keith Simons and try to tackle that big bastard.

Keith Simons now coaches tackle football at Santa Rosa Junior College in California, a state south of Washington where the nonÐtackle footballs students don’t seem to care if forty-nine dollars of their tuition allows eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds to get football out of their systems. I’m certain Keith weighs more than 110 pounds now, but he hasn’t, to the best of my knowledge, broken anyone else’s femur.

The next year, I returned to the gridiron for more hard-hitting action. I was the quarterback. No more blocking for others. No more tackling Keith Simons (he was in the heavyweight division now). I think I threw about 23 passes all season. Mostly, my coach told me to hand the ball to his son and my best friend, Mark Sansaver. Mark gained about 2,000 yards on the ground. We never lost a game. I didn’t break my femur. Some of the highlights of that season cannot be seen on ESPN Classic. I do have two nonaction still pictures. (One, with Mark Sansaver and me, is on the back of the book.)

In ninth grade, I was the second-string quarterback to Bruce Humphries, who was almost a full man already. I think he drove a Camaro to school. Mostly, I played in what was called “fifth quarter.” This was for the awful players who hadn’t made it into the real game, the one with four quarters. I think my dad was the only parent who watched fifth quarter. Poor bastard.

It was so humiliating to play in fifth quarter. I’d have preferred it if my dad had stayed at home, worked overtime, taken up crafts. Anything but standing and cheering me and the other parka wearers who hadn’t played in the four lawful quarters of tackle football. While we played in the extralegal fifth quarter, Bruce Humphries and the other starters did not stay to cheer us on. They turned their backs on the game to pick up cheerleaders, who weren’t cheering for us.

Susan Nelson was one of the cheerleaders. I had my shot with her in seventh grade, but in seventh grade I was scared of girls. I’m still scared of girls. I had no shot with Susan Nelson by ninth grade. She came to the field each week to cheer her heart out for the guys who played in the first four quarters, not dorks like me, cover-boy nominees for Parka Wear Quarterly.

I do not remember a single play from any fifth-quarter game. If you call it a game. Screw fifth quarter.

I do remember one key play I made in a legal fourth quarter. And it almost counted for us. Coach Lou Blaise finally came to the realization around midseason that I could actually throw a football. I could throw even better than Bruce Humphries, even if Bruce had a better car than Lou Blaise. Coach had started using me to throw the ball in obvious passing situations. I’m no Bill Walsh, but down by five points with three seconds left to play, fourth down, 35 yards from the goal line sounds to me like an obvious passing situation. Coach Blaise looked at me and said, “Get in there and throw up a prayer.” We had no play called “throw up a prayer,” plus Blaise didn’t have as much confidence in me as I did. I knew I could throw the ball 40-odd yards in the air. I just needed time to do so. I told the linemen to block like they cared. I told Mark Sansaver to run a post route from the right flanker position and told the tight end, Lance Mihok, to run a post-corner to the right corner of the end zone. Mark drew the safety to the middle, Lance beat the kid trying to stay with him, and I heaved it to the right corner. Lance caught the ball. Even Susan Nelson had to notice.

I was a hero. Lance celebrated in the end zone, the cheerleaders almost cheered, my dad acted like the dad of the quarterback who had just thrown the game winner.

Then one of the men officiating the game signaled (quite late) that the pass had been caught out of bounds.

It was a terrible call. Lance was definitely in bounds. If you don’t believe me, call Lance right now. His number is 212-782-9127.

The week after my near heroics, I broke my leg again. Coach Blaise was actually going to give me the start in the next game. In practice that Wednesday, however, I was running opposition plays for our first-team defense. They were taking turns sacking me. It was Fred George’s turn. He dove at my left ankle. It snapped.

Coaching had improved since sixth grade. Lou Blaise called 911. I don’t remember much about my high school tackle football years except that we were always third best when the season ended and only the top two made the state tackle football playoffs. I do remember being named the Player of the Week by one of the Seattle papers (Joe Orr and Mark Sansaver had big games that night too). The guy from the paper wildly misquoted me in his story. I haven’t trusted the mainstream media since.

In junior college I was picked off four times in the same game. We were playing at Columbia Basin, down there near the Columbia Basin. My roommate, a Canadian named John McKay, who looked even older than Bruce Humphries had in junior high, and who could buy beer, was supposed to have been blocking for me in his running back position. Just after he was knocked down, I was picked off. I made some kind of half-assed attempt to chase down the defensive back who was running for a touchdown. John just lay on the field. But later on film, we did notice his extraordinary effort. He was seen pretending to shoot the guy from the other team who was returning the pick for a touchdown.

