A Walk In the Park

Over the years I’ve occasionally been asked which was my worst football game. The question itself is annoying enough but what’s really disturbing is when the questioner, before I can respond, begins to make suggestions. I mean sure I had a little rough luck in several games but I never considered there were enough bad ones for a lengthy debate. The way I recovered from such conversations was to ask my mother what she thought of the performances in question. After pretending to give it some thought, her reply was always along the line of “I don’t see how they could have gone any better, and by the way, is someone suggesting otherwise?”

The truth is there was one clear winner for worst but thankfully almost no one witnessed it. Eight years after I had finished playing football I was living in New York City and a guy named Mark who I had known in school invited me to join his team for a game of touch football in Central Park. At first I declined explaining that I had not moved faster than a walk in the last decade and was enjoying that speed a lot. He countered that it was just a friendly, relaxed outing and no one took it seriously.

Finally I said okay,  which I suppose gave Mark the confidence to suggest that since the games were played on Monday, the pro players’ day off, some of my former Longhorn teammates, now with the New York Jets,  might get a kick out of attending our game. When I realized he was serious I said, “They are nice guys and good friends but I don’t think it’s likely they would be interested in using their day of rest to watch me play touch football.” (When I mentioned this to the guys years later they assured me that my assessment had been correct but wished I had asked anyway so that they could have had an excuse to laugh their asses off.)

By the time I arrived at the Park on game day the other team had learned that I had been a college player on a national championship team. They suggested that it was unfair to bring in a “ringer” and therefore they should be given points; however,  they settled down when they were told I hadn’t exercised in ten years and seemed further calmed when they got a closer look at me (instead of my normal playing weight of 170 I was then at 145).

As we began warming up, I started throwing a few passes but seemed unable to throw a spiral. One of my new teammates walked over to me and said in a friendly but challenging tone, “You were a quarterback, right?” I quickly told him that obviously it had been awhile and besides my real strength had been on defense.

When it was time to start the game, because of my “ringer” status, the other team was given the ball first and I was assigned to play defensive left halfback. In college I had played safety which put me in position to watch everything develop and since I was the only one to play beyond high school it seemed foolish for me to watch just one man when I could be helpful all over. My thinking was reinforced when I saw that the man I was assigned to cover was the chubbiest one on the field.

The game began with our opponents completing a few short passes but my guy was hardly moving; I assumed he must be either bored or tired. I began to concentrate on the quarterback, preparing to move in whichever direction he was looking. Suddenly the place he was looking was over my head, and out of the corner of my eye I saw gargantuan boy flying down the field past me. I didn’t have time to recover and he caught a perfect 40- yard pass, on the dead run, for a touchdown.

While the other team was wildly celebrating and congratulating tubby, my team was busy interrogating me as to what went wrong;

         “How did he get so open?”

         “I thought we agreed to concentrate on our assigned man.”

         “Didn’t you say defense was your specialty?”

         “It seems impossible that you could have lost all your speed.”

         I said,  “He took me by surprise. Look at him, who could have imagined?”

But they just walked away. For the rest of the game I looked only at the speedy heavyweight and gave him plenty of room. They didn’t score again but neither did we, so we lost 6-0.

When I got home after the game my wife said,  “Rough day huh?”

         “How did you know?”

         “Mark’s wife just called.”

         “That was thoughtful of her.”

         “Did the fellow actually weigh 250?”

         “I don’t know.”

         “You used to be so fast.”

         “I remember.”

         “Well, you’ll do better next time.”

But there was not to be another time. Mark and I would see each other occasionally, but he never mentioned and I never asked if they still had their games in the park. It took me a while to recover from that performance, but I took some consolation from the fact that at least Mother hadn’t seen it.