“Let her kick it until she misses. Tell her one miss and she’s out.”
“Really?”
“You’ve seen her in practice. She doesn’t miss.”
“Anybody can do what she does when there’s no pressure on. If I put a six-by-eight plank on the ground, every single one of the men out there, and Jesse, too, could walk right across the field on it without blinking an eye or wavering even a little bit. But I put the same plank a hundred fifty feet in the air? Hardly any of them could make themselves take a step on it, much less walk across it to the other side of the field.”
“And I bet Jesse could dance across it.”
“Jesus, Skip—you in love with her or something?”
“I’m in love with her ability.”
“Ability,” he said quietly. You’d have thought it was a word new to him.
“She’ll make every kick inside the forty. Fifty yards or less, every time. How much you wanna bet?”
“How much?”
“If she makes every kick, you keep her on the team and list her as the third quarterback.”
“I’m not going to cut anybody for her.” Neither one of us knew about Kelso yet.
“All right, then just list her as the fourth quarterback.”
“And if she misses one?”
“Cut her and I’ll hold a press conference to confess it was all my fault.”
“I’ll take that bet.”
“Starting tomorrow night?”
“You got it,” Coach Engram said. “But you make sure she knows: One miss and she’s out. That’s the deal.”
“You wanna put the pressure on.”
“That’s right.”
“So do I,” I said with a short laugh. “So do I.”
“You do?”
“She thrives on it,” I said. “Absolutely thrives on it.”
“Really?”
“Maybe it’s because she’s a woman,” I said. “You know? She doesn’t have a pair of balls. So successfully kicking a football through the uprights isn’t some verdict on her manhood.”
“Very funny.”
“You’ll see,” I said.
Sixteen
It really was something to see. And I don’t mean that first game she got to play in either, although that was something, too. No, I mean the look on Jesse’s face when I told her the conditions. She didn’t blink an eye.
“You know what that means,” I said.
“What?”
“You miss and you’re out. Engram will do exactly what he says.”
We were standing outside the training room after practice. She looked at me with those clear, stony blues. “I’m not going to miss,” she said.
There’s something about athletes with real talent; I’m not talking about guys who are, you know, better than average, or even the ones who get scholarships and national attention because they’ve got perfect bodies with no fat to speak of and all the muscles in the right places, along with whatever natural talent, whatever swiftness of foot. That kind of athlete is everywhere. You can find them on any pickup basketball court in America; on any soccer or baseball or football field in any school you care to name. They’re everywhere. No, when I say real talent, I mean something beyond mere athletic ability, physical strength, or skill. That’s a part of it, obviously. But I’m talking about something else—something internal that integrates all that physical talent and uses it in such a way that it appears almost effortless.
There’s a story I like to tell about the great Joe Louis. My grandfather actually saw him fight once and said that Louis could knock a man out with either hand, left or right, and frequently did; he could move and box with the best of them; he was a superb athlete. But here’s the thing: so were many of the men he fought. A lot of them were strong, had perfectly tuned bodies, could move with the best of them. For more than a dozen years—until he got old, that is, and started losing to inferior fighters—Louis lost just one fight, to a German heavyweight named Max Schmeling. Schmeling’s trainers had him watch film of Louis in the ring, see, and they discovered a flaw in Joe’s left jab: Every time Louis threw that left jab, he’d lower it a little as he drew it back to his body—not a lot, but just enough so that if you were watching for it, you could throw your right hand over it and tag him good. And that’s what Schmeling did in their first fight. He knocked Louis down in the fourth and twelfth rounds. Some say Louis was essentially unconscious after that first Schmeling right hand. Eventually, of course, Louis stayed down. Schmeling knocked him out.
Hardly anybody saw that first fight, but for the rematch the whole world was interested. This was in the middle of the 1930s, and Schmeling was now a representative of the master race, Hitler’s golden boy. (He did not like that role and always hated it when anybody mentioned it to him, but that’s how it played in the press.) The story was, a representative of the master race was going to defeat an American Negro. Everybody was sure Schmeling would engineer another slaughter. Most of Germany, anyway, was sure of it. But Americans desperately wanted Joe Louis to win. Even white America wanted Joe to win. And few thought he could.
