I do not recall the first time I donned a football helmet and the wonderful gear that comes with playing little-gridder ball. I do recall wearing it though. The equipment included a male girdle to protect the hips, thigh pads and knee-pads that went into the pants, shoulder pads and cleats. This was as close to a uniform for battle that a boy would ever come. It was a thing of beauty and glory! Also, there was a distinct smell and feel to this time of year. It was the fragrance of piles and piles of yellow and red leaves combined with a cool crispness in the autumn air. And, invariably, someone was raking and burning them outside, which intensified that fragrance. It makes me think of the movie Apocalypse Now where Robert Duvall comments that he loves the smell of napalm in the morning. When I got a whiff of that smell, football was in the air.
Well, of course the season started with practices usually no later than mid-August. And coaches offered all sorts of warnings to prevent injuries, such as “lead with your body, not with your head! Make sure your chinstrap is buttoned! Get rid of your gum!” The last one made no sense to me, which is not unusual for my age. The coaches could see we all had bubble gum in our mouths and warned all of us about how we might bite our tongue. After his speech, the coach looked directly at me and instructed me to get rid of my gum. I feigned like I had but didn’t. Shortly after, we started a practice drill and I was asked to carry the ball and a defender hit me low and wrapped his arms around my calves. I went to my knees first, followed by my stomach and then my chin. When my chin hit the ground, my teeth bit into my tongue right where I was chewing the gum. Sure enough, I ended up in the emergency room with a small chunk of my tongue missing. When the coach saw blood coming out of my mouth, he looked inside and mentioned that a chunk was missing. Instinctively, I started looking around on the ground the way someone looks for a contact lens. I couldn’t find the chunk, but no matter. Off to the emergency room I went. I was embarrassed but with this little uniform on, people treated me like they were getting me ready to receive a “Purple Heart.” The doctor stitched it up with two stitches and without a local anesthetic. I’ll spare you what it felt like. But if I put my tongue out far enough almost 45 years later, you can still see the scar. It seemed strange to be in an emergency room for a mouth injury due to playing football, but this was before plastic mouthguards. Heck, I don’t remember my first practice helmet having a facemask, although we got helmets with facemasks for the actual games.
I was a middle linebacker and fullback that first year and started both ways. I must have played decently that first year, because I do have fond memories of my father taking me on occasion to the Whippy Dip or Dairy Queen below Hawkins Avenue and the tracks on Fourth street for milkshakes. He was of the mindset that milkshakes were good for your bones and strength and who was I to argue with him. Bring it on! As many as I could get! There were three teams in our division of 8 and 9 year olds. This division was called the “Termites.” There was the Red team, Green team and Yellow team. The Green team was stacked with the best players from the three wards that made up the borough of North Braddock. I know there is usually an effort on the part of the coaches to create equity, but for whatever reason it wasn’t there. I was on the worst of the three teams, the Read team. But as a nine-year old on offense, I held my own and managed to run well, rarely fumbled and could drag more than a few players along. On defense was where I shined, capable of anticipating the snap count and blitzing in to take down the quarterback or halfback just as he was receiving the ball. My big drawback has always been that I am slow, have always been slow and will always be slow. But it is strange, I was slow, but very quick. I could get anybody if it was within five yards. I had great peripheral vision and field vision. Occasionally, I would get taken in by a bootleg, a double reverse or fake handoff, but they were rare.
The following year, I played with the 10 and 11 year olds on the “Mighty-Mites.” I went from starting the prior year to seeing limited action at fullback. They had better players to run the ball. But I still started at middle-linebacker. There are a couple of experiences that season that stood out in my memory. One had to do with a practice where a very, very large defender was to tackle me as I try to run through him. They place dummies on the left and right to keep the players from trying to skirt around the defender. And for this practice, my mother’s first cousin, my Great Aunt Beulah’s son, “Nuffy” was helping out as an assistant coach with the team. As we line up, the defender smiles at me as if to say, “You are mine!” Well Nuffy hands me the ball and I run at the humongous defender. Now, I was no smallfry, but this kid was definitely eating his Wheaties and whatever else he could get his hands on. I thought to myself, “this guy is going to kill me!” Instinctively, just before we made contact, I jumped straight up in the air, straight up. You must remember, if a person is slow chances are they can’t jump either. And without thinking I come back down to the ground looking in the direction I’m running and the defender is gone. As my feet hit the ground I run forward and turn back to see what happened. The coaching staff are laughing. I mean, they are bent over, laughing with tears in their eyes. Apparently, when I jumped up, the defender at that time tried to move in on me very low and he moved so quickly he went under me completely and never touched me. When I came back to where everyone was standing, the coaches said they were laughing at the grimaced look of fear on my face when I jumped and the smile of satisfaction tied to the fact that I pulled it off. They made me run it again and told me not to jump. “Just go through him, don’t be afraid!” Nuffy still tells the story and shakes his head.
The second recollection that stands out was an away game against Lower Burrell. I remember one play that stands out where the quarterback fakes a handoff to the halfback going to my right but the quarterback keeps the ball and bootlegs to the left as I am blitzing. Given the blitz, I didn’t bite on the fake and stayed right with the quarterback. I remember him being just out of my reach as I ran, leaning with my arms dangling, hands reaching and grasping. Now of course the quarterback was faster than me, but I was managing to stay just behind him. And it became clear, very quickly that I was the only one who did not go with the play fake and it was a foot race between this Lower Burrell quarterback and me. As I chased him following him out into the flat, he began to turn upfield and he was beginning to put more space between the both of us. I had myself in a full sprint and could not close on him. Just then, I heard my dad yell, “dive, dive!” They say that babies and children can distinguish the calls of their parents in the presence of other adults and even when the noise level is rather high. Well, no one has ever heard my dad yell. He could bellow above most crowds and his voice was clear and distinct. At the moment I heard him holler, “dive, dive,” I did exactly that. I dove and stretched out my arms and hands and caught the heels and shoelaces of the quarterback. As he was thrown off stride by my reach, I found myself grabbing both of his feet. My body was completely stretched out and at this point, his body was the same. In that moment our bodies were a straight line parallel to the ground. We hit the ground hard and I prevented the touchdown. This was the only classic shoe-string tackle I would ever make. Everyone cheered after the play on both sides of the stadium as every football lover thrills to see a great play! It was particularly satisfying to have the coaches from the other team single me out when we walked through the handshake ritual to signify good sportsmanship after the game was over. My dad grinned from ear to ear. And I think I got a whole milkshake for that one play.
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3 Comments
May 1, 2008 at 8:49 am
Did your food preferences change after your tongue was treated? Or did some flavors register differently than before the shouldve-spit-out-the-gum lesson?
(are little league baseball kids instructed to lose the gum too?)
May 1, 2008 at 10:19 am
I don’t think so. It hurt for a couple of weeks and just went away.
In baseball, kids chew gum and sometimes put large amounts of bubble gum to imitate the few pro ball players that chew tobacco. I don’t see that very often anymore, but it does happen occasionally. Some bubble gum manufacturers will simulate a tobacco pouch and sell shredded bubble gum.
thanks for the question!
May 1, 2008 at 11:22 am
Shredded bubble gum! I remember that from the 80s. This grocery store called Bruno’s sold them.