Memoirs of a Third-String

Who is to blame for my tenure in parochial school football?

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished. And on the seventh day God finished the work that He had done, and He rested. But then God became bored as there was nothing to watch on Sunday so the Lord God Almighty plucked a pig out from Eden, skinned it and created the game of football, the American version, not the other one. [Genesis - 2.1-2.25, King Ditka Bible]

Scholars and zealots may tussle over the original location of the Garden of Eden, but there is no room for debate when mapping the birthplace of God’s sport. Football was not founded in some ancient city where the great Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet, but rather a place 60 miles west of the University of Notre Dame where the great Eisenhower expressway meets the Reagan memorial tollway. A place called Elmhurst, Illinois.

Long before Elmhurst had its first Italian beef or deep dish pizza joint, Elmhurst had football. Since the founding of the sport, football has consumed all aspects of the provincial town. There are more football fields held within the town’s border than the entire state of Texas.

Not only was football our way of life in Elmhurst, it was the only way out. Unlike our cake-eating neighbors in the north shore suburbs used as backdrops for John Hughes films, boys in Elmhurst knew better than to waste dreams on fancy jobs in downtown skyscrapers. You either got drafted to the NFL or you got drafted into the union at the local limestone quarry.

And unlike our Hebrew neighbors up in Glenview who became men at thirteen, we Elmhurst gentiles transitioned to manhood upon entering fifth grade, the year organized sports began in the Catholic parochial school league. Football was a mandatory calling from God encouraged by the nuns at Immaculate Conception Grade School. The sisters had us memorize the names of IC football legends ahead of the saints and apostles.

In Elmhurst musical performances had a way of never making it past dress rehearsals. One time a traveling music man rolled into town and tried to start a boys band. After polite but stern no’s, he took the next train out of town to try his luck in more forgiving lands like Iowa. At least that is what city hall told the FBI weeks later when the man was still missing. Once the Feds were gone, I and the other boys were taken on an unofficial field trip to the local quarry so we could see for ourselves what happens to those who dare to hum do-re-mi instead of grunting hut-hut-hike!

Football was my destiny. Pope John Paul II could have forbidden me from playing, and my parents would have just switched to the neighboring Immanuel Lutheran parish. No pontiff pardon could break the family’s legacy of seven generations of Jr. IC Knights. The only time Father ever seemed happy was when he spoke of his days on IC’s Plunkett field. Now instead of taking hits on the field, Fathers took hits against scabs who dared to cross the quarry’s strike line. Back home, the only x’s and o’s he handed out were those in the playbooks he had me study each night before bedtime prayer.

Mother’s Father was holding back the clutches of death solely so he could witness me donning the Knights jersey. Years on the football field followed by years in the quarry had ravaged his body and mind. At night, I would read to him switching between the sacred texts - Parseghian and Notre Dame Football and In Life, First You Kick Ass: Reflections on the ‘85 Bears and Da Coach. Every so often Grandfather’s mind would go somewhere else, and he’d be in a trance-like state repeating platitudes: “Football is our way…I am football…you are football…we are football… ”

I’m sorry…I cannot continue this lie.

Everything I have laid before you is a complete and utter farce. I promise, this deception was not done out of malice. This rewriting of history was done as a final act of kindness in much the same way as what Vanessa Redgrave’s character did in Atonement. There she invented a happy ending for star-crossed lovers. I attempted to give my ten-year-old self, not a happy ending but a happy beginning. I crave an origin story that strips away all agency and therefore all guilt. I want to believe that I was not the harbinger of my own doom.

You see, Elmhurst is not the birthplace of American football nor does it have the most football fields per capita. It does on the other hand have the most porn searches per capita*. I’m sure Elmhurst also competing for most churches per capita is a completely unrelated achievement.

*City officials contend that the results were skewed by a nearby cell tower.

Yes, we Elmhurstians have venerated Mike Ditka to sainthood, but he’s just one of many patron saints of Chicago sports along with the likes of St. Jordan and St. Santo.

Immaculate Conception Grade School didn’t force boys into football although you’d be forgiven for assuming they forced the girls into Irish dance given how the annual talent show was 95% Irish dance troupes.

My grandpa never sustained a football injury nor did he ever play. My grandma would have loved to have donned a jersey as her dual passions in life were the Chicago Bears and the Fighting Irish. Grandpa much preferred tailgating, a trait I would go on to inherit.

And as for my dad, the only organized sports he ever forced me into was the chess club at the local library. The Bobby Fischer groupie somehow lucked into marrying my mom, the former cheerleader. When it was time for me to pick up my football gear, he sent the former cheerleader to accompany me so he could avoid having to run into all the other dads who would be reliving their former glory days.