Right before the fight, Louis said to his trainer, “I’m so afraid.”
The trainer was shocked. “You’re afraid?” he said. “The way you’ve trained for this? You’re ready, champ. You don’t have to be afraid of this man.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” Louis said. “I’m afraid I will kill him.”
The bell rang to start the fight, and it took a little under two minutes in the first round to put Schmeling on the canvas—he’d been hit so many times with Joe’s hammering left and right hands, he screamed audibly. People said it sounded like a woman’s scream. The fight was over before anybody could say “master race.”
That’s what I mean when I say “real talent.” When Jesse said, “I’m not going to miss,” I thought of Joe Louis.
“I love you, Jesse,” I said, suddenly. “You’re a true champion.” It was a burst of enthusiasm that took her by surprise. She smiled a bit, looking down at the ground, seeming to get an idea it would be bad to look at me.
I reached over and gave her a slight punch on the shoulder. She still had nothing to say, but she was smiling.
“You’re going to make history,” I said. “You know it?”
I’m not sure if my saying “I love you” caused her some sort of alarm, but the awkwardness was kind of embarrassing. I punched her shoulder again so she’d know I wasn’t getting romantic on her or anything.
“Quit that,” she said.
That Saturday Engram made Justin Dever kick off (as he would all year long—he didn’t want Jesse getting blocked or knocked down in kick coverage). The fans booed the kickoff all the way as it sailed high and end over end in the air, but Dever got it inside the 10 and the Aztecs ran it out to their 31-yard line. It was not a great kick. In the second quarter, on third and 9 from the Aztec 37-yard line, Ambrose overthrew Anders on a deep pass to the corner. The crowd went wild, of course, anticipating a field goal. Jesse had been warming up a little by kicking into a net on the sideline. Everybody knew what was about to happen: For the first time in human history a woman was going to step onto a football field and take part in an NFL game. Even if it was just an exhibition game, the electricity of that night was impossible to suppress. You could almost feel the world take a deep breath and watch.
And what a play it was—maybe the most famous play in any exhibition game ever. You’ve probably seen the film of it a hundred times. It registered in Engram’s mind as a missed field goal.
Jesse had been working with Jimmy Kelso, our holder, for only a few practices, and he had a fractured wrist, remember, that we didn’t yet know about. What happened caused a gasp to go up from the crowd—I think I even felt the wind of it. I know my own heart stopped. Kelso fumbled the snap and the ball squirted on the ground at Jesse’s feet. It looked like Kelso was just nervous and tried to place the ball before he actually got his hands on it. The snap from
the center came in pretty low, too. We studied it, believe me.
Anyway, seeing she wasn’t going to be kicking the thing, Jesse bent down and picked up the ball. She had only a split second to do this, given the mob of opposing players rushing at first to block her kick, and now to put her on the ground. She held the ball in her two hands and stepped quickly to her right to dodge one guy. Then she stood up a bit, scooted quickly to her left, looking downfield, and saw Dan Wilber, who plays on the end of the line in kicking situations, running behind everybody toward the Aztec goal line. Since he was lined up on the end at the beginning of the play, he was an eligible receiver. Jesse let go a quick short pass about 20 yards or so right into his big open arms. It looked like somebody dropping a pellet into a kettle the way that ball disappeared in Wilber’s arms, and he scooted about 15 more yards before anybody could drag him down.
First down Redskins. The crowd went wild.
Jesse trotted off the field, but they wanted more. “We want Jesse!” they started chanting. “We want Jesse!”
Ambrose took us the rest of the way, handing the ball to Mickens, who took it around the left end to score untouched. But the crowd would not let up. Jesse came back in to kick the extra point and you’d have thought that was a touchdown too.
