6           

That offseason, spinning on my new CD player were Guns N’ Roses Lies, Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, and The Beastie Boy’s License To Ill and Paul’s Boutique as well as anything from Zeppelin, The Who and The Doors. I hit the weight room hard, but one huge failing in our conditioning program was…lack of conditioning. All we did was throw weights around in a semi-efficient way (looking back and seeing some of the terrible lifting techniques we employed due to lack of any real coherent coaching on the matter makes me wonder how more kids weren't hurt). There was no cardio whatsoever. We should’ve been out on the track running sprints and on the field all Winter working our heart/lungs. We should’ve been doing shuttle-runs in the gym. We should’ve been working on our speed, endurance, and quickness, not just strength.

In mid April, playing basketball on a 7-foot hoop and wearing Timberland boots, I stepped on someones foot after coming down from a dunk and tore my right ankle to shreds. It had to be put in a cast. Recovery would be about two months. I thought the cast would gain me some sympathy from the coaches, but instead when I showed up on crutches, they were completely ambivalent almost to the degree it seemed like Pal and the others wondered if I was faking it somehow. For real.

Over the years I had seen them fawn all over guys who had been injured, but that wasn’t my relationship with them. They wouldn’t let me be anything other than tough and rock solid. In fact, I’ve never been babied babied that much, even by my mother. I still remember very clearly being nine-years-old and rushing home after falling off my bike and skinning my entire right leg sliding on a baseball infield. It was an ugly wound. I cried as my mother cleaned it. She said to toughen up and to ‘stop being a baby’. That was the end for me. When your own mother informs you that you can no longer be a baby, that is it. I think it’s an important moment in a boys life. This doesn’t mean you can’t be sensitive and kind and all that, it means this is a tough world and when it truly comes down to it, no one likes a man-baby, aka a wimp.

I was never allowed to be ‘wimpy’ mainly because that’s just not who I am at my core, not because it was forced on me. The coaches were just carrying on with the program. Still, I wanted some sympathy, but could find it nowhere. I couldn’t even get it from my own parents. In fact, foot still in cast, my father made me push a Volkswagen GTI up a small hill in order to do a running start because the battery was dead (only possible with a manual transmission). I guess file all this under the heading: Character Building.

This injury taught me an important lesson: Don’t get hurt.

My junior year saw me finally being reunited with my own grade. I hadn’t EVER played a down with them. The team was stacked with good athletes and tough kids. We had some size and speed. My junior year was also the first year I didn’t care so much about how I looked on the field. I didn’t care what my facemask looked like. Didn’t care if my shoulder pads made me look bigger. I didn’t wear gloves or arm guards. I was out there to win and be the best linemen in Section-1.

It was by far my best preseason. I wasn’t the youngest anymore and I was playing with my friends. Gone were all the stupid things I was prone to. I knew my job and the coaches left me alone to do it. Our team was projected to win Section 1 for the first time in school history.

A bit of tragedy struck in the Maroon & White game. Our Tri-Captain Tom Lynch suffered a knee injury (injury to a knee he had hurt the season before). He played right defensive tackle. Going with the flow of the play I collapsed into his left knee. He had stood up his man and I was on the move and fighting off a double team. Momentum took me and two guys into his legs. I always felt bad about it but that’s football. Tom would miss the first game. The Maroon & White game was a travesty all three of them I played in.

To say it rained for at least half of the football games I played might be conservative. Our season opener was at Mahopac. On a rain soaked September Saturday we beat them 14-0. The win felt better than any I had ever experienced. We were truly on our way to a great season. No video or pictures of this game exist…yet.

We play Spring Valley at home next. Kevin hurts his right knee badly (ACL tear and MCL partial) in this game and in comes backup David Feuerstein who is in my grade. We win convincingly 22-6. I remember nothing of this game and this is only recording from it.

Our third game was a forfeit by the other team, hapless Lincoln High School who couldn’t field a team. Not getting to play that game drove me nuts. I couldn’t understand how such a thing could happen. It was a disgrace. We only played nine regular seasons games, so every game mattered, and a football game for me was some kind of three-hour-long transcendental experience I never wanted to miss.

The forfeiture would end up hurting us in a big way.

Up next is Suffern. They have the best QB in the Section. He can really air it out but his bread and butter are short passes after a quick drop back. They’re also a Wing-T offense. My main job is to tackle the FB even if he doesn’t have the ball. It’s a home game, cool and dry late September Saturday. Tom Lynch is back at tackle, but then hurts his knee again late 3rd quarter. The other defensive tackle Brad Sussman also has a season ending knee injury during the game. Next thing I know, two backups are flanking me, Gerald #75 moves from offensive tackle and is very good, the other isn’t good.

Right after Lynch goes down the defense cracks. I get fooled on a double trap play and they make it down to our goal line then score easily. And then our offensive line collectively forgets how to block and we can’t move the ball.

Our long shadows cast across Dean Field. It’s a beautiful day and an ugly outcome.

The game ends in a 7-7 tie. I truly believe that the Lincoln forfeit was the cause. The post game speech we get is nothing short of terrifying. Coach Pal yells himself hoarse. It was a pathetic outcome and we all hate it. Better than a loss, yes, but disappointment has come. The after game dinner is like a wake without alcohol.

We get back on track and shut out Mt Vernon 23-0 at Memorial Field where they play their home games. Any grass that had been there last year is totally gone and I remember excavating tiny pebbles that had imbedded in my elbows.

Next up is Mamaroneck at home. Tom Lynch is back and somehow so is Walsh. Walsh doesn’t play but for reasons unknown, Tom comes in at tackle mid 3rd quarter and totally tears up his knee the first play he’s back. Out for season. We win 24-0.

At Rosevelt. Going to be a rough game on their dirt field overlooking Central Ave in Yonkers. Kevin is back at starting QB. Let’s Go!

Our perennial rival White Plains is up. Big Cable 3 game of the week and there is actual hype in the County paper The Reported Dispatch. I’m one of the featured players to look out for. I’ll be matching up against two of Section-1’s best and biggest linemen. My coaches told me how I was now a major part of the opposing team’s gameplan. How to stop #74 was one of their big questions.

All week I had to hear about the three guys I would be lining up agains (a Nose Guard ALWAYS has four guys that he must prepare for: center and two guards and fullback). The center and right guard were big, both over 6’2 and 240+ and projected to be good college players. Steve Hanrahan and William Covert. Before the first snap they reached out to shake my hand and wished me a good game. That is what you call ‘football class’, sportsmanship, and mutual respect earned from the previous year’s battle in the slop. Only some highlights of the game are online.

We shut out White Plains 15-0. I had 13 tackles and two sacks. When all those bodies would come at me for a run up the middle, I would just collapse the whole thing into a heap, allowing the rest of my team to clean up the ball carrier. When they ran to the outside, I was there slipping through the line making plays. As good as the Mahopac season opener felt, this win was double that. People started talking about me being a major Div-1 prospect. (Back then Division-1 was the ‘big leagues’ where all the big name college teams played. Then came Div-1A, Div-1AA, and Div-1AAA. Most football payers from Westchester went Div-1AAA with a select few going Div-1A which included the Ivy League. A small percentage would get a true Div-1 full ride scholarship).

The stage was set for our last regular season game. We were pitching five shutouts in a row. The winner of this game would be in second place in Section-1 and play North Rockland in the big bowl game (North Rockland was almost ALWAYS the top team in the Section).

New Rochelle was good again, better than the last season. Their QB, a great competitor named Tom Prudian, had speed and a great arm. And guess what… they now run the Wing-T! New Ro was one of the few teams we played that had an actual stadium. Sunken, lower from street level and built in the 1920s, it formed a bowl with grassy knolls on the ends and cold mud down the middle. It had a press box. The stands were full. Probably 2500 people were there, which was a huge crowd for us. Blasting on the stadium intercom pregame was Young MC’s Principal’s Office. Tom Lynch is recupterting in the hospital after having reconstructive knee surgery so we are missing one of our leaders. Even though he had been out for a few weeks he was at games on cruches and would go out for coin-toss with Kevin and Andrew. (Something had always bothered me. Kevin, starting QB and coming back from a serious knee sprain that would’ve ended most guys seasons, is back at long snapper. That’s a bad coaching move in my opinion.)

This was a very tough game, a game that has stuck with me all these years. In a twist of epic proportions, the full game was recently uploaded to YouTube and narrated by two fathers. For the rest of history for all to see will be our offense scratching out six points (missed extra pt) and our very strong defense spending 80% of the game on the field. Josh Kessler was going against their best player named Scott Travis. 6’5 260, looked like Dolph Lungren, and went on a full-ride to The Florida Gators. Mid 3rd quarter New Ro exploits this big miss match and just hammers away at it.

With two minutes left New Ro punts from their 20. Our guy fumbles it. We hold but lose the possession which would’ve started on our 45.

Going into halftime the score is 6-0.

I make some big plays as my sideline to sideline quickness is in full force. One play, in pursuit of the quarterback, I leap over the pile and knee one of my teammates Doug Knopp in the head. It’s a full-speed hit. His eyes were glossy and he was hardly there. One of toughest guys I’ve ever known.

The game features two massive mistakes by the SHS Raiders in the second half that lead to our demise. (As I reflect on my losses in high school and even college, it dawns on me that the vast majority of losses were due more to our own mistakes rather than the other team’s superiority).

3rd quarter, game tied 6-6, driving to score a TD and put us up by 6 or 7 if we can kick an extra pt, on New Ro’s 35yrd line, Andrew Brennan gets hit on a sweep right, the ball pops up, and is snatched out of the air by a New Ro player. He sprints down down our sidelines, scorning a TD. Runs right by me. For a split second the urge to tackle him overcomes me. A reflex. My fast-twitch muscle system engaging. I come very close to stepping out and close-lining the kid. I can’t even imagine how that would’ve turned out.

