RUNNING SCARED

"Yo Bosom Buddy Beatty, check out that dude across the hall" commands my freshman roommate at the University of Louisville. 

"Yee f---in goints!" I exclaim in my native pigeon Sicilian from growing up in Bound Brook, New Jersey. "That's who will be chasing me?"

__________

I was a walk-on about to try out for flanker on Coach Vince Gibson's football team. My 4.4 forty yard dash speed coupled with football grit as a high-school halfback put me in the running for a roster spot. 

That dude was Otis Wilson, a redshirt Syracuse transfer who would become an All-American linebacker, not to mention an All-Pro member of the 1985 Super Bowl champion Chicago Bears. As a 6'2" 220 pound freshman, Otis could already bench press 350, squat 500, and run just a 10th of a second slower than me. 

___________

"That's a real pissa" laughs my roommate from Oyster Bay, Long Island.

"When does Fall baseball start?" I ask but had already decided to try to steal bases instead of catch passes.

HANKIE SPANKY

"23 trap on two, and put that snot rag away" calls the Bound Brook High School quarterback to the huddle in general and me in particular.




"Bwake" I respond with the rest of the offense while stuffing the dripping handkerchief back under the red belt of my white away pants.

___________

There was something about eleven big uglies chasing me that made my nose run too. The first two games at halfback had been miserable affairs, hardly able to breathe with a plastic mouthpiece, stuffy nose, and post-nasal faucet. Throw in a few face plants and and I was a slobbery mess. 

With an Appalachian mother and pharmacist big brother, I should have been able to find some relief for games. But I didn't talk much, she was reduced to Vick's Vaporub by the move to New Jersey, and he was preoccupied by a business and two young sons. So I became the only known football player in history to carry a hankie in games.

___________

"Down-Set-Hike-Hike" launched us toward the left side of the line. As planned, the defense followed. 

After two steps, our left guard Karpy and I cut back to the right as I took the handoff and tucked the ball into my right arm. He barreled into the pursuing linebacker, knocking him back as I cut hard behind Karpy into a wide-open field, sprinting untouched for a 60-yard touchdown.

"Way to go, Bates" cheered Coach K, slapping my bottom as I jogged off the field.

"Thags" I smiled, pulling out my handkerchief for another blow.

GOING MINIMALIST

"Listen to your feet" was the lesson I was trying to learn after reading Born To Run, Christopher McDougall's groundbreaking book on barefoot running. 

_______________

Life had just taken a minimalist turn in the hot early summer of 2010 when my two teenagers decided to have only one home in the looming divorce settlement. Naturally, that would be where they were already living with my soon-to-be ex-wife in the house we had built a few years before. The three bedroom rental I had created for the kids was suddenly superfluous, so it was time to downsize. Going native in footwear seemed in the spirit of that change. It also made good biomechanical sense that the legs and back should respond to foot sensations by automatically adjusting into a more stable long distance posture.

_______________

"Don't run on gravel" was the first lesson, sent after three runs in my new minimalist shoes on the shady and cool Greenbrier River Trail, the only level surface besides a track in southeastern West Virginia.

"Don't run on hills" was next, learned after two weeks of sore balls from uphill leans and soles from downhill slaps on the steaming blacktop around our little town of Lewisburg.

"Don't go past five miles" came after another month of letting my legs adapt to the painful sensations coming from my feet after long sunset runs on state forest trails or country roads.

After a summer's trial of barefoot running, it was time to get the larger message: A 50-year-old body sometimes needs a cushioned landing.

GETTING LUCKY

"Are those them?" asked big Sam Jordan, reaching up to touch the stiff red polyester shorts hanging from a hook in my locker before a Randolph-Macon College football game.






The big defensive tackle was the last of a half dozen guys shuffling past to receive the blessing of the lucky shorts as we dressed for our first Old Dominion Athletic Conference game of the 1979 season against Washington & Lee University. 

"Yeah, ever since my first good high school game" I answered, taking down and stepping into the shorts as the first item of my pre-game uniform ritual.

__________________

What my Yellow Jacket teammates didn't know was that I had found the red gym shorts on the girls sale rack at Efinger's after my first wretched high school game at halfback. I had run with the ball about twenty times in a tough loss to Manville, a nearby rival in the Mountain-Valley Conference. All the runs and subsequent hits by their twin Hynoski linebackers had made my jock rub my inner thighs raw. I needed an under layer, and the tight fitting shorts in Bound Brook High School colors were just the ticket, even if I did have to wait until no one else was around to sneak up to the counter for the purchase. 

In our next game at Ridge High School, the field had opened up as we moved the ball with power sweeps, short passes, and punt returns. Their all-conference halfback sought me out at midfield after the game.

"Keep it up, guy" he smiled, and I did just that as the new red shorts propelled us to three straight wins to finish the season even at 4-4-1.

