Chapter 3: The First Football Game, Part I
I woke the second Saturday of November 1992, nervous as a kid in the principal’s office. The game I’d waited forever for would be here in less than two hours. Playing it both terrified and excited me.
This is Chapter Two of The Stories We Tell, a nostalgic lookback on friendship, growing up, and the hopes we have of becoming heroes.
It’s The Wonder Years meets The Sandlot with sprinklings of Friday Night Lights. New stories will be published weekly. For a list of all chapters, please visit the Chapter List here: Chapter List - The Stories We Tell.
November 14, 1992
I woke the second Saturday of November 1992, nervous like a kid in the principal’s office. Rain tap danced against my bedroom window, and the howling wind rattled branches outside. A shiver crawled through me. My heart, racing faster than an Olympic relay team, rattled bones inside my chest.
I walked downstairs to a breakfast nerves told me not to eat. “Come on,” Mom said as she watched me stare into a plate full of noodles dressed in reheated alfredo. “You need something in your stomach other than those butterflies.” She laughed and poked me. My hand shook some as I jabbed at the leftovers of last night’s carbo load.
The game I’d waited forever for would be here in less than two hours. Playing it both terrified and excited me.
Football started in 3rd grade in our town. We wore flags through 6th grade, with helmets and pads coming after. As kids, we played because crowds had cheered for our big brothers when they scored touchdowns, and we wanted the same rush. We played because back in kindergarten, when teachers passed out stickers for grades, the more tiny, sticky footballs saying good job on them you got the better you were.
We played because on fall Fridays the tall, bright lights in the center of town lit up the skyline for miles to see.
We played because our fathers’ stars had once burned brightest under those lights.
Each of the seven elementary schools in town had a team, and we all played each other once during the season. Starting in 4th grade we had an end-of-year tradition stretching back to before any of us were born. The top 4th grade team played the top 6th grade team, and the top 5th grade team played the second-place 6th grade team. The Tournament ran on the last two Saturdays of November. The whole town turned out for the games, and if your school was lucky enough to make it, they rewarded all grades with an extra vacation day the Friday before the first round.
No 4th grade team had ever beaten a 6th grade team in all the years they’d hosted The Tournament. Until Saturday, November 7, 1992, when our rag-tag bunch of 10-year-olds won 22-14. Which is why, one week later, my heart felt like it had been injected with a bunch of pixie sticks.
My dad, who coached our team, walked into the kitchen sipping a can of Coke and wearing a nervous smile. He paced around the counter, sat in a stool, stood, and paced some more—the same routine he’d done every Saturday morning all season. I looked at Mom. She rolled her eyes. We both giggled. She’d seen this scene too many times to count.
Dad had been everybody’s All-American, the small-town hero turned Rose Bowl legend. He never spoke much of his games but hidden in a filing cabinet at home he had the old radio broadcasts on cassettes. More than once, I snuck into his office after our house had gone to sleep to play them.
“And that’s another touchdown for the man who’s #25 in your programs but #1 in your hearts,” the broadcasters would say, almost in tears with excitement.
I’d listen in the dark, a football spinning between my hands, just listening and wondering what, if anything, anyone would ever say about me.
Those days were long gone for Dad, now. And, as I watched him hobble across the kitchen on knees crisscrossed by faded scars, I knew he’d never share how much he missed them. He didn’t have to, though. Actions always speak louder than words.
After several minutes of him pacing and me not eating, he gave me a look. Time to roll.
We drove in Dad’s old mustard and rust colored jeep toward the high school practice fields where we played. Mom sat up front, and I sat in the back. Tired windshield wipers slapped each second of the ten-minute drive. I yawned, a habit that kicked in whenever I got so nervous, I wanted to hide.
“Nervous?” Dad asked.
“A little,” I lied.
“Being nervous is good. It means it’s important. I used to get so nervous—so nervous—I didn’t want to play. Then, boom! After the first snap… my nerves… all the adrenaline in me... woosh. Everything disappeared. All the noise. All the be this and do that I heard from people who talked too much. Gone. Only the next play mattered.”
I closed my eyes for a moment until a rush of wind slipped through the plastic windows and whipped me in the face. Dad wore a new smile, softer than before and with a hint of sadness.
What I didn’t know watching him then, but life taught me later, is that when something you love leaves you—spouse, sibling, parent, friend, or sport—your love never goes away. And you spend most of your life trying to get back a sliver of the feelings what you lost once gave you.
“Think we can win?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter what I think,” Dad glanced back and grinned.
A lump formed in my throat as we got closer. Sixty minutes before our 11:00 AM game, and it looked as if the whole town had braved the morning rain. Vans and buses, the ones folks took Big 10 and NFL tailgates, filled the parking lot. They came decorated in scarlet and grey, blue and gold, and orange and brown. Hot dogs and burgers, with buns turning soggy fast, were spread across tables. I heard the faint sound of some song by Boston playing from someone’s car speakers. It wasn’t quite Friday night, but for as a kid it felt pretty darn close.
