Bringing the Heat

by Mark Bowden

  “Please, Mrs. Hopkins. Please,” begs the guard, who has come sprinting back, embarrassed for her. But Erika is beyond embarrassment now. She has crossed the line. She has had enough.

  They lead her back to the guard station. Later, they bring Lynn Allen in, too. Lynn explains how she had gone out to confront Amy again in the lot outside the Eagles’ entrance to the Vet.

  “I don’t have anything to say to you,” Amy had said.

  “Well, you’re going to listen to me,” said Lynn, and then laid into her with a vengeance. “Don’t you know what you are doing? He’s married, he has a little girl. This isn’t some kind of game. People get hurt.”

  Security had dragged Lynn off.

  No charges are pressed. As the Eagles finish their triumphant shutout of the Broncos, and Erika listens through the stadium’s concrete walls to the cheering and thumping of the happy fans out there on that fabulous autumn afternoon, watching those beautiful young men in their colorful gear play the violent and manly and fascinating game, she knows it will never be the same for her again. It had been foolish to try to hang on to it.

  She waits until the cheers die down and watches as the crowds file out happily through the gates. Then she takes the elevator downstairs to wait in the dark concrete tunnel outside the locker room— to wait for Wes.

  He is the last person to come out, long after the stadium has grown dark and silent. Erika has to stand down there for hours, being cheerful and pleasant with everybody, reporters, coaches, coaches’ wives, players and their families … wondering if they know what has happened, worried that her brawl in the stands will make the news reports.

  IN THE LOCKER ROOM after the game, Wes is positively bubbling with enthusiasm, about how they shut down Elway and how this game, in all his nine seasons, was the most dominant all-around game he and the boys have ever played.

  Wes has reinjured his hamstring, so he has to stay late for treat ment. Out in the damp and gloomy concrete corridor, Erika has lots of time to think through what she’s going to say. She rehearses it in her mind, coolly, slowly.

  She has made a decision.

  Erika is standing alone when her husband emerges through the twin green metal doors, limping slightly on his bowed legs.

  “I have to go get an IV,” he tells her.

  She can’t tell if he knows or not.

  “Okay, I’ll go with you,” she says, forcing a smile.

  “You follow me,” he says, which means he plans to head off on his own someplace afterward.

  “No, we can go in one car,” says Erika.

  She is going to confront him, but she has to wait for the right moment. Wes is a runner. If she starts in on him with something he doesn’t want to hear, he just jumps up and leaves, gets in his car and drives off. So Erika rides with him to Methodist Hospital, a few blocks up Broad Street, and waits until the nurse hooks him up to the IV.

  Only then does she start. “You know, Wes, I just beat your girlfriend’s ass,” she tells him.

  He grimaces.

  “You know, Wes, I’ve been through a lot with you. I’ve been behind you in everything you’ve done, and, you know, I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve to be humiliated like I was humiliated. I was put in a position today where I reacted. I regret that I reacted the way that I did, but, you know what? I’m totally within my rights to have done it. Do you have any idea how hurtful that was … finding her there at the game? That was the one thing I asked of you. This is supposed to be my time. I’m well respected in the organization, and with the wives. These people are my friends, Wes. And you have to flaunt this girl in front of them? You don’t disrespect me like that. You have to have more feelings for me than to do something like that. You could see this bitch six days of the week, but she didn’t have to go to the game.”

  Wes just listens glumly, tethered to the IV.

  “I want you out of the house,” Erika says.

  “I’m not moving out of my house.”

  “Wes, yes you are.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Well, either you come and get your things on your own, or when you go to work tomorrow you’ll come home and find all the locks have been changed. I want you out of there.”

  When the IV bag has finished draining, replenishing the fluids he lost in the game, they walk together out to the car, a minivan that Wes is driving as part of a promotional deal with a local car dealer.

  “I’m taking the Lexus,” he says (Erika had driven the new luxury car to the game, and it was parked back at the Vet).

  “No, you’re not,” she says. “That’s my car. I’m taking the Lexus.”

  Wes doesn’t come home that night. He shows up the next day and loads the minivan with his things.

  ERIKA DOESN’T KNOW how to explain all this to Montana, so initially she doesn’t try. Whenever her daughter, soon to be four, asks about Daddy, Erika says, “Daddy’s at work, honey.”

  Montana understands work. She has driven with her parents over the big bridge across the Delaware River, the Walt Whitman. The giant stadium where Daddy works is on the other side of the bridge.

  Wes stops by to visit his daughter every few weeks. He comes in and parks on the sectional sofa, bounces Montana around for a few minutes, and then loses interest—at least that’s the way it seems to Erika. Wes comes by for Montana’s birthday party and is over again for Christmas—but Montana knows something big has happened. She misses him.

  After the Eagles win a big game at the end of the year—Erika and Montana had watched it on TV—Montana says she wants to buy flowers.

  “So Daddy will be happy at me.”

  “Tana, Daddy is always happy with you,” Erika says.

  So they go out and buy flowers, and when Erika talks to Wes on the phone—they still talk almost every day—she tells him about it and asks him to stop by for them.