I made honorable mention All-America in my second junior college season. So did about twenty other quarterbacks. Like me, most of them probably now just say “All-America quarterback” when recounting their junior college years, leaving out the honorablemention part.

I was not All-America at UNLV. I was barely at UNLV. I was the second-string quarterback my junior year to a guy named Larry Gentry. I was the second-string quarterback my senior year to a guy named Sam King. It is often misreported, but since it’s really my only athletic bragging point (besides throwing out Ozzie Smith going to third in Legends-Celebrity softball on ESPN in 2007) I think it’s fair to note. I was ahead of, not behind Randall Cunningham on the 1981 UNLV depth chart. A guy named Allyn Reynolds (third string) can still say the same thing.

In my junior season, 1980, I was just starting to play a bit more in the games when we flew to Eugene, Oregon, to play the Ducks. We were getting trashed, something like 33Ð9. It was down to the last play of the game. I called “go” routes for the wide receivers and figured we’d at least take one more shot at putting some more points on the board. The pass fell incomplete. I fell to the ground. Broken. The left defensive end for Oregon had put his helmet on my right ankle. Not the same ankle Fred George had fractured in ninth grade, or the ankle below the femur Keith Simons had fractured in sixth grade. No, this was a brand-new experience for me. This time, my ankle was both fractured and dislocated. Bonus. The bone was broken and every ligament in the neighborhood was shredded. It felt like my leg was underground. Mr. Foltz wasn’t there to put me in his pickup truck. None of the Oregon players offered me a winter coat. It was just me and my leg. Underground.

My right ankle and toe have been operated on seven times since that play. My right ankle is sitting under a bag of ice as I write this. And I still love tackle football. What do four billion people know?

After my senior year at UNLV, my coach there, Tony Knapp, talked the Seahawks into giving me a tryout when Sam King turned down their free-agent deal to go to sign in Canada. He probably went there because of all that undeveloped land.

I flew to Seattle and threw for their quarterbacks coach, Jerry Rhome. Afterward, he told the player personnel director, Dick Mansberger, that I wasn’t “terrible.”

Either the Seahawks had lowered their standards, or they needed more bodies for the potential strike that year (there was one).Whatever the case, I was offered a contract for thirty thousand dollars with raises all the way to forty-five thousand dollars. I got to work out with the team at its old Kirkland, Washington, headquarters, on the shore of Lake Washington. (The part about “the shore of Lake Washington” wasn’t all that necessary, but this is my first book, and in case I end up doing Great American Novels one day, I’ll need to work on my scene settings.) During those workouts, my confidence was buoyed when Seattle fullback Dan Doornink, who was even bigger than Keith Simons, saw me complete a 22-yard “out” route. He said to me, “If you can throw that route, you can throw anything.” It was the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me.

I didn’t really think I was going to unseat the Seattle starter, Jim Zorn, or his backup, Dave Krieg, who was from tiny Milton College, which no longer exists (see “Bowling”). I just wanted to last long enough for somebody to notice me, even Susan Nelson. Maybe I would get a shot in the upstart USFL or, really now, Canada. Some of my best games were played on undeveloped land.

But on the first day of official training camp in Cheney, Washington, they put me through one last check of my ankle. I failed miserably on the Cybex machine. Had I known it was to test the strength of my bad ankle, and not just some random fitness test (which I naively thought it was), I would have cheated. I would have gone easy on my good left ankle and pushed my right (bad) ankle like I was trying to fool trained physicians. Instead, I pushed both equally hard and my right leg came up deficient. The machine spit out some kind of graph info like a lie-detector test.

My right ankle had lied.

The Seahawks had an intern drive me to the Spokane airport in a team van. He handed me ten dollars for airport meal money, the last dollar in quarters.

I now play tackle football only with my daughters other than when I throw with my NFL features producer, Tom McCollum, at NFL training sites. Lambeau Field was our biggest thrill. Tom is way better than some of those fifth-quarter players from Totem Junior High. Recently, when my contract with ESPN came up for renewal, and our family’s situation was up in the air, my older daughter, Riley, said, “Maybe you should consider playing professional football.” It was the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me.


That’s pretty much all, or at least all the important stuff you need to know about tackle football, except that my wife, Laura, has always been sort of attracted to Joe Montana. Joe’s won four Super Bowls. Three times he was the Super Bowl MVP. He’s in the Hall of Fame. He was All-America at Notre Dame. He was Sports Illustrated’s Man of the Year. He’s married to a former model.

I am attracted to Joe Montana.