Oh, and while we did live a football throw away from the local limestone quarry, my dad worked as an actuary downtown in one of those skyscrapers. Plus, based on his voting record, he would likely be rooting against the strikers while writing Thatcher-Reagan fan-fic.

So you see, no blame can be laid onto my lineage nor birthplace. I was not a casualty of a pig-skin black hole consuming the innocence of every boy in its path. The blame for my future suffering is all on me. It was I who coveted those shiny jerseys. It was I who had watched Remember the Titans one too many times. It was I, out of my own free will and fruition, who walked into the gates of Hell, known as parochial football.

I had played enough recess touch football to shed any delusions of making All-American. My only aspiration was to be half-way decent. It took all of half a practice to realize I had zero innate ability for the game. I could have gotten stuck in a groundhog day situation where I spent years and years reliving that first practice, and I would still be the worst player.

I memorized the playbook like my life depended on it. It was all in vain. Memorizing every play was as useful as memorizing every spell cast by Harry Potter. I would never levitate a football, much less throw one.

Now I was far from the only unskilled player on the field. In fact, pee-wee football teams can win on the backs of their unskilled labor. Kids the size of mice become successful running backs squeezing through the cracks in defensive lines. Those on the other end of the BMI scale had secure spots on the O-line. Taking up space was pretty much 99% of their job.

But what to do with an untalented kid like me? Too tall for running back, but too skinny for the line. Instead of being the bed that’s just right, I’m the bed infested with bed bugs. That’s how I became the third-string tight end. And no, we didn’t have second-strings.

I quickly learned to despise every aspect of the football complex. I despised practices that brought about pain bordering on torture. I’m not talking about the tackling where I held my ground as well as an inflatable tube guy outside a dealership. I’m talking about the end of practice when I would need the help of multiple coaches to pull off my helmet. It was a horrible catch-22. I prayed for practice’s end so I could be freed, but I also feared the end as it would mean another attempt at ripping my head from my neck.

I despised the game day pageantry , which is saying a lot because gay kids love pomps and circumstances of all kinds, but not when it comes in the form of 7am Sunday team masses dressed in suits. Eventually, the coaches changed mass to 5:15pm on Saturday to combat our sluggish performance.

I despised having to stand the entire game on the sidelines. My qualm was not with being a benchwarmer as that was a perfectly logical role for me. However, if I’m going to be a benchwarmer then give me a bench to warm instead of a patch of grass to brown.

I despised not getting to flee to the sanctuary of my house the minute the clock struck zero. Instead I was forced to watch the older grades play so we could “learn”. I think we learned as much as engaged couples in Pre-Cana learn from a perpetual single priest.

Oh and I really despised the orange slices we received at halftime. I much preferred apple slices. I admit this grievance is a bit petty, but at that point those produce snacks felt like a targeted attack.

All my hatred for the game could be boiled down to the fact that I did not accept the fantasy. My teammates and coaches embraced the myth they were creating in real time. Any given pep talk was treated like a thrown out draft from Any Given Sunday. To them we weren’t just another fifth-grade suburban parochial team trying to accomplish the simplest of plays. We were the town’s last hope of pulling itself out of its depression caused by the closure of the local quarry.

I planned for the last game of the season to be my swan song. I picked a good one to finish out my career as we were playing our arch nemesis Visitation, aka the other catholic grade school in town. My dumb team treated the game as if we were off to fight some holy war.

The game was moving along unremarkably until the coach inexplicably had me stay on the field after kick-off. I assumed the extra playing time was thanks to threats my mom made to the coaches’ wives - either Danny sees favorable playing time or I’ll place you at an unfavorable table at the upcoming parish gala.

Viz snapped the ball while I aimlessly stood in the back-field. It was not till I saw the football hurtling towards me that I remembered I was in the game. The QB’s terrible throw hit me square in the chest. I caught the interception and ran for what seemed like a lifetime but it was like two maybe three yards. The crowds cheered, the announcers called my name, and the coaches gave me the game ball.

Finally I was starring in my own sports movie. Down on his luck player is ready to quit it all until he makes the game winning play catapulting him from zero to hero. It’s the type of movie based on a true story that you can’t believe is true. Despite living it, I can no longer believe it. I don’t want to join the ranks of flat-earthers or anti-vaxxers, but I can’t help but dabble in conspiracy theorizing.

Had both teams held secret practices in the weeks leading up to the game? Had magnets been placed inside my helmet and the football to ensure I could not miss the catch?