Four years later my school colors had changed to yellow and black but the red short mojo remained, if stained and over-stretched.

_________________

"How were the Yellow Jackets so successful in the rain and mud out there today?" asked the Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter after our big win.

"That's a real short story" I thought, pulling a clod from my facemask and taking off for a hot shower.

TO GAIN WEIGHT

"Three eggs, a banana, four tablespoons of protein powder, a quart of milk, and six scoops of ice cream every night" I listed when Donnie Etz asked for my milkshake recipe.


"Make that four times a day" countered the lanky defensive end.

________________

We were vying for starting spots on the Randolph-Macon College football team. Size hadn't mattered much in high school where determination and hard work could make the difference. Now we were up against the best of the former high schoolers, and they were bigger, faster, and stronger even at Division III schools. 

So after a rough first season on the scout team getting trampled by the starters, it was either shit or get off the pot. It would take an off-season commitment to getting bigger and stronger to be able to keep playing. Steroids hadn't yet hit the small college sports scene in the late 1970s, leaving us to our own twisted logic. Three times a week in the weight room and seconds in the college cafeteria were our standard fare that winter, and five pounds each was all we had to show for it.  

_______________

"Sure, four times the weight gain is even better" I replied. 

After a week on this draconian regime, the reality of a dozen eggs a day on a college budget hit home, not to mention it's interference with the study and party schedule.

"Back to once a day" concluded Donnie. "We'll get the rest of the pounds at Happy Hour."

GETTING IN YOUR REPS

"Check the windows" commanded Dave Geren as we waited at the locked fieldhouse door.





"Here's an open one" I called, spotting an unlatched grate over a back window.

"I'm your ladder" offered the tough noseguard, bending against the wall for me to step up onto his back.

I pulled open the creaky grate, wedged the window up, and squeezed through. Leaping down onto the black and white tiles of the shower room, I marched to the front and unlatched the door.

"Better lock it in case he comes" advised my intrepid weight lifting companion.

_______________

The decaying building in a corner of LaMonte Field was painted in Bound Brook High School colors with white wooden shingles accented by red shudders and roof just like our home uniforms. Inside, the chipped concrete floors and dented lockers surrounding the Universal Gym were also Crusader red. 

The school had just moved the new weight machine into the fieldhouse for summer football training. Coach Eutsler had invited prospective players to use the equipment, promising to have the building opened three evenings a week. A dozen guys showed up the first Monday of July and shuffled through the stations in the stifling central Jersey humidity. 

"Move it, you pussies" laughed Coach Steffner, turning on a huge upright fan that drowned out the clangs and moans but provided a cooling breeze. 

By the second week it was down to two or three of us. On the third Monday the coach didn't show so we ran a couple of laps and went home. Wednesday night came and we waited a half hour before taking matters into our own hands.

_________________

"Kill that propeller" directed Dave. "We need to hear if he drives up."

After a couple of sweaty sets alternating bench and leg presses, we looked up at each other.

"Was that a car door?" I whispered.

"The back window" he laughed, running for the shower room.

We scrambled out, climbed over the tall back fence, and went around to the gate, arriving back at the front door as Coach Steffner came out.

"It's about time you loafers got here" he greeted, missing that we were both already drenched with sweat. "Now get to work!"

THE BEST LAID PLANS

I fumbled the ball three times in my first high school football game. Never mind that I was the quarterback handling the ball on every snap from center, that the game was played in the muck of a torrential downpour from the tail end of tropical storm Elaine, or that I was one of the smallest and youngest guys on the field facing their biggest and meanest middle linebacker. I was aghast, blaming myself for a 6-6 tie in front of the home fans against our perennial whipping boy Bernardsville.







So that night I embarked on a plan to prevent such future horrors. I inflated my brother's old regulation ball to full resistance, retreated to the upstairs bedroom, and tucked it into my right arm. Then I proceeded to pound the ball with my left hand a hundred times from the top and a hundred from the bottom. 

"Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack..."

"Everything all right up there?" yelled my sister Karla, a year ahead of me at Bound Brook High School.

"Just practicing" I shouted back, continuing the pounding.

"Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack..."

"What is that?" she asked, her steps up the stairs in time to the hits.

"Don't come up here!" I screamed, pausing to switch the ball to my left arm. 

"OK, but don't hurt yourself" she warned, retreating back down the stairs.

"Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack..." I resumed, launching a second set of four hundred punches.


This scene was repeated every night for the next week. I'd pop on J. Geils Band's Bloodshot album, dial it up full blast, and proceed to pound my hands into swollen red lumps.



Then the next game came at Kenilworth High School on a bright September afternoon perfect for football. And my plan worked - no fumbles in six offensive series. Too bad my right arm and hand were so sore that I couldn't hit speedy Mike Fogarty wide-open thirty yards downfield. We lost 3-0 and I was moved to flanker for the next game.