  But weeks go by before Wes comes, and the flowers wilt. They stand dead on the foyer table for days, but Montana won’t let Erika throw them away.

  “How come Daddy didn’t take my flowers?” she asks. “Is Daddy’s bridge broke?”

  9

  BETTER THAN SEX

  Defensive tackle Mike Golic is driving south on I-55, cruising the great thundering tangle of expressways through Philly’s sprawling New Jersey suburbs, when he sees an eighteenwheel rig up the road clip the back end of a car.

  It’s like a cow flicking a fly off its rump. The car flips up and off the road at high speed, airborne into the median, where it touches down on one side and does three violent rolls before coming to rest, upright.

  It’s Monday afternoon of D-Day, Dallas Day, about seven hours before kickoff for what the local Pack has facetiously dubbed the “Game of the Century,” the ABC-TV “Monday Night Football” spectacular Battle of the Unbeatens between the Eagles and Cowboys. Both teams are 3—0, and both had last weekend off, allowing for a twoweek build-up of suspense … and hype. Mike has dutifully spent Sunday night at the hotel in Mt. Laurel with the team. They had meetings all morning, and now, with a long afternoon to kill before reporting for work, he’s heading home to the wife and kids.

  He pulls onto the median, jumps out, and runs toward the wreck. The car’s windows are all blown out. He can see the driver, bleeding and slumped over the steering wheel, and, as he approaches, hears the unmistakable sound of WIP coming from the radio. The station has been featuring a pregame show since dawn this morning, broadcasting from a tent across the street from the Vet, where a beery crowd is already deeply in the mood.

  Mike leans in the window on the driver’s side. The driver has his seat belt on, and a gash on his forehead.

  “Man, you all right?” Mike asks.

  The poor man stirs and looks up, and a look of startled recognition comes over his bloody face.

  “Hey!” he says, grinning. “You’re Mike Golic!”

  He reaches to release the seat belt and maneuver himself out from behind the crumpled steering wheel. “I’m going t
o the game tonight!” he says.

  “No, no, no,” pleads Mike. “Sit still!”

  “Man, how do you think you guys are gonna do tonight?”

  Mike can’t really blame the guy (who did, he learned later, emerge from the emergency room braced and bandaged but in time to take his seat in the seven-hundred level for kickoff). Two weeks is too long to wait in a town as football-mad as Philadelphia has become. One week is bad enough; two weeks amounts to fan cruelty.

  The NFL instituted these midseason byes in ’90, a nod to mounting injuries and player complaints, because the league’s profit-driven schedule had expanded beyond the bounds of human tolerance. Back in the days of the so-called Iron Men, heroes like Y. A. Tittle, Otto Graham, and Johnny U., pro teams played a neat twelve-week season. The first game was played at the end of September and the last before Christmas. Today, it isn’t unusual for players to report for pre-training camp workouts early in July and finish their season in mid- to late January. Making it to the Super Bowl can mean playing twenty-five football games in six months (five preseason, sixteen regular season, three play-off games, and the big one). Midway through this slog, pro training rooms look like the outpatient ward in a MASH. To Richie and his players, the bye is like a thirty-second breather in a marathon, but to the devoted followers in Philadelphia, fresh off that 30-0 Broncos rout, it amounts to (this being a Monday night game) holding their breath for fifteen days.

  While the teams rest, the hype mills work overtime, with every newspaper, radio, and TV station in Philly’s huge media market milking the upcoming contest for all (no, more than) it is worth. This being a nationally televised showdown, it attracts the bigfoot national newshounds. The matchup has become a megaevent that transcends mere sport. It’s a national happening.

  It is featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, on nightly national news programs, in weekly news magazines, dissected from every conceivable angle in the burgeoning literature of pro football tabloids and newsletters, and is even discussed in the high cerebral zones of National Public Radio. It may be the most celebrated early season battle in NFL history. Locally, Monday, October 5, 1992, might as well be a city holiday. Philly hasn’t been this giddy since those Phillies hosted the Orioles in the ’83 World Series.

  Radio station WIP is cashing in, of course. They’ve been egging on Id-people all day, seeding the airwaves with bellows, grunts, and other simian-display noises, culminating in a ritualistic smashfest of Cowboys’ paraphernalia. Put it all together, a genuinely good early season matchup, the decade of rivalry, a mountain of hype, the city’s desperate wish for a champion, and the endless two-week wait …

  “A supercharged air of excitement!” is how ABC announcer Al Michaels kicks off the evening broadcast.

  THE EAGLES TAKE special pride in arriving at this pinnacle of expectation without two of their star players, Jerome and tight end Keith Jackson.

  Their cello-playing, would-be recording star— nom de rap K-Jack— had been sitting once more, through the summer and first month of the season. Despite their differences, Norman (you know, “the Moron”) had made Keith a liberal offer—$3.6 million over three years, which would have made him the highest-paid tight end in football. But K-Jack was holding out for the sky. He and his agent, Gary Wichard, that Mr. Upfront, had a score to settle with Norman. Keith wanted $6 million over three years, and he wanted the contract guaranteed.