It may seem crazy - why would the football establishment in town go to such great lengths to make me happy? Who cares if I planned on quitting the sport? I was only one kid. Yet, if I dropped out, I would prove that there was life beyond football. Perhaps my act of defiance would propel someone else to drop off, and another, and another. It wouldn’t be surprising to find out that the coaches had read up on Kissinger’s domino theory.

Regardless if the play had been fixed or not, the outcome was the same. Those exhilarating twelve seconds made me forget about the embarrassing twelve weeks. Come a year later, I once again excitedly and stupidly signed up for football.

Hey, I thought, I’m on the rise. I had my fill of trials and tribulations in the Act 1 of my football career, but all had come to a happy end. Sadly, I was in for a ruder surprise than theatergoers coming back for Act 2 of Into the Woods.

My second year of football was an exploration into gluttony - how much humiliation could I consume?

There was the epic ‘03 Mud Bowl that at first seemed like my rock bottom. Thanks to a Saturday night monsoon, Plunkett field had turned into a cereal bowl of Coco Rice Krispies. After each play, you needed a crane to lift the sixth grade players out of the mud pits. Post-game, the team relaxed on the stands and reveled in their mud stains treated as battle scars, proof of their manhood. Who needed armpit hair or being eye level with at least one girl in class when you were drenched in mud.

Then there was me. My jersey sparkled like the end of a laundry detergent commercial. Everyone already knew I didn’t get playing time, but now the proof was on the jersey, or lack thereof.

It was beyond embarrassing, and my teammates could sense my unease. Instead of hurling insults, they hurled their leftover mud at me. My jersey became their canvas for an experimental post-modern muddy art piece. Eventually, I was fully assimilated, and my unease was lifted. Sometimes junior high boys are assholes, but sometimes they are kind in their own messy way.

Being on mud welfare still bruised my ego, but then came the loss to St. Michaels. It was unsurprising as the boys of St. Michael’s were always two feet above us. There was something in their holy water. In this game, we were losing by so much that the coaches benched all the starters. Before I could put my mouth guard in, the coaches called on the fifth-graders to take the field. It was humiliating. I was no longer the worst sixth-grader but also the worst fifth-grader. The only thing that made my suffering bearable were my fellow sixth-graders bitching about the coaches. For once my misery had tons of company.

Rock bottom finally arrived in the last practice. Here the coaches divided us into four small teams for fun scrimmages. Players would try out new positions. Coaches would draw up wacky plays. What was meant to be a farce devolved into tragedy.

The catholic guilt must have gotten to my coach as he seemingly out of nowhere made it his mission to rectify my season long humiliation with a stunning touchdown. Play after play, Coach drew up the same routine - throw the ball to Milling. Positions shifted, routes were altered, but I remained the target. Sadly, a touchdown catch was just not in the cards. QB’s would get switched out, defensive players would get that look from the coach to “try a little less”, and all I gave back were incomplete passes.

“So close, let’s run that again.”

Again and again, we ran the plays. I had long stopped caring about getting a touchdown in a useless practice scrimmage. Besides, how was scoring a touchdown with unlimited chances during a half-hearted scrimmage supposed to build my self-esteem? Any touchdown I scored would be the ultimate participation trophy. Not to mention that my teammates were angry that their fun scrimmage had morphed into some twisted make-a-wish event.

After the 95th failed play, I was at my wits end. I desperately wanted to scream out -

“THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY COACH!?”

- but I didn’t because I was a kid and kids don’t yell at adults. Plus, it would be a few more years till I was well acquainted with Ms. Jane Fonda’s filmography. So we continued with the useless charade until the whistle sounded.

Not long after that disastrous exercise in futility, I bumped into my football coach while in the post-9am mass donut line in the basement below church.

“Danny, sad to hear you won’t be joining us next year. Is there any way we can change your mind?”

I quickly stuffed my mouth with a strawberry frosted sprinkled donut. It was the only way to stop myself from cursing in the presence of the pastor.

Are you really gonna do this song and dance? I thought You don’t want me on the team. I don’t want to be on the team. Cut the shit and eat your donut.

I gulped down the sugary treat and then sweetly replied, “No, thank you.” I then grabbed a second donut and walked away. Technically it was a sin to grab two donuts, but I knew God would forgive me.

Let me be clear: I hold no ill will against my coach. He was merely a vessel for the Holy Spirit to guide me back to my true destiny. It was I who had mistakenly taken the wrong turn that led me to Plunkett field. God was left with no choice but to humiliate me until I finally pursued what I was put on this Earth to do. God had given me gifts that I was wasting on that field. It was time for me to answer my true calling - Musical Theater.