So now mid 3rd quarter it’s 12-6. Our offense goes three and out several times. Watching game again we should’ve been throwing the ball all game, but Coach Pal was run up middle first, then option left or right, then pass. New Ro has a long drive, just hammering away, running behind Travis and thier other good lineman. For record the New Ro center was the best lineman I played against in high school. The two guards were very good too. The score and are up 12-6.

With four minutes left in game after stopping New Ro and forcing a punt, our return man, a good player and good guy I will not name because it’s so painful, fumbles the punt on our own ten-yard line. I also won’t show it.

A crushing blow. We’re giving the game away.

We hold them to a field goal and it’s 15-6. With two minutes left and an offensive that can’t get a first down it’s over. The game ends. A crushing defeat.

Like football players have been doing for the past 100 years after a painful loss, we get over it and focus on the next opponent. There’s still a very good chance we will be picked to play in the Section 1 Championship vs North Rockland.

Nope.

Again we’re playing in the ancient crumbling ruin called Memorial Stadium in a rematch. This time, though, the game is a 2pm kickoff (the night game was reserved for the marquee matchup of Carmel vs. North Rockland. Somehow Carmel had slipped past New Ro into the 2nd spot. There seemed to always be some kind of controversy with the Section-1 bowl system).

We knew Suffern was going to air it out and we worked all week on our pass rush. There was a lot of pressure on the team. Coach Pal was 0-4 in bowl games and was getting a reputation for losing big games (like the New Ro ‘must win’ the week before). In fact Scarsdale hadn’t won a bowl game since 1971. We wanted to get him a win, and even more so a win for the out-going seniors who I had been playing with since 4th grade.

Over and over the coaches drilled into us about mistakes. The only way a team could beat us was by us beating ourselves. As for playing Suffern again, I wasn’t too happy about it. Rematches have never been my favorite thing. We believed our destiny was to play North Rockland and have a rematch of that epic game four years earlier. But I promise you once the first snap is done, everything in the past is forgotten and you want to win the game you’re in more than anything. We won the toss and deferred, sending our defense on the field first. Right before I ran out onto the field, Coach V said: “Biff, make some plays.”

The first play was a pass. The play is on YouTube. Lightning quick I’m past the center and in the backfield, and with one hand I bring the QB down for a sack (my hands are like a pit bull’s mouth, once I get hold of someone, they never get away). The next play was a sweep to the left. I sliced through the line and brought the RB down five yards behind the line of scrimmage.

The pace had been set. I would not let us lose that game. No way. After those first two plays I got tripled-teamed on nearly every play.

Even though we were vastly superior to our opponent, as we left the field for halftime, the score was 10-3 Suffern. Our offense was sputtering…again as. In that locker-room the mood was dour even though we were only losing by seven points. When Coach Pal came in, everyone quieted. For seven minutes our head coach screamed his head off. He said something to the affect that if we didn’t want to play we could stay in the locker-room and die. It was kinda shocking, but the speech fired us up. We scored on the first drive of the second half and never looked back.

The final score was 34-17. Coach Pal had his first bowl victory and the team was jubilant. Myself and Andrew Brennan are interviewed as MVPs after the game surrounded by the entire team.

At the end of season banquet, it’s announced that Doug Knopp and I will be the next team captains. It was a great honor. We’re voted in by our teammates.

Sometime after Thanksgiving my junior year I decided to change the way I ate and rode a stationary bike for cardio. Gone was fast food, junk food and soda. The weight disappeared, and next thing I know I’d lost 45 pounds. My clothes didn’t fit. The coaches didn’t like that their biggest player and co-captain was no longer a 270lb linemen.

7

Early Spring of my junior year letters from major Division-1 colleges started showing up. UCLA was the first letter I got. It was a form letter going on about how they understood I’m a great football talent and would be watching my progress. A week later when I got a letter from Notre Dame, I was walking on water. Truth is, I don’t know who sends out these letters; probably some lowly assistant who’s given a list by the recruiting coordinator. They really don’t mean anything, but it was exciting none the less and you are officially in their system.

Around this time my focus became academics. Throughout my school career, I was a solid C student. I excelled at doing the bare minimum to pass. I was happy with that. For my junior year I was no longer in the skills department (which meant I was no longer taking mostly skills classes which was where all the school’s slow learners, learning disabilities, trouble makers, and degenerates were). I had also started prepping for the SAT.

Back then my philosophy about school was that studying sucked. If you had to do anything, cram the shit out of it the night before the test. Instead of reading the whole assignment, read the first page of the chapter and raise your hand at the beginning of class, answer a few questions, then be quiet, the teacher won’t call on you again. You can then relax with a big congratulatory grin on your face and just kick back for the rest of class. I just didn’t care about actual school work or so-called ‘learning’. I loved the social aspect, and some classes like Social Studies, Science, and Current Events I excelled at. English, Math, not so much. I also cut a lot of class, most of the time without consequence, but at the same time detention was not unfamiliar territory.

All around me, my peers were stressing and getting ready for the college process. The pressure at SHS to get into a good college drove some kids mad. They believed their entire lives would be decided based on where they spent the four/five years after graduating high school. I’d rather watch TV and play Nintendo/SEGA then do homework, in fact, I hardly ever did homework, ever.

My first SAT I took un-timed due to my dyslexia. My mother was the one who set the whole thing up. I could’ve taken ten hours on the test if I wanted. I walked out of there in just over an hour. I got a 1178. That was good enough, I figured, especially for hardly studying for the grammar half of the test. All I had to do was get a 2.0GPA and over a 800 on the SAT to be eligible to play college football. Now, if I wanted to play at a good academic school, that was a different story.

Through a business connection, my father set up a meeting with an NYC judge who was a powerful alumni at Yale. We had a nice lunch in the city and he seemed impressed with me. He went on and on how I would help Yale beat Harvard. Then we got to my grades. The only way he could help me get into the Ivy League school was if I blasted past 1300 on the SAT and got a 3.5 first half of my senior year. Until then, the coaches wouldn’t even talk to me.

I didn’t care. I had other plans.

Late Spring I started working out a gym called East Coast Fitness. In the basement under a Red Lobster, the dark smelly place was home to many steroid heads. I liked it because it was bigger than the school gym and had a lot more equipment. Plus a lot of the Roosevelt guys worked out there and I really liked them. The problem, I was now co-captain and I had to be around the SHS weightroom all the time. I worked out both places, but Coach Pal was very much against East Coast. He told me straight up I had to be around more and he didn’t like the people at that ‘other gym’.

When we did testing to see what everyone was benching, a new guy named Coach Bundaron spotted me when I attempted 315lbs. Three 45lb weights on each side of the bar. With that 315 and a 475 squat, my numbers were good enough when college teams came asking. Also, there was my 40-yard-dash time. The best I could do with no training or coaching, was 5.02. I was desperate to get that under 4.9. I was so focused on all those numbers it took away from my football focus. Without Coach Bundaron pulling up about 15lbs of that 315, I wouldn’t have ever been able to bench that much, but on the board went 315 and that was all that mattered.

For a brief period during the end of my junior year I considered trying steroids. I researched them (which back then meant only one thing: going to the library). I never got further than reading that book. It wasn’t worth it. Even though I was getting more recruiting letters, and when the perennial preseason college football magazine Streets & Smith came out and my name (somehow correctly spelled) was listed as one of the Top 50 High School Linemen in the entire nation, people were congratulating me left and right, but in my mind, I still wasn’t big enough, strong enough, fast enough, quick enough, but I knew I was ‘good’ enough. And honestly, on paper I wasn’t major Div-1 material, but in the only way that truly counted, I was…I could just flat out play football come gametime.

I had intangible abilities. Football predator. I always knew where the ball was and I was almost always within a few yards of the play. I had innate football awareness and hated losing so much that my desire to win was painful. The history of football even to this day is full of guys who on paper and video aren’t that impressive, but they could play the game as good as anyone.

Before preseason began, my mother and I drove to a sporting supply company in the Bronx and bought me a new pair of shoulder pads called Ridell Power—next-gen pads rather than the ones I wore the year before which were the same tech from 1960. I also got a new facemask that looked a hell of a lot more intimidating than the plastic one my new size-8 helmet came with. (Those plastic face masks were one of the worst equipment innovations of all time and were easily broken and looked terrible.) The Ridell Power pads are the football standard even to this day. They were smoked grey with black pads. I got a neck roll installed. The pads were huge and I think added a level of intimidation (although a few years later, smaller pads for D-linemen would become the standard). Football, like most sports, is a mind game as much as it is a body game. If you can get in your opponents head before the snap, that’s a small victory that can help lead to a victory on the scoreboard. Psych-out the lineman in front of you by presenting a hulking mass who looks ready to crush anything that comes his way.

By the time preseason of my senior year began I had gained back 35lbs. With every dinner I ate loads of pasta plus whatever the main meal was. I also drank a lot of beer that summer. My first week of being team co-captain went smoothly. The juniors were a raggedy bunch, though. They wouldn’t contribute much to our team and it was like they weren’t even there. The juniors had only three or four guys who were decent football players. And the sophomores? I was a real dick to most of them. When I saw them slacking I’d turn all captainy, order them around and give a lecture about commitment and teamwork. This was my place. I’d been around that locker room for five years. One sophomore kid, and this is true, had to leave preseason for a Nintendo camp. I blew my top, told him he should choose football or Nintendo.

One exceedingly hot day during rest between practices in the old gym, a bunch of sophomores, juniors, and a few seniors were playing tackle pingpong and just running around, doing anything but resting. I sat there, shaking my head. I knew what was coming. Coach Pal walked in on the action. For 10 minutes we heard him yell about how stupid it was to be fucking around when we should be resting. Then Coach Pal turned to me, yelling that I should’ve put a stop to it. Those kids joined the rest of us on the mats and that was the end of between-practice tackle pingpong.

During the second week of two-a-days, a reporter for the county newspaper showed up along with a camera crew for the cable station. They took a lot of pictures and interviewed me.

Apparently I had been named All State 1st team.

