By Dick Brooks
For Capital Region Independent Media
The morning air has a little bite to it and a few colored leaves flutter down. It’s fall, football time!
If I listen carefully, I can still hear the clash of pads and helmets, the thud of bodies, the grunts and groans of extreme effort, so I know I’m having a football flashback, or else the dog got shut in the cellar again and is banging on the door to be let out.
I loved football and still get helmet envy when I pass the high school during practice. It’s hard to remember as I watch these young giants racing up and down the field that under all that fancy equipment and plastic body armor are a bunch of skinny 16- and 17-year-olds.
I always watch for the second stringers — they aren’t hard to spot if you know what to look for. Even in this era of big athletic budgets, they are the ones who don’t quite match.
They might have different stripes on their uniforms or the shirt and pants are slightly mismatched. Their jerseys might not have their names on the back.
They tend to clump together, they know assuredly who and what they are. Their place in the scheme of things is cast in cement. They are the expendables, Varsity Chow. Every day they offer up their blood and sweat with no hope of being the star of the game on Saturday.
The thing that keeps them going is the knowledge that out of their pitiful herd will rise next year’s heroes and it might even be them. I love the second stringers, their hope knows no bounds.
I was a second stringer once upon a time. I made the decision early in my high school career to offer up my manly 120-pound carcass to the football gods.
I showed up for the first day of practice, no try outs, no cuts, if you wanted to play, there was a place for you. My previous experience consisted of pick-up games with my friends in a former corn field. I had practiced my broken field running avoiding “meadow muffins” and had toughened up playing with no equipment.
The coach welcomed us new guys and turned us over to the equipment manager to get outfitted for combat. He doled out the most pitiful collection of cast-off and outdated junk imaginable. We didn’t realize it was junk; it was real football equipment and we were now real football players.
The next stage of my career began when I tried to figure out how to put the stuff I had been given on and where it went.
I started by putting the hip pads on backwards, figuring the front was the area I really was interested in protecting. The kid on my right pointed out that it might be difficult to run if I wore them the way I had them on, I thanked him and turned them around. The pads were skimpy by today’s standards, made out of some kind of fiberboard and padded with what looked like thick felt. They did bulk you up and made you feel kind of he-manly.
The pants were made of canvas and ended at the knee. Mine had seen better days, having been patched in several places, smelled of liniment and had room in them for a couple of other guys my size even after I cinched the belt up as tightly as I could.
My shoes had been worn by Jim Thorpe or at least someone from his era, black high-topped leather, cracking a little from age with spikes screwed on the bottom.
My crowning glory was my helmet. I swear it was made of papier-mache on the sides and had a steel top. No face mask, no bars to protect your tender nose. This was a take-no-prisoners, full-speed-ahead piece of equipment. The only problem is that it was about 12 sizes too big. Every time I would get down in my football stance and get a snarl on my face, the helmet kind of ruined my image by slipping forward, down over my eyes until the only thing I could see was my opponent’s hands on the ground in front of me.
I remember making a really sharp turn to the right once, my helmet continued going straight ahead and I wound up with my nose stuck in the helmet’s ear hole. Not a good way to impress the cheerleaders.
So to all the second stringers out there, take heart and carry on the good fight. Some day when you are my age, you too can remember back, smile and walk weirdly.
Thought for the week — “Men do not quit playing because they grow old. They grow old because they quit playing.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Until next week, may you and yours be happy and well.
Reach columnist Dick Brooks at whittle12124@yahoo.com.