I climbed from the jeep and glanced around the parking lot. Smoke bubbled from bowls of chili, and a kid I recognized from a few grades below blew on a plastic spoon before taking a bite. Behind him kids in varsity letter jackets threw a football. Past them, adults sipped cans of beer. The air smelled like Marlboros—Marlboros and the fall.
A long table on the far side of the lot sold memorabilia under a tall tent. Rain slid off its sides, and people dodged the drops on their way in to buy t-shirts and photos of memories worth keeping. In the center of the table stood a tall trophy. Etched on it, I knew, were the names of each school who had won The Tournament. After today, it would live in the trophy case of the winning school. Greatness getting to be remembered.
I started toward the field.
“Gonna be like his old man?”
“Next in line?”
“Big shoes to fill…. real big shoes to fill.”
From behind, I heard random voices call at my dad, the same comments I’d heard all my life. I walked on and tried to ignore them. Expectations – like football –already just something I lived with.
I stopped where the parking lot met the grass. Steam rose from it, stretching toward the still lifting fog. On one side of the field, the team we would play warmed up. They were fifth graders and the men who gossiped over burnt coffee and well-done home fries served next to three-egg omelets had already anointed them the next big stars in our small town. They’d whipped their 6th grade opponent 48 to 12, the first time someone scored double digits on them all season.
Many already had muscles, and one had the early scratches of sideburns. Another, the first dots of hair on his chin. Last year, their ringleader Justin forced some 2nd grader to bring him extra pizza every week. We watched in the cafeteria each Friday as they made a ceremony of it, even making the poor kid wear a silly delivery boy hat. Justin’s henchmen, Jared, Chad, and the lot of them threatened the quiz bowl team with acts of violence if they didn’t do their homework for them. It worked. They all got straight A’s.
What I’m saying is, think about the bullies from all those teen movies you’ve ever seen and imagine them as jerks in a midwestern, early 90’s elementary school. We all went to the same school. But we didn’t like them, and they hated us.
Justin yelled to his friends, “Fifty? Think we win by fifty?”
“Come on. They’re just fourth graders.”
“Yeah. Sixty sounds better. It’s gonna be sixty.” Justin looked my way and smiled. A**hats, I thought.
Just then I heard B yelling from over my shoulder. I turned and saw B, the only one of us taller than all of them, standing next to Ryan and Mike. B raised his long arms and waved both hands at Justin, begging him to start something.
“That’s what I thought!” B shouted when Justin turned and went back to his team.
The four of us stood together. Then, as we’d done for every game that season, locked arms and walked onto the field together. A few steps in, we stopped, crouched, and pressed our hands into the ground, the cold from the grass shooting into us like a bolt of lightning.
We knew it was a silly tradition, but it was ours. And, it hadn’t failed us all season.
We looked at each other but said nothing. Ryan nodded his head, a slight smile making it look like he had something sarcastic to say about this little ritual. Mike stared ahead stone faced, eyes locked like Singletary, nostrils flaring like a bull set to charge. B shifted side-to-side, unable to be still, a jack-in-the-box ready to spring. Smoke from each breath floated between us. Small drops of water bounced atop my trembling hands.
After a minute we popped up, almost time to play.
Few things hurt as much as how time passes before the most important moment of your life. Each second took a minute. Each minute took ten. My mind raced, playing out a million scenarios all leading to the same outcome: Soon, we’d either be winners or losers, and it scared me to get caught on the wrong side of the line.
I looked around and, whether real or imagined, felt pressure from everywhere. Family, friends, the guys in the parking lot who’d hollered at Dad. Countless eyes all watching, watching and waiting to judge whether I was worthy of my last name or just destined to live forever in its shadow. I knew, even then, that playing was the only way to find out.
Dad called us to the center of the field at the goal line where we’d warmed up. He limped over, looked to the sky, let the light rain drop on his face, turned, glanced at the other side of the field, and looked back at us.
D**n, he loved this game.
“Well,” he started. “They’re older. They’re bigger. They’re stronger.” He counted their advantages on his fingers. “They know more about girls…” He paused, here, and we laughed nervously.
“They’ve never lost. Heck, they’ve never been close. But here we are. In this rain… in the mud you’ll be covered in… the cold running through your bones… with hearts you can’t stop from racing… playing a team nobody can beat.
And that’s why this game is so great.
Because in five minutes, none of that matters. In five minutes, the only thing left is to play the next play. And then, the one after that.
So, have fun. Talk a little trash.” He looked at B. “You’re going to anyway, so might as well have my blessing.”
He pulled us in closer and dropped his voice to a whisper. “But I want you to know, win or lose, I’m proud of all of you.”
He let his words hang for a few seconds, then said, “Now, let’s go kick their a** and win.”
Finally, we could play….
PS- For those curious, this was Billboard’s #1 song this week in 1992. The Nineties, wow.
Oh Kelly,
You had a very tall ladder to climb and make your mark. You were fast. Dad , PoPo, sure did love going to your track meets with your Mom! You sure were fast!