Things were going great until that stupid and useless end of preseason ritual, the Maroon & White Scrimmage, arrived once more. For reasons I never knew, Coach Pal gave me one of the terrible new white jerseys to wear for our team pictures which we would take before the scrimmage. All the juniors wore them. He refused to give me the trusty white #74 jersey I’d worn for two years. The numbers on the new jersey were a different color than half the team and was just a generally ill-fitting piece of crap.

In the locker-room before the scrimmage I saw a teammate taking 200mg caffeine pills. I asked for one. I had never done anything like it before, but figured now was a good time to try them out. See if the pills could give me an edge. If they weren’t good, at least it wasn’t a game. I popped one. Then two, three, four. Within a 15-minute period I had taken six, 200mg pills, which according to the package is equal to 12 cups of coffee, but in reality is much more because its pure caffeine. By the time we hit the field I was on fire. My mind and body were in hyperdrive. I remember sacking the QB, our own starting QB, and wanting to crush him. I was actually playing great and was tearing though my own team, when suddenly between plays I dropped to a knee. It felt like my heart was going to explode. I puked. Next thing I know I run to the sidelines, tell a coach I have to throw up, then without another word, I run into the woods at the north end of the field. I dry heave for 10-minutes, gather myself, calm down, and return to the sidelines. By then the backups were playing and everything was cool. I essentially OD’ed on caffeine pills. It was a mistake. That was that, or so I thought.

Walking back to the locker-room, I made another mistake.

Coach Bundaron. I saw him more of a peer than as a coach because he was in his late 20s. I told him about the pills. I felt fine now. We laughed about it. I told him I’d never be doing that again.

On Monday we began the regular 330pm practice schedule even though school didn’t start until Thursday. On the bulletin board was an alert that there would be a team meeting before practice in the old gym. No one knew what it was about. As I sat at my locker, Coach V appeared and asked me to come to the coach’s office. I happily went. Totally and completely oblivious as to the ambush I was walking into.

“You took caffeine pills,” accused Coach Pal.

There I was, stuck in that stinking windowless office filled with cigar smoke with ALL OF THE COACHES, even the Ianellos and the freshman coaches were there. Talk about being put on the spot. I glanced over at Bundaron. I must’ve shot him some terrible daggers because he said: “I’m sorry, I had to.”

No he didn’t.

…Or maybe he did.

In this life I’ve become a believer in ‘what IS, is meant to be’. For all I know, if he didn’t tell the coaches, maybe I’d have tried the pills again. I mean, they did work even if they made me feel like I was going to die. What if I took 10, or 20 200mg pills? That could be a death sentence. I could die on the field.

Okay, so I was busted. I admitted it, and I thought that was that. But the interrogation went further. They pressed me about how I got them.

Bought ‘em at 7-11, coach. No way I was gonna rat out my teammate.

Where’d I get the idea to take them?

Read about how some pro football player liked to pop them, coach. I’m sorry, coach. It won’t happen again, coach.

I started to leave the office, but the coaches weren’t done. They went on to accuse me of using steroids. WHAT?! I couldn’t believe it. Coach Pal mentioned that I had been hanging around that nasty gym all summer and had gained a lot of weight. I‘ve been eating a lot of spaghetti, coach.

Pal asked one of the newer coaches who supposedly knew something about working out if it was possible to gain weight so fast. He said no. It was an ambush. Coach V sat silent. The look on Big I’s face was one of total disgust. They asked me if I was doing cocaine. Now I was getting mad.

I said: No, and wouldn’t that make me lose weight instead of gain it, coach?

Pal didn’t like the attitude. Finally the dust settled and Coach Pal got down to business: “We’re suspending you for at least two scrimmages…and taking away your captainship.”

That hit me harder than anything in my life up until then. I wanted to cry. I could feel it coming but I bottled it up. I felt like these men who I’d given everything to had turned on me. They were treating me like an outsider, like I wasn’t ‘Biff’ the happy-go-lucky kid they had watched grow up. These people were a huge part of my life for five years. I would even go so far as to call them father-figures since my own father wasn’t around that much during my high school days.

I left the office in a daze. I joined the rest of the team in the old gym and slunk to the floor. The coaches came in stone-faced as if someone had died. Coach Pal went on about a few team issues then addressed the situation with me. I almost lost it again. Everyone was shocked. Now my own team was looking at me funny. My co-captain Doug shook his head and wouldn’t make eye contact. The teammate who gave them to me looked panicked but I’d never rat him out. Coach Pal announced that every day a new captain from the seniors would rotate in to fill my place. It was a fucking nightmare…but…it built my character up in ways only something so real could, and that I am grateful for.

I sucked it up and didn’t freak When we went out for practice, and I was no longer up front leading the team but in the last row with the juniors and slackers, I seriously and honestly considered quitting right then and there. Just throw my helmet and go out in a big blaze of glory. It would go down in history. Hey, maybe I’d even drop out of school. I could jump in my 1980 maroon Caprice Classic and go on a roadtrip to California. Then when I turned 18 in January, I would join the Marines. Laying there, staring up at the sky, I came within a second of doing it. Then next thing I know we’re practicing and the wave of rebellion had vacated. I left the facility alone and defeated without talking to anyone.

When I got home, my mother went ballistic.

She wanted me to transfer to Roosevelt, the rival school whose coach, the venerable Dom DeMatteo Sr., after playing against me three times in the past two years, really liked me (I was also friendly with his son, who worked out at East Coast). As I remember it, Coach DeMatteo contacted me during the summer and offered to write a recommendation letter for college coaches, something my own head coach never offered to do. My mother reached out to him and asked if I could transfer. He said yes. I told her to calm down and let’s see what happens.

In my life, I had never missed a game and only missed one scrimmage (due to my ankle). Being on the sidelines for those two scrimmages hurt both my pride and football readiness, but I held my head up and pretended like it wasn’t a big deal. The coaches hadn’t made anymore ridiculous accusations and they were just keeping their distance, seeing how I would react. I do admit to hating some of my teammates for a short time while they were usurping my captainship, and I felt like an outcast. I would accept it if the coaches didn’t reinstate me as captain, I would not accept it if they suspended me for a game.

Six days before our season opener, an away game against Carmel, Coach Pal called me into the office and reinstated me as captain and said I would not be suspended for any games.

Life lessons are one of the great intangible reasons why we play sports. Sports truly build character. I was patient and calm. I didn’t make a big deal of the situation and I didn’t talk smack about the coaches. I never told anyone my feelings on the matter and I never ratted out my teammate who gave me the caffeine pills. I sucked it up and took it like…like a man. I was becoming a man. It scared the shit out of me.

That first game, and you guessed it, was played on a rainy muddy field. Before the game Coach V told me Carmel would be gunning for me and I should be ready to take a lot of cheap shots. I had a big target on my back.

I got triple-teamed the entire game. It was very frustrating. Carmel was a passing team with the Section’s second best QB (Dave in my opinion was the best). I’d get through the center and guard only to be clipped by a fullback or wingback. I was held on nearly every play. The refs only called it twice. But we were kicking their ass and ended up winning 34-17 and it looked like we finally had a reliable offense.

For our senior season, the leagues of Section-1 had been reshuffled and we had a new schedule, and because NY State was starting the new decade with a quasi playoff system, we would only play eight regular seasons games to make room for one potential extra game after our Section-1 bowl game. The winner of Section-1 would then go on to play the winner of another Section at some upstate venue. One less game. Flat out that sucked.

We were riding high on the victory. That season I started listening to a Walkman before games. I made a mix. Motley Crue dominated it. Their album Dr. Feelgood had just come out and I listened to Same Ole Situation and Kickstart My Heart over and over at full volume along with Slaughter’s Fly With The Angels. I had also pretty much ditched my varsity jacket for a black oilskin duster I ordered from some catalog featuring products from the Australian Outback. I only wore jeans and of course Timberland boots. If I had an Indiana Jones hat I’d have worn that too.

Our next opponent, and we had been looking forward to this game since the schedule came out in early Spring, was…North Rockland. At home. The bad news…the game would be played on Friday afternoon 3pm kickoff. As I’ve said, the absolute WORST time to play a football game. This wasn’t Friday Night Lights—no, it was an after school special that no one would watch. We played on Friday afternoon due to Rosh Hashanah.

By now I was getting several calls a week from college coaches. The most interested Div 1 coach was a defensive line coach from the University of Colorado. Back then the Buffalos were the best team in Div-1. He would call after dinner and we’d just talk about life and football. After a few calls he asked me: Alexi, are you a good football player?

I hemmed and hawed, finally said: I guess.

‘There’s nothing wrong with admitting you’re good. You should be more confident,’ he suggested. The coach needed some game film on me. I had Coach Pal send my junior year game against White Plains. Coach Pal took a week to send the second-half 8mm reel to the Colorado coach. A few days after receiving the film, the coach called me, asking what the hell was he supposed to do with the big 8mm reel. They only used video, so my mother hired a man to film the North Rockland game with a high-end video camera. Coach Pal hated that too.

Since SHS hadn’t played North Rockland in five years, no one really knew what to expect. We understood that they were a very good balanced team, but not a juggernaut like in the past. I remember having major butterflies all day before this game and ended up cutting all my classes. When we walked out to the field, the entire situation felt off. There were very few people there to watch the game. Many parents were at work. North Rockland had few fans in their bleachers and they didn’t bring a band (they typically brought 1500 people and a 40 piece band to away games). It was hot and very sunny. Dean Field was filled with those shiny red helmets of the North Rockland Red Raiders. They must’ve had 95 kids on the team which was almost double our number. By kickoff, it felt like I was playing freshman football all over again. There was no Friday night dinner and meeting. No curfew or pregame breakfast; no bands, no BBQing fans, no energy.

Five years in the making and the game felt more like a scrimmage than a colossal match up.

It was a 0-0 stalemate through the 1st Quarter with lots of hard hits. I had a sack. Their center and guards couldn’t really stop me. As was always the case, once the first play happened all the pre-game shenanigans faded away and I couldn’t care less if there were a million people there or just one. (To my knowledge there is no video or pictures of this game. In fact, as of this writing, our senior campaign has only a few short clips on YouTube and a few pictures. Supposedly a few games will be uploaded one day.)