  This, of course, was perceived by the Pack and the general public as the height of arrogance. Keith was a twenty-seven-year-old man whom the Eagles wanted to make a multimillionaire to play a game! And he was scoffing? Who did he think he was?

  But look at Keith’s take on it: A career in pro football is like no other. It lasts (on average) four to eight years, can end at any time, and demands that team and player agree on its value beforehand. Keith’s initial four-year contract for about $2 million assumed he would be a starting tight end and a good one. No one foresaw that he would become the best in the league in his first year and then have to play for three more years being paid far less than players of comparable value. So what? says the cynic. This time the Eagles got a bargain; he’ll catch up with his next contract. The trouble is, there may not be a next contract. Every time a player suits up for a game, it could be his last, or it could result in an injury that will never again allow him to play at the same level. For four years and sixty-three football games, Keith ran the risk of finishing his career without ever earning his true value—and it’s safe to assume he would never earn as much money doing anything else.

  You had to see him on the basketball court to fully appreciate his skills. At six-two and 250 pounds, his size approached that of an offensive lineman—with a bulk-up diet and lots of weight training, Keith could probably approach the 280-pound playing weight of Ron Heller. But on the basketball court he moved with the grace and quickness of a point guard, dribbling, passing, driving to the basket, making flying, one-handed dunks. Tight ends evolved from linemen who could sneak out occasionally and catch the ball. It was considered a low form of comedy watching one try to run with the ball after catching it—as the little cornerbacks and safeties bounced off trying to make the tackle. Even today, teams assign big pass-rushing linebackers to cover tight ends on pass routes. But Keith’s speed and agility mismatched every linebacker in the league. He was too quick and fast for the big men, and still so big it was fun watching the safeties and cornerbacks bounce off him—if they could catch him. Opposing coaches literally had to redesign their defense when they played the Eagles, to account for both scrambling Randall and their point-guard tight end.

  By dint of talent, luck, and effort, Keith emerged as the rarest of jewels at the bottom of the Sluice—yet he was being paid like a run-of-the-mill lineman. In ’91, the last year of his Eagles’ contract, he had earned about a half million. Norman and Harry conceded that was less than half his worth. The way Keith saw it, he had years of back pay coming—at least $2 or $3 million—in what might well be the last crack at a pro contract he would get.

  In the past, a player had small leverage. He couldn’t negotiate with other teams. But this year, while Keith sat out, the NFL Players Association was pressing a lawsuit in federal court to break the chains. Players argued that the league restrictions on free agency violated their rights.

  Keith wasn’t about to sign a contract with Norman until the court ruling, even if it took most of the season. He knew this next threeyear contract would carry him through his prime playing years—if he hadn’t passed them already. He would never again be in such a strong negotiating position. In fact (as he knew better than anyone), he had better leverage two years before, when Norman had refused to renegotiate. Despite Mr. Upfront’s windy projections two years earlier, Keith’s stats showed a steady decline over his four-year career (accelerated by his contractual hassles and injuries). He had caught eighty-one passes in his rookie year and then, year by year, sixty-three, fifty, and fortyeight. His total yardage during that phenomenal rookie season was 869, and then it went as follows: 648, 670, 569. He was still averaging five or six touchdown catches per season, but Keith hadn’t made the Pro Bowl since ’90. He was, without question, a superb tight end, but he wasn’t a player (like a blue-chip quarterback) who could make or break a club.

  Four days after the Eagles won their opener against the Saints, U.S. District Judge David Doty ruled in favor of the players, striking down the league’s restrictions and ordering both sides to craft an agreement that protected players’ rights and the league’s competitive balance. Keith and nine other unsigned players promptly asked the court to free them from all restrictions in the interim, and two weeks later, four days after the Broncos game, Doty did. Keith was a free man. The following week, as his old teammates prepared for D-Day, he signed a four-year, $6 million contract with the Dolphins. Even spread out over four years, he stood to make $300,000 more in each year of the contract than the Eagles were offering. Harry had made a last-minute effort to sweeten the deal,
shifting a few more dollars into the first year and offering a bigger incentive package, but for Keith, the choice wasn’t even close.

  “There was clapping and cheering in the background when we called to tell them we were coming here,” he said at the Thursday press conference in Miami, beaming under a Dolphins cap and standing alongside a new teal-and-orange jersey bearing his number, 88. “In Philadelphia, I think, even if they came up with the money, it would have been a bitter situation.”

  Bitter and probably frustrating. Because every bit as important to Keith as the money was the way he was likely to be used in Philly. The slide in his stats over four seasons was less a reflection of declining skills than it was of games missed and other teams figuring out how best to stop him—and how the Eagles, subsequently, adjusted their use of him. As the team’s offense improved, with the addition of wide receivers like Fred Barnett and Calvin Williams and the emergence of a stronger running game, Randall had more options for advancing the ball than scrambling around and dumping it to his talented tight end. And they needed more options, because Keith wasn’t a big surprise anymore.

  So despite the perfunctory nods to Keith’s talent (“You always hate to lose a player of that caliber,” says Richie) and the obligatory player shots at ownership (“It should never have come to this,” says Keith Byars), Jackson’s defection to Miami barely causes a ripple on the surface of this confident, surging team.