We beat the Aztecs 31 to 10. Jesse kicked a 41-yard field goal in the third quarter and made all her extra points. It was like a big party. The crowd never let up—you’d have thought it was a Super Bowl game.
Engram looked at me when I got to the sideline near the end of the game—I usually occupied a booth up in the stands for games—and I didn’t like the look on his face. Jesse trotted off the field with the rest of the players, carrying her helmet by the face guard. They were all patting her on the back and cheering. That one pass had won over the team. She was one of them. Her eyes gleamed, her short hair bounced on her neck, and she stared straight ahead as she went into the tunnel. At least a thousand fans were leaning over the wall at the entrance to the tunnel screaming her name.
“Well,” Coach Engram said, as we were leaving the field. “She missed.”
“Come on. You’re not going to count that.”
“It was a miss.”
“It was a botched hold. Kelso dropped the damned thing.”
He shook his head and smiled. “Goddamn it,” he said.
“You hate it that she’s doing so well, don’t you?”
“She thinks pretty fast,” he said. “I liked that quick pass to Wilber.”
“It’s the kind of thing she can do with her eyes closed.”
“Well, then, goddamn it, I wish she was a man.” He walked on ahead of me. I was beginning to see what a tremendous strain Jesse’s presence on the team was going to be on him. I had no idea, though, what it would do to me, the league, or the rest of the country.
Seventeen
Once the year got started and we were playing games for keeps, things started to settle down a little. Engram kept Jesse on the team, but only to kick field goals and extra points. He held on to Dever, as he said he would, to kick off. His leg was no stronger than Jesse’s, but Engram didn’t want her on the field in kick coverage. It was risky enough, he said, having her on the field goal team. “She could have been killed on that first kick she tried.”
“She didn’t get a chance to try it,” I said. “And she came nowhere near being killed. She threw a perfect pass to the only open receiver on the field.”
“Yeah, well.”
I don’t have to tell you, it took a while for the media storm to calm down. And a lot of players were openly hostile to us for having the audacity to break the “rules.” There was no shortage of strict constructionists in the league angry at our lack of “judicial restraint.”
Women, though, loved Jesse, and every cosmetic firm, dress, dish, cooking utensil, and appliance manufacturer wanted her. I acted as her agent at first, but I realized pretty early on that she’d need somebody full-time who knew what he was doing. So I lined her up with an agent to represent her in football—a cocky but honest young fellow named Justin Peck, whom I never minded dealing with. For the commercial endorsements she insisted on using Nate and Andy. Things went pretty fast after that.
You started seeing Jesse in all kinds of ads. She modeled training shoes, workout clothing, camping gear; she was in a toothpaste ad; several times a week, she announced that with her busy schedule she was grateful for her new KitchenAid dishwasher. She drove a Mercedes SLR because it gave her the best combination of hybrid technology and automotive performance. “I get sixty miles to the gallon,” she’d say, “and still I have plenty of power when I need it. This car, let me tell you, has got real kick.”
They painted her face for the ads, put eye shadow and mascara on, so when I first saw her I didn’t even recognize her. She was beautiful still, don’t get me wrong, only now it was glamorous beauty—a sexy beauty, even. She didn’t look even remotely like a football player. In one ad for the NFL about taking care of America’s needy I thought she looked particularly silly with that makeup, as she smiled at the camera, lifting her helmet to her head. It was just a total disconnect of identities, and I was embarrassed for her when I saw it.
On the other hand, she was making money in baskets; nearly every day was some kind of payday.
Justin Peck flirted with Jesse a lot, called her way too often to tell her he planned on making sure she collected a lot of money when it came time to negotiate. I told him to leave her alone until that time, but he was determined to cultivate a “relationship.” That’s what he called it. All Jesse said about him was that he was “cute,” though I couldn’t help noting that she was a full head taller than Peck.
I kept waiting to see what all that money might do to her. But she just put her money in various trusts and annuities and kept on going. All of this she took care of by herself. She had no advice from me, Andy, or even Nate so far as I know. She never asked any one of us about her money or what she should be doing with it. But I did find out a few things just from being around her.