Then disaster struck. QB David Feuerstein got hurt, bad. He broke his collar bone. He was done for the game, if not season. Suddenly we were in big trouble. His backup, Robbie, my first friend when I moved to Scarsdale at five-years-old and one of the best good guys I’ve ever known and everyone’s buddy, was woefully unprepared to play in this big game.

Score is 0-0 right before the end of the 2nd Quarter with North Rockland at their 40. Pal calls a ‘slant-right’ for the defense. Our defensive plays are terribly rudimentary. Pal calls the play from the sidelines by slashing his right arm downward across his body. If he slashed with his left, it would be a slant left. He’d been doing the same thing for almost a decade without guessing that maybe a keen opposing coach might be watching. There is no doubt in my mind that North Rockland knew what play we called.

Our entire defense slanted to our right while they ran off-tackle to their right away from our slant. We were all out of position. The kid ran 60-yards for the TD. I chased him all the way into the endzone. It was the longest running play a defense I played on had ever given up. We were in shock.

Our offense could do nothing. There were turnovers. Coach Pal called two plays: run left, run right—two yards and a cloud of dust. Five years in the making and things weren’t looking good, but our defense was keeping us in it as the score was still 0-7. Early in the 4th, Pal called another slant. This time slant left…

…Yup, North Rockland ran to their left, again catching us all out of position. They scored on a 35-yard TD. That was it. We couldn’t score.

Everything was skewed about that game. We didn’t even have an after-game team dinner at someone’s house. That was a long, hard weekend. Monday practice came around and the mood was very down. Watching the film was painful, and now with David out (who was also our kickoff man and placekicker), for some crazy reason I was asked to be backup kicker. Linebacker and great friend, Pete Sheahan, would be the starting kicker. The coaches picked us because we had the strongest legs. Instead of kicking soccer style, which is how kicking in football has been done since the 1960s, we toed it like club-footed Jack Dempsy. We wore this block-toed black boot that had to be from the late ‘40s.

The toe was a steel plate. Pete and I had a good time with it.

Our next opponent was White Plains. A few games into the season and we were already in a ‘must win’ situation. Co-Captain Doug Knopp was now the QB. Even though he was a great athlete, he couldn’t throw the ball, I mean not at all. All we could do was run the option like Army, but not nearly as efficiently. Our warhorse RB, Pete Fradkin, had such a multitude of welts and bruises on his back due to carrying the ball 30 times in this game, it looked like a gang had beaten him with lead pipes.             

The game was a slug match. There was a lot of pushing, late hits, and jawing. The field was mostly dust and pebbles as WPs usual field was getting a new surface and couldn’t be played on. I had blood everywhere. Again, I played one of my best games against the White Plains Tigers. In fact, I think I won the game for us. I had three sacks. My last one coming when WP was driving to get a score at the end of the game. On third down I stuffed the RB for no gain, a tough kid who called me every name in the book the entire day. On fourth down, I beat the double team and sacked the QB, ending the Tigers’ hopes. We ran out the clock and won. It was a gritty game.

While we were shaking hands, the Tigers’ RB told me to go fuck myself and said he would kick my ass. I told him he was a pussy and to look at the scoreboard, loser. He threw down his helmet, danced around, flailing his arms around like a chump. I laughed and this made him more angry. His coaches subdued him and we hustled to our buses. After the game, Coach Pal came the closest he had ever come to giving me any kind of props after a game. He said if it weren’t for the great effort of ‘someone’ on this team, we never would’ve won. He looked at me when he said it. That was it. The most public game praise he had ever given me. I guess the coaches thought I really didn’t need it. I guess they were right.

We reeled off three straight victories. One game was against the hapless, though always fun to play against Mt. Vernon Knights.

The deal with MV was thus: on the southern end of Westchester County and bordering the Bronx, MV was a city, not a town. The team was 98% black. They had good players, lots of big guys, but their coaching sucked and they could never get it together as a team. Every year we beat them by 24 points at least. It was a home game. Mid Fall. Had a good crisp sunny feel. The Knight’s center and guards shit-talked from the very first play. After a few downs, the center, who was a big guy, said: All State? Ha, you ain’t so good. We’re gonna break your legs.

‘I’m All-American, asshole,’ I responded.

After one sideline run that we forced out of bounds, I was coming to a stop after the whistle blew. The center clipped me full speed in the back, sending me sprawling into their sidelines. It was a 15-yard penalty for sure…but the refs didn’t call it. I went to go retaliate. From across the field I hear a blood-curdling scream: “ALEXI!!!!!” it was Coach Pal. My teammates pulled me away and we ended up winning big with Rob back at QB.

Sitting in the parking lot for me after the game was a brand new Toyota 4Runner SR5. Dark blue. Five-speed manual. Brush guard on the front. It was a semi-surprise gift from my father who attended the game (the only game he ever attended). We had been looking around for a new ride (my Caprice had died) but nothing had been picked out yet. I still remember the smell of that car. I would end up putting 200K miles on it and drive it for 11 years. Many good memories with that truck. I even had sex for the first time in the passenger seat of it. Good times indeed.

Next week was our big Cable 3 TV game against Mamaroneck at their field. Thursday and Friday it rained nonstop. Their field was a mess. The game had to be moved to Monday afternoon and would not be filmed. If there was a time to play a football game worse than Friday afternoon, it was Monday afternoon. I had to admit it to myself that my senior year of football had become a disjointed, teetering-on-the-edge-of-disaster season.

Around this time, during practice staring up at the sky while stretching, I discovered that I wan’t sure that I want to be there. A bunch of my friends who weren’t on the team were having the senior-year time of their lives. Going to concerts (a new band called Phish had shown up on the scene and I desperately wanted to see them, but it was a Friday night and I had curfew). I wanted a girlfriend, but had no time for that. I wanted to see the Grateful Dead at MSG. For five years, more than half of my year was dominated by football. I had grown weary. While I loved the actual playing of a game more than anything, the 90% of what made up football had worn me down. On top of that, our season was threatening to capsize. But in the end, those feelings disappeared and I was fully committed. Yes, a lot had gone wrong so far, but in reality we only had one loss and were in great position to meet North Rockland in a bowl rematch. If that happened and we won, we’d move on to that inaugural game upstate.

QBing the Mamaroneck Tigers was Jack, the kid who two years earlier had almost blinded Chris Cap. He was a total asshole just as everyone had described him. We were kicking their asses all over the field but those assholes never shut up with their anit-Semitic bullshit and general dickery.

Then, in the 3rd Quarter, dropping back to punt, I broke through and clobbered Jack who was also the punter. I missed the ball completely and instead took out his right leg with all my weight. He had to be carted off the field. It was karma, payback, but I did not do it on purpose. Refs called a “15-yard roughing the kicker” on me. As their team broke the huddle, the linemen were cursing me out, telling me they would kill me. All I did was smile and make more plays. The game was a lopsided victory and we were on a roll.

I talked twice a week to the coach from Colorado (I cannot remember his name). He got the tape from the North Rockland game and liked what he saw even though it wasn’t that great of a production (my mother had also made a highlight tape of me using two VCRs. It showed me from sophomore year including interviews). Again, I didn’t look so great on tape nor did I have the big stats and numbers, he just really liked me and believed in my football ability. He was also very impressed that an opposing coach would write me such an amazing recommendation letter, but he wondered about Coach Pal, who he had called and talked to briefly. Pal spoke highly of me, thank god, but wasn’t glowing like Coach DeMatteo. I told him Pal just wasn’t that kind of coach and that our program was antiquated; proof being the 8mm film. We had a good laugh and became friends. We actually talked about life and current events like the potential for war in Iraq. I would be invited for a recruiting visit sometime in mid January, that he assured me, and he would be pressing hard to get me a scholarship offer. At the same time, I was in twice weekly contact with the D-line coach from…the United States Naval Academy.

A lifelong dream of mine was to be in the military, and beyond that I envisioned myself becoming a Navy SEAL. I was obsessed with the SEALs. I would take freezing-cold morning showers in the dead of winter to toughen me up. If I could get into Annapolis, I’d be an officer AND a SEAL. If I couldn’t become a SEAL, I’d go to the Marine Corp. Plus they had a competitive football team that played Div-1. They played at Notre Dame almost every year. The Navy coach was pretty hot on me as player. I had already been invited to the Army Navy game as a special recruit. I was pulling in a 3.8GPA first semester (but my overall average was still sub 2.2) and he said the Academy would look very fondly upon the vast improvement. My SAT could be higher, but it wasn’t anything to worry about now. Just play good football, stay out of trouble, and work hard.

There were continuous calls from Div1A schools like UMass and Deleware. Several Div-2 and Div-3 schools told me I would be their #1 recruit.

Overall I was having a decent season. Not like the year before, but then again, teams were planning their game around me. Also, the coaches I talked to weren’t worried about how many tackles or sacks I had.

The biggest game of the year, second to last, was, once again, against New Rochelle. It was a home game for us. Clear, beautiful Autumn day. Big crowd. Winner a shoe-in for the big Section-1 bowl game.

We fumbled the ball seven times. All on the QB-center exchange. Seven, count it, seven fumbled snaps.

We lost five of the fumbles and two were inside our 10-yard line. Our defense was valiant. It was the finest defensive performance I had ever been part of. I chased Tom Prudean all over that field. New Ro couldn’t do anything with a QB who would go on to have an illustrious college career at the position. No run. No pass. I blocked a field goal attempt. The score was 0-0 going into halftime.

Sometime in the 4th, New Ro kicked a field goal after another fumble inside our 10yrd line.

They won 3-0.

3-0 let that sink it.

It was an unbelievable outcome. We were devastated. The season was over. Walking off the field I pulled Rob aside, told him that if anyone blamed him for the loss he should tell me, I’d set them straight. There were tears in his eyes, mine too. It was a brutal moment.

