‘Stache and Gridiron: Concrete Downs

I had to shave my beard. I have several business meetings all next week with a very important customer. But, before I shaved it off, I wanted to see how I looked with the mustache. Observe:



Don’t worry, it’s gone now.
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Football for me started on Woodhull Street, playing with a Nerf and all the neighborhood kids. You get four downs to score – the sidelines were the rows of cars running down the street. One goal-line was the start of the Hicks Street lot, the other was the hood of some car, depending on how long of a field we wanted.

Every play was the same. The slowest kid on the defending team hiked the ball to the quarterback and counted to 7-Mississippi way too fast. The quarterback looks down field for the open man while shouting, “You’re counting too fast you fucking fat fucking fuck!” Two of the receivers do a crossing pattern, quarterback lets go of the ball and it’s a 50/50 chance that ball will be intercepted – a 10/90 chance it’ll actually be caught by the intended receiver. The receiver will complain about pass interference, the fucking fat fucking fuck that was counting to 7-Mississippi too fast will run up and push the receiver, shoving turns to fists until someone eventually breaks it apart and calls for a “do over”. The kid who owns the football will get so pissed off that he’ll leave and take it with him. At that point we go to Joe Toemo’s cigar/candy shop and pick up a blue-ball for a quarter and play some stoop-ball provided that there’s a stoop available without a car parked in front of it. Otherwise we go to the powerhouse and play suicide.

And that was football on Woodhull Street.

In elementary school we started cutting lunch to play football in Carroll Park. I already told you one story from our PS58 footballing days, a happy tale involving football and guns. I was always one of the receivers since I was pretty fast and had about a two foot reach over everyone. One time I was burning downfield and, not understanding the physics of a body hitting concrete, took flight for a bad pass, caught it in the air, hit the ground, bounced, slid and got thoroughly fucked up. I still wear my keloid on my arm proud.

The keloid has come in handy in the past. You’ll be surprised how many out-of town girls believed it was a gunshot wound when I was growing up. This keloid helped me pull much Pennsylvanian ass during family trips to the Poconos. It used to be a lot bigger, too. When I was twelve my father took me to a special doctor that informed me if he were to cut it off it would grow back bigger. Instead he shot me up with about twenty cortisone shots, my keloid bleeding profusely, and told me I’d have to go back one more time to finish the treatment. After those two days of hell the keloid shrunk down quite a bit.

My father played rough-touch with his friends every Saturday and used to take me with him, I’d play regular touch football with the other kids. These guys were nuts – it was basically tackle football but it’s easier to sell “rough touch” to the wife. But man, I’d see my pops out there in the snow drilling people from behind and getting drilled in return, all without pads, and it was the coolest thing imaginable for a kid my age. Of course he hurt his back eventually and stopped playing for about a year which was awesome for me – I got to use his special receiver gloves in my pick-up games. They were the “Jerry Rice” endorsed gloves that made it possible to pull down a football using one finger. Those things were so not NFL-legal. My father’s back was never the same again but I was king shit on Woodhull Street with those gloves.

Before my father’s injury he got to play in this touch football tournament at Giants’ Stadium. I don’t know if they simply entered some tournament or they won their spot but he took me along. This was the summer after the Giants’ championship, the winner of the tournament got to play the Giants in touch football. I’m sure my pops played his heart out but they didn’t make it past the first round. I didn’t really watch him play, me and a bunch of kids played our own game at the Meadowlands – that’s a once in a lifetime opportunity and I took full advantage.

So, I love football. Problem was I was never really good at it. My father was shocked when I told him I was trying out for the football team in High School and even more shocked when I made it.

Not as shocked when I got moved from Tight End to Lineman two practices in.