Five days in Japan flies by in a jet-lagged blur. Coach Mariucci gives us a good amount of time to ourselves, time we spend wandering the streets of Osaka, frightening the locals. Eminem blasts from storefront speakers. Adolescent Japanese girls sing along, unaware of what they are describing. We walk through the crowded streets as a pack of lanyard-clad Godzillas. The locals point and stare and run inside screaming. Big black man! Big black man! I’m given my own room at the hotel because another rookie did not make the trip. I push the small beds together and stretch out. I turn on the bidet, chuckle, use toilet paper instead. The Redskins are staying at our hotel. So are their cheerleaders. I spot one in the lobby who shoots an arrow through my heart. We fall in love immediately. She chooses not to acknowledge it, though, and so I give her the space she needs. I’m still waiting.
On one of our nights out I tag along with some of the veterans, a few girls who work for the Niners and some Niner cheerleaders. We go to a club on the top floor of a nondescript office building. The rookie-veteran barrier seems broken down, if only temporarily. We’re united as strangers in a strange land. To the locals, we are interchangeable monsters. There are fifteen of us. When we walk in the record screeches to a stop and the entire club recoils in fear. The Japanese patrons slowly back into the corners of the room and watch us the rest of the night as if we are a multi-culti variety show. We party NFL-style: shots and dancing and yelling. And a few buff dudes with their shirts off. Jeff Garcia dances on the bar and passes out beers. Terrell Owens knows better than to get drunk during camp. But he takes off his shirt anyway.
We play the game a few days later. I watch from the sideline with my neoprene harness cinched up tight. Stew had told me I wasn’t going to play. Rest the shoulder, he said. Don’t worry about this game. You’ll get your chance. But it’s hard not to worry. I can feel my chance slipping away, like the Japanese girls when we walked into the room. Konnichiwa!
We fly back to California and back to training camp in Stockton and I am back in my metal bed, lying awake once again as the light cuts through the blinds. Soon the assistant coach with the air horn makes it official. Wake the fuck up. It’s time to hit—again.
The next week we have a home game against the Kansas City Chiefs. I put on my wifebeater and go out to warm up early. I stand on the grass of Candlestick Park and feel fully immersed in my new profession. I look up to the spot where Ryan and I sat the previous year and smile to myself. I don’t get in the game until late in the fourth quarter. On my first play, I catch a slant from Brandon Doman for five yards. On the next play I catch another slant for 10 yards. Football is easy. Our drive stalls out. The game goes into overtime. On our first possession of overtime, Brandon throws an interception down the middle. The DB is dancing around and cutting back against the grain, trying to end the game on a walk-off interception return for a touchdown. He cuts back one too many times. I stick him under his chin and body-slam him. They kick a field goal on the next play and win the game. The next day we watch film and Stew dissects our performances. Stew’s favorite play from the game, besides T.O.’s freaky 71-yard touchdown, is my tackle in overtime. Receiver coaches love that shit.
On the last day of camp in Stockton, the offensive linemen go out for dinner. As is customary, they get the rookies shitfaced. Ty comes back to the room like a tornado and plops down on the bed. John Engelberger is a veteran defensive end—a big, corn-fed bruiser, who likes hanging with us rookies. We sit around the room laughing. Ty is a funny man, even more so after too many tequila shots. After one of his jokes, he hiccups and reaches for the closest receptacle. It’s an empty water bottle. He attempts to vomit into it but instead creates a suction. It sprays out the sides of his mouth and all over the room.
—Ty! C’mon!
—Shut up, Rapper!
I had mistakenly told my teammates about my hip-hop aspirations, and now they tease me relentlessly. At least we can laugh. Training camp is over. That night I lie awake in bed and listen to the last of the partying linemen run wild underneath our window. They have found a golf cart and turned the campus into their own personal bumper car playground. I fall asleep a better man. The next day we pack up our dorm rooms and go back to the 49ers facility.
We’re back to a regular schedule, done every day by five instead of ten. On one of our nights off I go to a movie with some friends and see Mooch outside the theater with his family. We talk for a few minutes. I meet his kids. He says see you tomorrow. The next day he approaches me as I’m standing on the sideline with ice on my shoulder.
—How’s that shoulder?
—Ah, it’s okay.
—You know, Nate. You’ve had a good camp. But you’re hurt. I appreciate you toughing it out. And I’d love to keep you on the practice squad. But practice squad players need to be healthy, they need to be able to practice, you know what I mean?
—Yeah, I know what you mean, Coach.
A few days later I’m stopped as I walk through the locker room. An assistant tells me to come upstairs, and bring my playbook. My days as a 49er are over, it’s obvious—only formalities remain. I saw this moment coming in slow motion ever since I slipped on the wet grass and my shoulder went pop. I am a broken machine. On the way out the door GM Terry Donahue tells me that if I get healthy they’ll sign me back the next season. I know I have Bill to thank for that gesture. He is serving as a consultant for the Niners.