All season long I had dutifully observed the ‘I will not drink or do drugs’ pledge. It was the first season I had followed it. That Saturday night after the New Rochelle loss, I tossed all that out the window.

If there was ever a time where I had alcohol poisoning and almost died, it was after that game.

Standing around a keg, I must’ve put down 12 16oz cups. We moved on to another party. Someone broke out a handle of cheap Gin. I guzzled mouthfuls of it (to this day the smell of Gin is very hard for me to take). I was wasted. I ran into Doug and a couple other guys at the party. He yelled at me for drinking. I told him what difference did it make, the season was over.

I ended up at Rob’s house. There was an apartment over his garage we all hung out at. Though I was very drunk, I wasn’t over the edge yet. I smoked a few bowls. Started feeling like my head might explode. When someone showed up with a bottle of J&B Whiskey, I grabbed it and chugged. I had never done anything like that before, or thankfully since. I put down eight shots worth at least. I stuck my head out a window and puked. Then I fell down the stairs and ended up in the little wooded area behind the garage. The world was flipping out of control. I was an epic mess. Thankfully, I was able to roll over and throw up. Someone found me and put me inside. Gave me a little bucket to puke in.

The week after the New Ro game I got into a fight at school. Nothing major, but I got suspended for two days. They could’ve easily suspended me from the team. I just didn’t care.

Our last regular season game was at Lincoln HS, who got their act together and now had a team. The field sat perched atop a plateau overlooking the Bronx river. Windswept and almost barren of grass, that cold November day saw us get David back at QB. If we wanted to salvage the season and get to a bowl game, we had to win. But Lincoln had a freshman starting at QB who would go on to start at Rugters and play in the NFL.

Besides the ugly grit-filled dirt burns on my legs and arms, one moment stands out from that game in a big way.

We’re up by six points late in the game. On fourth and one on our 20-yard line, Lincoln goes for it. I stuff the play. During the tackle, three of my left fingers get stuck in the RB’s face mask. I twist around as five more guys come into to assist. Once the pile disperses, it’s just me and the RB on the ground. I manage to free my fingers. Even before I see them, I know something is very wrong.

What I see is a horribly mangled left hand. The middle finger bent to the right. The pinky bent to the left. Worst of all the ring finger. Flipped up and bent back to the left; big knuckle exploded as the cartilage ripped past its membranes, swollen and grotesque, going in a direction it’s never supposed to go. I grabbed it and ran and hopped off the field. It hurt but the sight of it was worse. Scary. Everyone thought I was jumping because I was happy about the play. I came to the sidelines and teammates groaned as they saw the damage. I yelled ‘Cut it off!’. I really did. Such drama, but I honestly thought there was no way I was keeping that finger. Coach V got a hold of me, grabbed my hand, told me to look away, and POP! CRACK! CRUNCH! the fingers were back in place. Thank god he knew how to do that. Without his quick action I think the injury would’ve been much worse.

So we won the game. We’d get a bowl. A rematch (again) against Carmel. I got ZERO attention for my injury. A month earlier while practicing in one of the old gyms due to a big rain storm, one of my teammates popped a finger on a hard pass. Coach V put it back in place. Coach Pal fawned all over him. Practice came to a standstill. Pal never even asked me about my injury. Nothing. I got no medical attention. I didn’t want sympathy, but how about a ‘how you doin'?’ and maybe suggest I get a doctor to look at it?

The game against Carmel would be played daytime at Iona College in New Rochelle (Section 1 powers that be had given up on the dilapidated Memorial Stadium). They had a brand new turf field with great facilities and a little stadium. We all had to go out and get turf cleats. The last game I would ever play at Scarsdale was met more with relief than sadness. I was ever grateful for all it was, but ready to move on from the whole scene.

For the game there was no Channel 3, there wouldn’t be an MVP interview after. There wouldn’t be any watching it next week on TV when they aired it. It drizzled the entire game. My fingers ached in the cold dampness. I wrapped some tape around the bones and taped them all together.

Down by three points late in the game, we had to make a stop.

Carmel was just grinding it out, getting two, three yards a play. Flat out, I had never been more exhausted in my life. I could barely move. My legs were seizing up, I was heaving, hands on hips, sucking in wind. They saw how hurting I was and just kept pounding away. We got them into a 3rd and short on our 45-yard line. I knew they were coming right at me. They had been for the entire fourth quarter. Their strategy, with the lead, was to just throw everything they had into the middle and just push. It was stop them now, or lose the game. I dug deep to find strength. In the huddle I managed to give the most stirring speech I had ever given. We had to stop them, our legacy was on the line. We could not go out as losers.

The RB slammed into the scrum. Instead of trying to out-muscle the four players coming at me, I went low, ankles low, shot through ‘A’ gap and created a pile. I grabbed the runners foot and the rest of my team piled on. I didn’t let go until five seconds after the whistle. I wasn’t going to let the RB worm his way for more yardage like he had been doing all game.

We held and Carmel punted from our 46. With under three minutes left, our offense drove down the field, and after some terrible time management and panic, the best we could do was get down to their 20 and try a 32-yard FG to tie it up and send the game to overtime (which they had in bowl games but not regular season games).

The kick missed by a foot wide right. Time up. Game over. We lost.

6-3 was our final record. The most amount of games I had lost in a season playing football (actually, the most amount of games I had lost in a season playing any sport at any level). A massive disappointment for everyone, and though I was truly ready to move on to the college game, I knew in my heart football would never be the same again. And I also KNOW that had we had Dave healthy the entire season we would’ve been undefeated.

One day cleaning out my locker, Pal came up to me with a letter in his hand. I had won the High School Heisman Award. Instead of one winner, there were a bunch of guys from around the Tri-State area who had won it. It was a huge honor. Coach Pal and I drove to the Downtown Athletic Club on the Lower West side of Manhattan where the Heisman ceremony had been held for decades. There was a great Sunday brunch with many previous legendary Heisman winners there plus the current winner who had just been crowned the day before. His name was Ty Detmer of BYU.

At the banquet they showed clips of everyone. Since we didn’t have professional cable quality video from my senior year, the clip shown for me was from my junior year and the two great plays I made to start off the bowl game against Suffern. I’m pretty sure no one else there had year-old video of themselves as their clip. I got a great red jacket with plaid fleece lining that had ‘High School Heisman’ stitched on the breast and trophy. Then I was nominated to the NY Post’s ‘All New York Team’ and got free, almost floor seats to a Knick’s game (I want to say against the Michael Jordan Bulls put not positive). They brought the All New York Team out at intermission onto the court and called out our names. I was wearing my red Jr. Heisman jacket (wore it all Winter). It was a good way to end my SHS Raiders career and took some of the sting out of a disappointing season.

8

With the season over I focused on college and finding a girlfriend. I fell for a tall, dark-haired Israeli girl who had only been in school for a year. She was my first love.

The Army/Navy game came up in early December. My mother and I took an early train ride to Philadelphia. We were on the Navy sideline pregame. The whole scene was incredible but the field was a joke. Admitted to be the worst professional field of all time, Veterans Stadium was just a layer of cheap Astroturf with a thin black foam pad as its backing laid over solid concrete. That was it. In some places it bunched up like carpet. In others, where the infield was for the baseball team the Phillies, there were inch gaps in the turf.

I wore my Timberlands, a SHS hoodie, a Packers hat, and my Outback duster. The defensive line coach told me I looked dangerous and said the Navy head coach specifically asked who that kid in the black coat was. Navy lost a close game and I was hooked. It looked like I would be choosing between the Naval academy and Colorado. Polar opposites, I know, but both Div1 programs and that was my goal.

Colorado was gearing up to play the National Championship game in the Orange Bowl against Notre Dame on Jan 1st, 1991. The Buffalos’ coach called me two weeks before the matchup, telling me he had to break off contact until after the game.

The Colorado Buffalos beat ND 10-9 and won the National Championship. Six days later the coach called me. I congratulated him and was ready to set up my recruiting visit. I was very psyched about it.

“Hey, buddy…guess what?” he said. Then, without giving me the chance to answer, he continued, “I’m at…KSU now.”

Nothing he said made sense. How could he not have told me he was going to a new college? I was dumbfounded.

“Buddy, it just happened. An opportunity came up that I couldn’t turn down. This is how it goes with my job.”

“Who’s KSU?”

There was a long silence, then: “Kansas State University. I’m now assistant defensive coordinator. We’re rebuilding this program and we want you to be a part of it. We’d love to have you out for a recruiting visit!”

I had never been to Kansas, but I assumed it was like Ohio, which I had been to. As for KSU, a year earlier, Sports Illustrated ran a frontpage article on how bad the team was. They were in the mists of an historic losing streak spanning decades. Yes, the new coach was in his second season and things were turning around, but Manhattan Kansas vs. Boulder Colorado? Was I that desperate to play Div-1 college that I’d go to Kansas? My family could afford college, so a scholarship wasn’t the end all be all (back then college debt wasn’t even on the radar). I felt betrayed, but also understood that it’s just how the business of college football was handled.

I called Colorado and tried to make contact with a new coach. They had very little info on me. Evidently, the coach who had moved on to KSU had taken my file. He was my only contact, and because I wasn’t a five or even four-star recruit, no one else knew about me.

Can’t say I was heartbroken that I wouldn’t be attending Colorado, because at that time I was fully leaning towards Navy, but it would’ve been nice to have a good back up, and who knows, maybe after visiting Boulder I’d say that was where I was meant to be instead of Annapolis.

Next time the KSU coach called, he could sense my disappointment. I told him how I felt and about Navy. He said he understood and wished me all the good fortune in the world.

I never found out if the Wildcats of Kansas State would’ve offered me that coveted Div-1 full ride. Funny thing, from the 1991 season onward, KSU has become a perennial college powerhouse. Perhaps I could’ve been a part of that new tradition? It just wasn’t meant to be.