She bought all new equipment for the Divas, for one thing—helmets, jerseys, shoes, pants, pads, everything. She bought them a gross of footballs, too, and told Andy that in the spring she would make sure the team had a field to practice on and a good stadium to play their home games in. Not that she could afford to have a stadium built or anything, but she could afford to rent Fairfax Stadium, a relatively new venue abandoned by Northern Virginia’s only professional soccer franchise, which folded shortly after they’d built the place. It was rarely used except by rock bands and a few remaining high school soccer teams each year. She even paid to have some repair work done on the place.
And for us, Jesse was kicking field goals.
She ended up kicking a good number of field goals in the first few games of the season, as we kept getting stopped on offense. Ambrose just didn’t have the same steam in his arm and everybody could see it. A lot of the time, when he’d try to compensate for less arm strength, the ball would just sail on him, flying high over the receiver’s hands. We won our opening game 17 to 14 over the Miami Dolphins. Jesse kicked the winning field goal—a 38-yarder. She was on TV all that week—ESPN, the four networks, the NFL Network. She was named special teams player of the week, and of course the late-night talk show hosts had a field day with that. (“She might be the most special special teams player on the planet,” Late Show star Jack Marlowe said.) She was a guest on the Tonight Show and the Late Show, both. She was more famous than the first lady.
Just before she kicked that first winning field goal, the coach of the Dolphins tried to “ice” her by calling time-out. He wanted her to think about it. She just stood back there, staring at the ground, none of the other players saying anything to her. She might have been looking for a four-leaf clover. Hands on her hips, one leg crooked a bit, she looked, from any angle, like a lithe, strong young athlete. As soon as the time-out was over, she took her place, Kelso patted her on the shoulder and knelt down, a
nd she waited there, arms swinging slightly. Then the center snapped the ball, and Kelso put it down in front of her with the laces away from where her foot would hit it—a perfect hold—and she stepped into it like she was doing a dance step. The ball sailed straight and high, right down the middle, like just about all of them did.
The pandemonium was impossible to contain.
We felt pretty good with that win because we thought the Dolphins were going to be a contender that year. But then we lost the next game—shut out by the Detroit Lions 17 to 0.
We worked really hard the following week to correct some things to get the offense moving. Coach Engram asked me to set a game plan that would take a more conservative approach; more runs with Mickens and shorter passes for Ambrose. I spent two nights working it all out—I mean all night long, with film and our playbook—and managed to design a plan that would take advantage of our speed out of the backfield, putting in some quick slants with Anders and Exley. I even used some plays where Anders lined up in the slot and ran quick outs behind the sharp crossing patterns of Exley. But when we went up to Philadelphia, we lost again, this time 21 to 9. Jesse kicked a 44-yard field goal in the first quarter, 30- and 38-yarders in the second quarter, and that was all we could do. Ambrose got knocked down a few times and hurried a lot. The real problem, though, was his damned arm. He claimed he had no soreness, but it was very clearly bothering him.
After that third game, Kelso had that MRI and we realized he’d be unavailable for at least six weeks, maybe longer. We put him on injured reserve, which meant he was lost for the year. So now we were preparing for Dallas, and we had to get not only a new quarterback, but a new holder for field goals as well.
I am still amazed sometimes when I look back on that year and realize all that had to happen for it to amount to what it did. I couldn’t have scripted it better. When Ambrose began to show his age, I suppose I had a little hope in my heart that Jesse might at least get moved up on the depth chart; but it really never occurred to me that she might do better than that. And in spite of what everybody has said since, I never actively lobbied for her. The fact is, Charley Duncan went right out and signed a new quarterback—a guy named Terry Fonseca—who’d played on our taxi squad the year before and knew the offense pretty well. He’d never thrown a pass in an NFL game, regular season or otherwise, but he was always prepared in practice and he knew what he was doing.
The Legend of Jesse Smoke Page 13