I go home and move back in with my parents. They have always been supportive of my football dreams, but we are not a football family. I’m the only athlete of all my siblings. My parents are schoolteachers. We live in a middle-class California neighborhood in a small one-story home. I spent my summer days as a child at the cabana club down the street. A lifeguarded pool is a great babysitter. My friends and I were fish. I swam competitively and played soccer, but I had my eye on the oblong ball with laces. I was a 49ers child. But my parents wouldn’t let me play competitive football until I was in high school. That I ended up in a 49ers uniform after not playing until high school, not getting recruited out of high school, and getting cut from Division IAA Cal Poly probably surprised them. So when I move back home after getting cut from my hometown team, they are extra-supportive. My dream came true, for a second. And now I’m licking my wounds in my childhood bedroom.
I have shoulder surgery paid for by my own insurance and I rehab at a clinic three times a week. My physical therapist is used to fraudulent worker’s compensation cases and old people who have fallen down. She marvels at my recovery time and my dedication. I explain that I’m headed back to the NFL. I’m trying to convince myself that it’s true but I have no idea. I’m holding on to Donahue’s words. But maybe he was just being nice. Maybe my football days are over. My shoulder heals very fast but my mind is a mess. I sit around in my bedroom and have panic attacks. I try dating but can’t relax. I scribble in my journal, trying to exorcise the demons, summon the angels, build future mental stairways. I watch the 49ers on TV all year with a new appreciation of the machine. For the first time I’m seeing the big picture through the small screen. I listen to the announcers and read the papers. The media narratives are sensational and simplistic, and when compared to what I know about the team, sound like drivel.
From the couch, my dad and I watch the football season unfold. The 49ers go 10-6 and slide in the back door of the playoffs, beating the Giants in the wild-card round at Candlestick Park in a thrilling comeback. But they lose badly the next week to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. A few days later Mooch is fired. I never understand firing a winning coach, but apparently there were some philosophical differences between Mooch and Donahue. There’s so much more to it than anyone ever knows. After the dust settles on Mooch’s firing, Ryan reaches out to Donahue and reminds him that I am still around. They need camp bodies. They always need camp bodies, especially at wide receiver. Receivers drop like flies during training camp. Donahue keeps good on his word and I drive back to the facility
in my Civic. They put another contract in front of me. No signing bonus this time. Here’s the pen. Look, Ma, I’m a 49er again.
The next week is the Super Bowl in San Diego between the Oakland Raiders and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Ryan and his cousin Bruce have just joined forces with super-agent Leigh Steinberg. Leigh throws a Super Bowl party every year. Ryan invites me. It’s at the San Diego Zoo. I’ll be on the list plus one, he says. I have friends who live in San Diego so I make the trip.
I bring my friend Justin to the party. He’s in town working for Pepsi, driving around in a souped-up two-door Lexus with a custom Pepsi Blue paint job. He sets up his Pepsi table in the Gaslamp Quarter and passes out free “Pepsi Blue” samples from a carbonated backpack hose.
—Free Pepsi Blue! Like to try a sample?
—Sure.
—It tastes like fizzy Nyquil.
—Sorry.
Justin breaks free from his Pepsi duties and comes with me to the zoo. We check in at the will-call desk and I get my lanyard. It says I play for the San Francisco 49ers. I’m funneled into a line where I walk the red carpet like a plank, photographers looking at me confused but still snapping away. A face lifted man from Entertainment Tonight interviews me. We both wonder why. Inside the party I’m formally introduced to pro sports high society. It has a strange, seductive sheen. The women are beautiful. The men are powerful. Everyone is horny.
The next night we go to the Playboy party near Balboa Park with girls we had met at Leigh’s zoo party. They told us to come along: that we’ll find a way in. But we have no tickets and are not on the list. It’s a gorgeous starry night. Attempts to squeeze past distracted security thugs are easily thwarted. The bouncers are on their game. This is their Super Bowl, too. We need actual tickets. Luckily I run into a girl whom I had met outside a club the previous night. There had been a rowdy mob trying to get in and she was pinned against a barricade. I pushed back against the mob and gave her some breathing room. Her name is Sasha.
Sasha has an extra ticket to the party, she says. It’s for her sister but she’s not going to make it. Here, take it. Now we need one ticket. I walk to the will-call desk.
—Hi, there, how are—
—Are you on the list?
—Yeah, should be.
—What’s your last name?
—Jackson.
She flips through the stapled pages and runs her finger down a long, tight list. She stops her finger.
—Tom?
—Yep, that’s me.
She hands me my ticket. Sorry, Tom. You’ve probably been to a hundred of these things, anyway. Inside the palace doors are the excesses of the industry; sports and entertainment collide in a puff of sex. Justin and I walk around and giggle. There are naked girls in body paint, celebrities, free drinks and free food and everyone laughing a little too loudly. I’ll remember these girls forever. One of them ends up in a cab with us after the party. She has olive skin and dark hair. She speaks clearly. Smells of black orchids. Wears loose-fitting linen. Her earrings are dream-catchers. Her aura is magenta. We drive across the Coronado Bridge and drop her off at her resort hotel. I never see her again, but I smell her every time the wind whispers, Mary.