By now I had denied all the small schools, and there was no way I was going to one of them anyway. I had to prove that I could play Division-1 college football. Looking back, I think the football experience at some of those smaller schools like William & Mary can be as great, if not greater, than Alabama or Penn State. Less pressure, less hype. Pure football for the love of the game. You were best friends with your teammates instead of always at their throats. The game on those levels is more organic and every bit as satisfying as the big time schools.

But for better and/or worse, I like to reach for the sun, swing for the fence, you know what I mean.

In late January I take my one and only recruiting visit.

My mother came with me to Annapolis (every recruit brought a parent). We flew down on a Saturday morning flight paid for by the Naval Academy. A cadet picked us up at the airport. There were 35 other recruits visiting. We toured the campus. The Academy had a functioning nuclear reactor in case you wanted to become a nuclear engineer. Sailing was part of the mandatory curriculum. We toured the stadium. It had natural grass. We watched the football team doing aerobics. The winds off the bay made it feel colder than it was, but Annapolis was a beautiful little town and the Naval Academy was a very special place. (Oddly enough, I never once considered West Point, which was only 35 minutes north of my home. West Point is a grey drab dark feeling place where I had gone a week earlier to do my military exams and physical. They had contacted me about going there for football, but I never responded.)

A big sophomore offensive lineman was my guide. The defensive line coach, the lineman, and my mother and I went to the Charthouse for dinner. The coach, whose name I cannot remember, was very much into me (he was of Greek heritage, too). He could’ve had dinner with eight other guys, but he chose to be with me. Everything was going great, and I didn’t feel out of my league, though I was intimidated by the academic level. Getting into Annapolis is more difficult than getting into Harvard.

That night another recruit and I were taken out to a bar around the University of Maryland. It was my first time in a real college bar….We drink pitcher after pitcher. Having a grand old time. Cute college girls spot the cadets and chat us up all night, telling me how Navy guys get the hottest girls. Then we have to get back by 1am. I puke a little in the car on myself. Something is very wrong. I should not be this drunk, especially just off keg beer. Back in the dorm the room is spinning. Somehow I make it to the bathroom, find a stall, and collapse onto the toilet. Puking and crapping at the same time, I manage not to make a filthy mess of myself. The linemen comes in asking if I’m okay. I manage a feeble ‘yes’. He comes back later with his roommate to help me into the shower.

They were good guys. I mean they didn’t know me for more than a couple of hours, but they made sure I didn’t sleep and die on that toilet and for that I’m thankful. I still wonder if I was drugged that night. I’ll never know for sure.

In the morning we had a brunch. I couldn’t stomach anything. My mother was pretty mad at me. Word spread how drunk I got. I felt like I was going to die. I snuck off to the bathroom to throw up but it was all dry heaves.

The literal commandant of the Naval Academy, an Admiral, asked me my name and what position I played, slapped me on the back and joked out loud in front of everyone that I would fit right in with the Navy after learning of my drunkenness. Everyone laughed and I was the center of attention at the brunch. All the other recruits wanted to talk to me, the head football coach came over to my table and asked how I was feeling and told me not to worry about it. I insisted I could hold my liquor, he told me it was Navy tradition to drink hard and pay the price.

Then, in a surprise move, I’m told I will be interviewed by the Academy psychiatrist, a Captain. They did not interview all the recruits. In fact, I feel like I was the only one but I could be wrong.

I can only imagine what that scene must’ve looked like: In this very official man’s office, who on a Sunday, is dressed in full uniform, me slumped in the chair at his big oak desk trying to answer questions about myself, but only caring about not having to rush off to the bathroom. He’s analyzing me and I’m praying not to puke. The Captain makes me write a page-and-a-half-long essay about something I really care about. I have no idea what I wrote, but since my handwriting and spelling back then was about as good as a chicken with a pen glued to it’s leg, I’m sure it was a creative and baffling mess filled with some deep ideas, numerous run-on sentences, and maybe something about Jesse Ventura, the Marine Corps and UFOs.

The coach drove us to the airport. He said not to worry about being drunk or the psych test. Everything would work out.

That night the NY Giants and Buffalo Bills played in the greatest Super Bowl of all time. I watched it at a friend’s house with a bunch of guys. I told them all about my weekend. I still couldn’t even think about eating any of the many chicken wings in a tinfoil bin.

A week or so later in early February, the Navy coach calls. I know by the tone of his voice this isn’t going to be a good conversation.

I would not be getting into the Naval Academy. He said it was my grades. The Academy just couldn’t get past the low scores (I couldn’t get my SAT score up even after taking it two more times. Maybe if I had studied that would’ve made a difference). And even though now I was busting my ass, a cumulative high school average under a 3.0GPA was just not going to cut it even though the coach originally assured me that wouldn’t be an issue. All was not lost, however. There was a place called the Naval Academy Prep School in Providence, RI. One year at this paid-for-by-the-Navy prep school, and almost guaranteed if I graduated, I would be admitted to the Academy. They even had a very good football team.

Okay, I said, get me in there. He said it would happen, don’t worry.

Three weeks later, the beginning of March when most kids know where they are going to college (and the vast majority of football players have known since mid February), I get a call from the Navy coach.

“I couldn’t get you in to the prep school. I’m sorry. I really am. There’s an independent naval prep school in Toms River, NJ, which is very reputable and sends a lot of people to Naval prep as well as straight to the Academy. Good luck and let me know what you choose to do.” Click.

My mother was on the phone downstairs. She asked me what I was going to do. I said I didn’t know. She lost it. She screamed at me over the phone unlike ever before. She broke pictures and threw books. It wasn’t because I couldn’t get into the prep school, it was my total and encompassing apathy. I had no plan. I didn’t care that I had no plan. Things would work out, was my attitude, as it is now. Things always work out even when it seems like they don’t. You’ve just gotta believe and let the river carry you. This attitude is a tough sell to your parental units.

Later on that month we went to visit Admiral Faragutt Prep School in New Jersey. I was just sleepwalking through the process. While all my friends were gearing up for college, I was flapping in the breeze. I hadn’t applied anywhere and it was too late to get in for Fall Semester anyway unless it was some community college. The Faragutt campus was a stark, deteriorating place. It was on a small river and there was a new football coach. Myself and two other postgrads would make the team good again, I was told. NJ football was much more competitive than NY. I would be getting a lot of attention from colleges as Faragutt played in the biggest league even if they weren’t very good. My girlfriend was attending UPenn come fall, which was only 45-minutes away.

Faragutt’s headmaster told me and my mother straight up that I would be allowed to keep my car on campus and have weekends off when I wanted. I decided to commit. One year of working hard and smart could get me into Annapolis, that was the plan. If that didn’t workout…I would have to attend the Naval Academy Prep School in Rhode Island. The prospect of two postgrad years didn’t make me happy, but I was going for it with the hope that one year of prep would be enough. Preseason football would be starting mid August.

In early April, my father and I flew to West Palm Beach, FL. He had just bought a condo and we would be sleeping on camping mats and sitting in lawn furniture. One day we drove down to the University of Miami in Coral Gables. The traffic on US-1 was impenetrable. By the time we got close to the school it was 5pm and the tour wasn’t being offered anymore. We drove by the campus, never going in.

The Miami Hurricanes had sent me a letter back in August before my senior season began. It was just a form letter, and there was no more contact, but I was in their system as a potential recruit. I didn't think too much more about UM. My track was to go to Admiral Faraggut. Going to look at Miami was just appeasing my father who was very unhappy about my military ambitions. I did love South Florida, though. Palm trees swaying in a slight breeze. No winter. Miami.

Oh, Miami.

Upon returning home from that trip I get Mononuleouss. The dreaded virus had finally gotten me. I was so sick I needed emergency steroids to bring down the swelling in my throat down. I missed two weeks of school and over a week of not seeing my girlfriend. I played SEGA Genesis the entire time, did no schoolwork, and drank copious amounts of MelloYellow. I also lost 30lbs.

The football lockers, where for five years I had spent so much time—a refuge and the only locker I used—had become a no-go zone for months. I avoided that side of the school all together because I didn’t want to see my old coaches. In my mind I’d let them down. They had such high hopes that I’d go on to make them proud as a big time college football player, when instead I was taking a very uncertain path. I also felt that they had let me down. Coach Pal didn’t help in my recruiting process at all, instead, there was some evidence he hindered it based on what some college coaches told me. I have not seen any of my old coaches since December 1990.

I slumped the second half of my senior year in a big way (missing almost three weeks of school with mono didn’t help). That Spring, stuck in my portable car CD player and played over and over was Jane’s Addiction’s Ritual De Lo Habitual which had some good melancholy tracks that fit my mood. I didn’t care what grades I got. I failed Marine Biology, which I had been to only three times. I was taking mostly art classes and history so I passed them. I went out drinking on school nights a lot. I graduated SHS with a monstrous 2.08 GPA.

When I walked up to get my diploma at graduation, I found it empty. The assistant principle, a hardass who spent his formative years administering a Catholic school, a man named Mr. McDermot (I never knew his first name) told me I owed him almost three years worth of gym class. Up there, on the stage, honest to god this is true, he held my hand and told me I’d never get my diploma unless I made up for all those missed classes.

To be fair, he and I had discussed this ‘issue’ in the past, but I thought he was going to let the missing years of gym class slide. I mean, who goes to summer school for gym? Did such a thing even exist? I had also just spent five school days in a row sitting in his office from 7:30am until school started to make up for three years of missed detention stemming from class-cutting and being perennially late to school (McDermot kept very detailed notes on every kid like some Stasi colonel). I thought we had kinda become friends.

The way I looked at it then and still do: It was good deal. I didn’t sweat cutting class like most kids did. Cutting class gave me tons of free time and sleep-in days, and at the same time, I didn’t get kicked out of school due to the mounting detentions like many kids did.

