I made it through another Christmas Week! Between family, friends and business get- togethers there was just too much rich food and imbibing of spirits for a man my age to consume gracefully – I was feeling like crap! I only know one remedy for this feeling so I slapped on the earphones and hit the treadmill for an hour. Had a smoke and now I feel better!

However, those first ten minutes really sucked. Very quickly I had that head-pounding ready to puke feeling. While you may think that this was a horrible way to end the holiday it was actually somewhat enjoyable as the feeling pulled me back to weekend football in high school. I’ve mentioned football in a few stories before but I never really went into it. However, the treadmill clarified the memory and that amused me during an otherwise boring endeavor.    

The High School Football we played was actually Town Football. For the most part we all attended the same school but there was a ferocious town rivalry that transferred well to the game field (read Come See About Me). However, we were hardly dedicated athletes unless, of course, there is an Olympic category for drinking and carousing. Just because we were going to play football the next morning was no reason not to stay out all night drunk and disorderly. These poor training habits made the first few minutes of the game, well, memorable for lack of a better word. This one particular game that comes to mind was pretty typical. We were receiving the opening kick-off. If you were not the one to catch the kick-off or close enough to the receiver to block then your objective was to knock someone down and take them out of the play. No matter what your roll in the return it inevitably resulted in a head-on crash with a member of the opposing team.

Needless to say this is a rather traumatic way to start the day when you have a hangover. I think it was Jimmy who ran the return and he did pretty well as he had gotten us out to our own thirty-five yard line. Then it starts – first huddle. For those who may not know the game the huddle requires your eleven-man team to stand in a circle huddled over to hear the quarterbacks call for the next play. There is heavy breathing and the center of the huddle smells like a stale bar rag. Vinny lifts his face guard a few inches and pukes. Bobby expresses some explicit commentary and immediately joins him by puking on himself and Andy’s cleats. I stand up and look around to make a mental note of the position on the field where this has taken place to remember an area to avoid if possible. I see the opposing team standing at the line of scrimmage and one of them is puking too. 

On this particular day we were playing Iron Man Football. That’s when you don’t have enough players to have two full teams; one for offence and one for defense. We only had a few substitutes so that meant you stayed in for both offence and defense. However, at seventeen you can do it without too much trouble. Youth is a wonderful thing!

I guess the reason this particular game comes to mind is because it was the game in which I learned that I was too small to play this game much longer. I was about a hundred and seventy five pounds (small is a relative thing in football). Some of these bruisers were hitting the two hundred to two ten range and it was getting ugly out there. Usually my speed and agility kept me out of serious trouble but not today.

I’m halfback on a pitchout to the right side and as I pick up a block and turn up field there’s this prick that played for Brooklyn Tech (you could play as long as you lived in your town and age didn’t matter either). He’ running full out and drops low to hit me. I pull the ball to my chest and cover it with both arms and drop to meet him. Next thing I know I’m on my ass but I still have the ball. I see him on his ass also just as two guys hit me to end the play. Needless to say we rang each other’s bells and avoided each other for the remainder of the game.

Next I get my right shoulder dislocated and come back to the huddle with my arm looking like a chicken wing. Vinny don’t say anything but reached out and grabs my rist and yanks down hard. A few screams and explicit words later and the arm is working again and I continue to play – Duh. It didn’t bother me most of my life but now days it wakes me up at night if a lay on it wrong.

Then the final draw – This two twenty monster carries the ball between a hole in the line and since I was playing line backer I had to stop him. To make a long story short I didn’t stop him! He literally ran over me crushing his cleats the length of my body (in those days we wore half inch steel cleats). Wherever I didn’t have padding I had holes in my body. To make things worse we lost the game. I played a few more times after that but decided that I would devote more time to pool and ping pong in the future.

However, I have to say that one of the greatest feelings in the world was hanging out in the Diner Parking Lot after the game still in your Jersey, pads, cleats and all covered in dirt and a little blood with a cold beer in your hand. You could hurt later. For the time being the adrenalin high and game talk with the team was one step closer to the top of the world.