School was a joke to me, and I was certain college was a joke too. The entire ‘system’ kinda felt like a joke, in all honesty. You work your ass off since 1st grade, then go to some college, then pray the corporate gods will shine on you until you’re 65 when you retire and end up constipated and dead a few years later on the golf course? No way. That was not my path, so school, since as far back as I could remember, was never taken seriously. (And please don’t think this means I lack respect for those in education. I had some amazing teachers in my life. Had some bad ones, yes, but the good ones really made an impact. It’s not even about the things they teach you from the text book. They teach you about life. About being a human, they teach you how to be part of society, giving you the social tools to navigate this life, that’s what school in my opinion is truly about.)

So I expunged three years of detention by getting to school extra early for a week. Good deal. As for gym, if you played a sport, you were excused from gym for that season. There were three seasons during the school year. I should’ve only had fall off from gym, but since junior year when I stopped playing basketball in the winter and lax in the spring, I took every season off. For that vicious crime, I had to go to summer school for gym. Yes, it does exist.

Two weeks.

For two weeks myself and 28 geniuses from freshman to seniors had to be at the field by 930am. We played kickball for an hour and were let go before 11am. I think it was another good deal for all that free time over the years I found by not going to gym class. You gotta make it work for you, life that is.

After graduation my girlfriend and her family moved back to Israel. We didn't break up. We were going to stay together, and when she came back to the states for college, I’d be very close. It would all work out.

My friends and I had a typical ‘last summer together’ July and August. We were going our separate ways soon. I stopped partying about two weeks before going to Faraggut, while all my friends seemed to be turning their partying up a notch. After all, they were going to college. Life would never be the same; it would be better, we said. And that was true. If high school is your pinnacle of existence, the rest of a lifetime might feel like it’s all down hill. No matter, I had a great four years and loved my fiends. I would miss them.

(I would like to close with some words about Coach Paladino. He ran a respected winning program in NY State’s most competitive and diverse section. My three years playing varsity he had a .800 winning percentage. In his previous 4 years at SHS he was .775 [then the bottom fell out after my class graduated and he had 2 losing seasons before leaving the position]. He was a hardass but he and his staff also had a great sense of humor. We all had lots of fun. Lots of laughs. He and his staff created an environment where boys became men and life lessons were numerous, where lifelong bonds were formed between players, and that is as important as winning football games.)

9

It was a steamy summer day when I got to Faragutt. I didn’t even have a fan in my room. Just concrete and gray paint everywhere. I sweated profusely no matter what I did. The mattress was old, sagging, and the frame was all squeaky springs. There was a pay phone in the hall and that was it. I got fitted for my uniforms the first day and we started practicing the next. I don’t think I slept at all.

I say hardly a word to anyone for three days. I’m in great shape and doing very well on the field and lobby to play fullback, but they put me at left offensive tackle and right outside linebacker. I’m excited about playing LB, always thought I’d excel at the position. I take out the anger brewing inside of me on some of the hapless kids on the team. In tackling drills I’m out for blood. I don't care at all about any of my teammates. I humiliate every lineman I go against in one-on-one drills, just side-stepping them, faking them out, or using my famous swim technique. For once I’m working hard at conditioning. I’m getting lean and mean.

Sometime during those two weeks the head of the school calls for me at night, I have an emergency phone call (the single phone in the dorm was shut off at night). It’s Zak calling from University of Vermont. He’s drunk and high going through freshman orientation and wondering how I’m doing. All the time the head of school is behind me with a frown, going on about how phone calls at night are not allowed. Zak says the guy was a total dick and I should leave that piece of shit school.

Then, the day comes when my girlfriend is to arrive from overseas and begin freshman orientation. She arrived Wednesday. By Friday we were off from practice for the long Labor Day weekend. Many kids on the team were from around the area and their parents came and picked them up for the weekend. The rest of the school would be arriving on Tuesday. School would start a week from then.

On Friday morning as I’m preparing to leave, the wretched headmaster calls me into his office.

“Alexi, is that your Blue 4Runner in the parking lot?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“You know you’re not allowed to have a car, correct?”

We have lost cabin pressure, assume crash position.

“You said I could have a car.”

“No, I didn’t. Having a car is reserved for second-semester seniors who have earned the right. I need the keys.”

Lying MF sack of donkey excrement.

I told him I would go get them. Instead, I gathered a few things and left the campus, destination: UPenn in Philadelphia.

It’s called AWOL in military terms. When I get to the Penn campus, which is in the middle of the city, I find out all the freshmen were having a BBQ on one of the intramural fields. Though over two thousand freshmen are there, I find my girlfriend. She is shocked…and not too happy. My plan was to just see her, then return to Farragut later that night. I didn’t know how I would deal with the headmaster’s lies, but I figured there’d be a compromise. My girlfriend was not happy to have me there, not happy at all. Who can blame her? I mean, the last thing you want your freshman year, especially as a girl, is a boyfriend who isn’t even attending the college. We had a nice high school romance and that should’ve been it.

Late in the afternoon I get ready to leave UPenn with a heavy heart, but I can’t find my keys. They’re locked in the car. An accident? My subconscious working on me? Destiny playing its hand? Loki? I couldn’t get a locksmith that time of day. Remember, no internet. No cellphones.

I end up spending an uncomfortable night in the dorm with my soon to be ex-girlfriend; finally get a locksmith in the morning, and am on the road heading back to Farragut. On the highway I come to a literal and figurative fork in the road: I can continue going east back to Faragutt, or head north and go to Scarsdale.

I go north because I wanted to talk to my mother about the car situation, the lies, and…the fact that I knew, just knew that I didn’t want to be at Farragut.

In this lifetime, and maybe all to come if you believe in that sort of thing, I think happiness is vital. It’s like air, and food, and shelter. It’s something we need. A person, to get the most out of life, has to do things that make them happy. Now, I can find happiness in most situations, and I would’ve made the most out of Farragut, but I didn’t really want to go to the Naval Academy anymore. It wasn’t a matter of not having what it took, I didn’t even want to find out if I had what it took. The reality was I would be spending two years in postgrad. I just didn’t want it badly enough, and I truly respect people who do want it enough and go through so much to get there. I know a little of what that entails.

A little secret I have yet to mention is that my mother really was an amazing human being. Yes, she coddled me through school, doing projects for me and reports because I simply would not do them. Truth is, without her I’d have never made it though SHS. And before that, I would’ve become a real delinquent if she hadn’t shipped me off to boarding school for 6th grade. She always came through for me, and this time was no different. Unbeknownst to me, my mother had applied to five colleges in my name. I never even filled out one page of an application. She wrote the essays and everything. I got into Ole Miss, Alabama, and…the University of Miami.

Each of those schools had sent me letters of interest. When you contact them, you are automatically funneled through the application process by the athletic department. My theory is that you get some special treatment. A 2.08 was on the cusp of eligibility. My SAT was more than required by a few hundred points.

Sitting there in my house with my mother and sister (who had been away at college in Europe for almost the entirety of four years) I decided that I would be going to Miami. Until leaving for school, I would find a job, workout, and get ready to play football for the best team in college football. I went back to Faragutt to retrieve my belongings. Everyone was talking about me. My roommate had finally showed up and neatly taken care of all my things. I told the coach I was leaving and going to Miami. He begged me to stay just for the season. I said no way and went to tell the headmaster that he was a liar and an asshole. We’re keeping your $1000 deposit, said the jackass.

Adios, Faragutt. As it turns out, that was the last year the school would be open. It closed for good summer 1992.

Back at home I became the kid who graduated and was still hanging around town, which was pretty much taboo in Scarsdale. I found a job delivering pizza for a local restaurant. When I contacted the Miami recruiting department, I was hung up on several times while I waited. Finally I talked to someone who could give me some information. He said I would be considered an ‘invited walk-on’. It was a fancy term for a player who wasn’t just sitting in their dorm one day and decides to try out for the team.

I received the number of a coach who coordinated walk-ons. The coach gave me about 1.2 minutes of phone time. ‘Come talk to me when you get down here’, was the gist of it. I asked him for a workout manual. He patched me through to the weight room. The gruff strength coach didn’t want to talk to me for a second, but I kept pressing until he gave me some pointers (but wouldn’t send a manual). Run in the heat of day, lots of sprints, bench, cleans, and squats till you can’t move, and take Anabolic Activator. Then he hung up.

‘Anabolic Activator’ was a powdered supplement you could get at any GNC. The ingredients included ground up cow pituitary gland and lamb adrenal glands. It was the most disgusting stuff I’d ever tasted. It got outlawed about three months after I started taking it. A new version of it came out called ‘The Hot Stuff’ which was also banned (though it has reappeared recently, it isn’t the same formula). The powder worked, I was gaining weight and strength by the hour.

Focused on my future, working, staying home six nights a week, there was one thing missing: Football. Every September since 3rd grade there had been football in my life this time of year. I was afraid I’d fall out of ‘football shape’, a kind of conditioning which can only be achieved by playing actual football. Up stepped my mom, again, who found a solution.

I attend the first Westchester Packers semi-pro football practice just to watch. It’s on some random field in White Plains on a Saturday. I tell the coach my situation. He says they’d love to have me. The season hadn’t started yet and the team could use me. Since my helmet at SHS was only worn by me and too big for anyone else, and the school was getting new equipment, I had been given my helmet after the season. Or I took it. Who knows, but I had a helmet, my shoulderpads and pants from senior year I also kept. The next week I show up for practice and join the team.

Semi-Pro.

This term might conjure up visions of players looking for someplace to keep their skills sharp while they are in-between NFL teams or even Arena Football. You know, the guy packing groceries on the side while he awaits his big break. In many circumstances, that was, and is the case…though in the case of the Westchester Packers and the teams we played, I assure you it was not.

Instead, envision an adult-version of the Bad News Bears, full of ex-cons (one of whom went to prison for five years for murder and was an admitted white supremacist), three Hells Angles, urban gang members, 50-year-olds who couldn’t bend their knees, punks, chumps, thugs, ginzos, weirdoes, and a QB who might or might not have lost a testicle to cancer or a land mine, all coached by a surly old man who took swings from a flask during practice.

And yet, they accepted me as a teammate. I paid the $100 dues, got my green jersey (#47) and had my helmet painted Packer Yellow (again, thanks mom). The coach didn’t want me to get hurt and ruin my shot with Miami, so he tried to make me the holder on kicks. It was ridiculous. The first game was in Brooklyn at Girls & Boys HS. A caravan of 25 vehicles drove there. It was a rough area. The field was turf and hot. There were actually a lot of people there. I played a few downs at defensive end. Got two sacks and made a big tackle, but there were veterans on the team who demanded playing time, and also there was the whole injury fear situation. We won but it wasn’t fun standing on the sideline most the game.

We would practice on Saturday and play on Sunday 1pm. Our home games, amazingly enough, were played on Lincoln High’s field where a year earlier I nearly had my fingers ripped off.

As the season went on, I wiggled my way onto kickoff and kick return teams. I was getting around 10 downs a game at D-line also. Our third game was in Queens somewhere, a muddy mess. Our starting RB was absent. Word spread that the night before he had shot and killed someone in a bar in Mt. Vernon. I had my hand smashed between two helmets on a kickoff. Two of the nails on the hand were pulverized and turned my blue gloves red. The hitting was furious and everyone was big. For the first time in my life I wasn’t one of the biggest guys on the field. And the guys we played against were huge. Every game there was a brawl. Mid way through the season we got a new player who’d been kicked off another team. He was a middle-aged headbanger who claimed he once played for the Steelers. A defensive linemen, he fought almost every play.

By now I was seeing more time on the field, and even…got to play fullback. I wasn’t very good (though I never fumbled), but I was hard to take down and I could hit people, thus getting the moniker ‘The Assassin’. The second to last regular season game was played in the Bronx. There were needles and crack vials scattered around the field. Kids from their windows were yelling for ‘Whitey’ to go fuck himself. I was playing about half the game now. Some at D-end, some at FB. I would pass rush every play and had two blindside sacks that game, one was nullified because I grabbed the QB’s facemask and yanked his helmet off. I gained a few yards here and there but was primarily in there to block. We won that game too.

At 8-0, we had one last home game against a 7-1 team we beat a few weeks earlier. It was a one game playoff. Whoever won the game would be going to the championship in New Brunswick, NJ, to play a team down there.

I was still on the kickoff and return team. My strategy was to just kamikaze down field and hit anyone I could as hard as I could. But to do that I had to get past the first line of blockers. The guy I had to get past, I had successfully avoided on every kickoff the last time we played. He was a mountain of a man. Easily 6’5 and 380lbs, probably much heavier. He looked like Fat Albert in a too-small football uniform. On the kickoffs all I would do was alter my running path to his left or right and breeze right past him.

On the first kickoff to start the game, I sprint down field, make a quick cut to the right around the man-mountain, and…hit a mountain going full speed.

The world vibrated violently as if King Kong riding a freight train were shaking me like a rattle. I heard this tremendous WAWAWAWAWAWAWA in my head. I literally felt my brain bouncing around in my skull. My spine and brain kept shaking as if it had now been ripped out of my body by that giant ape and dragged along behind the train. The mountain held me up or I would’ve collapsed, and thus began a four-day dream-state and my introduction to a football concussion (it wasn’t my first concussion, but the others were from a sledding accident and banging my head on the pavement when I was younger).

That dream-state included the game. In today’s age, I would’ve NEVER been allowed to play the rest of that game, but back then concussions weren’t considered to be a big deal, and anyway, there wasn’t a doctor around to give such advice. And yet, amazingly, my memory is still so vivid of the whole event. I truly felt like I was in a dream, it’s the best way to describe it (think about how some of your dreams are so vivid you remember almost everything, but there’s still an opaqueness to the memories, somehow both cloudy and clear at the same time). My mother came down from the bleachers because she knew something wasn’t right. She looked into my eyes and said it looked like I wasn’t there, but she didn’t try and stop me from playing either.

On a kick return the ball came to me. I caught it on the fly and rumbled down the field. I broke three tackles until laying into a tackler. On the hit, I gave him a concussion. He had to be helped off the field. Go easy on him, man, bro’s got a family! joked some of my teammates after witnessing the hit. Much of it was just so fuzzy and dreamy.

With time running out in the 4th Quarter, we marched down the field and got to their 10-yard-line with just a few minutes left. Up five points, all we needed to do was run out the clock, but our coach wanted some insurance. I ran the ball and smashed through to the two yard line and was ready to score my first TD, but the next play, instead of giving it to me, the RB got the ball. He fumbled. One of the opposing team’s players picked it up.

Now, as I’ve said before, I’m not that fast, but I’m also not slow, and on the football field somehow I got faster. I took off after him, was right on his heels for 80-yards, just me and him. Then somehow, maybe there was a gust of wind, who knows, I catch him, bringing him down on our five-yard-line. Honest to God.

I stayed on the field as defensive end and would not leave. In three downs the opposing team got nowhere. Now it was fourth and four with almost no time left. There was panic on our sidelines as someone on my team accidentally called a timeout. That gave our opponent the clock stoppage they desperately needed. My teammates were fighting with the guy who called it. We didn’t even get a defensive play. The ball was snapped.

A naked bootleg executed perfectly…to my side.

On a goalline naked bootleg, the QB fakes a handoff to the RB. The entire offense flows to one side to ‘sell’ the fake to the defense, while the QB hides the football on his hip and tiptoes into the endzone in the opposite direction. The one player on defense who can really foil everything is the defensive end to the side the QB runs. A defensive end who is disciplined and practiced in his technique, will ‘stay home’, meaning he will not be faked out and sucked into the play. Instead he will pull back and play containment. I had never been coached on what to do in this situation. I was operating on pure football instinct. Everyone but me was faked out, and there I was all alone with almost half the field open for the QB to run. He made a move on me. The QB was a tall, fast, wiry guy. I wasn’t faked out. My body moved autonomously. There was no thought, just action. I zeroed in on the QB and chased him towards the pylon, caught him just before he made it in to the endzone, and body slammed him out of bounds. Time was up. Game was over. We were going to the championship. Probably my single greatest football moment and it happened with the Westchester Packers. Go figure.

Everyone was ecstatic. If I was ever going to be carried off a field, now was my moment. I had never received so much attention. Maybe because I had never so obviously won the game almost single handedly. Everyone was amazed that I made those two plays. Somehow I drove home. As I said, the next few days were a total waking dream.

While I didn’t go see a doctor, I knew I was not going to play for the Packers again. I had the sense of awareness to know my brain needed time to heal. My season was over. I missed the Saturday practice before the championship. I didn’t answer the phone when the coach called. Where were you? The team is driving down tonight and staying in a cheap motel. Call ASAP!

Nope, when I’m done with something, I am done. However, I did talk to the coach when he called the next week to find out what the hell happened to me. I told him. He sort of understood. The good news was the Westchester Packers had won the championship game without my help.

The rest of my time home was spent working out with fellow SHS Raider Pete Sheahan, who would be attending the University of Arizona in January and walking-on the football team, and Doug who would be attending Cornell in the spring, where he would go on to play DB for 3 years and be the Ivy League’s interception leader even to this day.

To bulk up even more, at the pizza place, I would make two giant pieces of Sicilian heaped with every topping we had plus extra, extra meatballs and cheese. Every night I would bring home an eggplant parm sub and several slices.

There was one delivery I made every Monday to a guy living in one of the old estates in town. Two large pies with triple garlic. The car I drove, owned by the restaurant, a 1981 Chevy Malibu with 480K miles on it, was so ripe and stinking, I had to drive with all the windows down even if it was 39˙ and sleeting.

On the radio, nonstop, much to my chagrin, was the new single by Gun N’ Roses November Rain. I had just officially broken up with the girl at UPenn. I had no social life; only having fun on the rare occasion when a friend came home from college for the weekend and was looking for someone to hang with. The time before going to Miami were some long hard months.

Another regular delivery was to a man who tipped me in pennies, and I don’t mean $2 in pennies, I mean as in he gave me .08. Once he gave me .12. By the end of my employment, I was eating half the toppings off his pie as retribution before I delivered it. Another delivery, always my last of the night on Monday around 915pm, that I would make in my own car, was to a nice middle-class, split-level home in New Rochelle. The Sicilian-born restaurant owner, before I left with the pies and meatball subs, would place a small but heavy brown paper bag on top of the two large pizza boxes I carried. He’d always look me in the eye and tell me how he watched me grow up and how glad he was that I’d come to work for him; tell me how much he trusted me, and how much the guys I was going to delivery the pizza to liked me. They always gave me $20, which was a huge tip in those days.

Yes, I was temped to look in the bag and find out what the special delivery was, but I never looked. Never. Also the bag was stapled shut. I’d venture that there was $50K in small and large bills in there.

I pull up to the house. Always out front are five or six Cadillacs and/or Lincolns. I walk up the steep stairs. A young guy let’s me in. First thing he does is take the mysterious bag and disappear into another room. Another few young guys are in the kitchen where I drop the delivery. Around a big TV in a house decorated like a throwback to the ‘70s, are six older men watching Monday Night Football. Some people would call them Goodfellas, I call them mob bosses. They ask me to stay and watch the game. I hang out for a few plays, have a slice, and tell them I have to go home and study. I get my $20 tip and leave. (The truth is, back in those days and maybe still now, the real Bosses lived in Westchester. Not in New Jersey or Brooklyn or Long Island or Staten Island. I mean the top guys. The untouchable guys. The multi-millionaire bosses who ran things and you never heard about and never will.)

In mid December, my last night working for the pizza place, I’m speeding down a slick road. I hit a dip, then a bump. I catch air. The car comes down so hard the front axle snaps and the rear tires bow. With the chassis skidding and sparking against the pavement, the car ends up on the side of the road.

Car’s totaled, I say after walking back to the restaurant in the pouring rain. It’s on Morris Lane right before Heathcote Road. Gonna need more than a tow truck. And that was the end of my career as a pizza delivery boy.

Part 3>>>>>