A few weeks later the Niners hire Dennis Erickson as Mooch’s replacement. Although he had a few losing seasons, Mooch did his best to carry on the Niner tradition. He ran the same offense. He often referred to our forefathers. He kept counsel with the elders. He was Bay Area through and through. Erickson has none of that. He brings his own brand and the 49er brand blows away in the wind.
I keep reminding myself: Joe Montana was here. Jerry Rice. John Taylor. Brent Jones. Ronnie Lott. Roger Craig. Steve Young. Dwight Clark. Tom Rathman. Eddie D. Everyone was here. But I have to put my face right up against the glass trophy case to remember they ever existed in this building. Who are these people who call themselves 49ers? Not the 49ers I know.
Part of my disappointment with this new brand of football (a new system of offense, new terminology, new schedule, and new coaches) is that it’s bumped me even further down the depth chart. I’m getting no reps. When Mooch was around, I often saw Bill Walsh on the sidelines at practice. He would offer me an encouraging word after a nice play, a nod or a pat on the back. But I rarely see him down there anymore. It’s just me and my fellow long-shot receivers, blowing dandelions and chasing down the safety on backside run plays. As a receiver, it doesn’t just matter if you get in the game; it matters what plays are called when you’re in. The veterans get all of the good pass plays. When they get tired we go in for a few run plays or screen passes. Once they catch their breath we’re back behind the huddle picking our butts.
On a typical training camp day in mid-August, I’m suited up, helmet in hand, walking through the double doors out onto the practice field for our afternoon practice. One of the quality control coaches taps me on the shoulder and tells me that Bill wants to talk to me in his office.
—Bill?
—Yeah. He’s waiting for you.
What could he possibly want to talk about?
I throw my helmet in my locker and walk upstairs. My cleats clack on the linoleum. Heads look up from desks in cubicles to see what beast this way comes. Bill’s door is open and he’s sitting at his desk. Behind him is a window that looks out the south end of the building. There are framed pictures of his family around the office, and papers stacked neatly on his desk.
—Come in, Nate. Sit down.
I sit. I’m trying to peek at the papers. I wonder if any of them have to do with me. What is it that Bill Walsh reads all day up here?
—Well, I’ll get right to it. We’ve traded you to Denver. As you know, you’ve been stuck down at the bottom of the depth chart. I asked Coach Erickson if you were going to make the team here. He said no. So I asked his permission to make a few calls on your behalf. I called Denver and Mike Shanahan was interested. He’s a great coach. You’ll get a fair shot there. I can promise you that. I think this is exactly what you need, Nate. You okay with all of this?
—Yeah, of course.
—I know it’s a lot to take in right now but you’ll be fine. Your flight leaves in three hours. You better get going. Good luck, Nate.
I thank him for everything, we shake hands, and I’m out the door. I change out of my 49ers gear in the empty locker room and leave. My teammates will come back after practice and my locker will be cleaned out. I will never see them again without a helmet on.
Two hours later I’m at the airport with a duffel bag. I am meat, traded to the highest bidder: the only bidder. Fine, I’ll be your meat. I’ll be whatever you want me to be. Just give me a helmet.
2
My Life as Randy Moss
(2003)
I arrive at Denver International Airport and am greeted by a driver holding a piece of paper with my name on it. I sit in the backseat and look out the window as he narrates the passing landscape.
—You can’t see it now but directly ahead of us are the Rocky Mountains. Beautiful sight when it starts snowing. Usually get our first snow in late September or early October. As you can see, downtown’s over thataway.
He points across the passenger seat with his gloved hand.
—But we’re headed south of that to Dove Valley. That’s where Broncos headquarters are. Boy, Denver is Broncos crazy, I tell ya. I’m not a Broncos fan myself. No offense. Everyone takes football so seriously around here.
—Huh.
—No idea why they built the airport so far away. Kinda makes you feel like you’re landing in the middle of the prairie, doesn’t it? And I gotta drive up and back and up and back, all day long, forty minutes each way. Anyway, it could be worse, I guess. You see that building?
—Yeah.
—We call that the ‘Sore Thumb’ building.
—Why’s that?
—Because it sticks out like a s
ore thumb.
We exit the freeway at the Sore Thumb building and go east on Arapahoe Road. It is lined with car dealerships, all bearing the licensed name of Denver’s golden child: John Elway Ford, John Elway Toyota, John Elway Honda, etc.
—Wow, you were right. They really do love their Broncos.
—You have no idea.
He drops me off at the Holiday Inn, right up the street from the Broncos facility. I check into my room and look at the clock: it’s just after eleven. I sit down on the bed. I am chasing my dream alone.
Nine hours later I sit in my new locker fiddling with my equipment. The Denver Broncos locker room buzzes around me. I am summoned into the training room where I have a brief physical exam with Steve Antonopulos, aka “Greek,” the Broncos head trainer, whom I’ll come to know as a sometimes not-grumpy bald man with a walrusy mustache. He scribbles his findings and files it with my already growing medical chart: “Physical examination demonstrates a left shoulder that appears stable on exam today after arthroscopic stabilization and some minimal achilles tendinosis. His plan therefore will be for routine foot care, continue shoulder strengthening exercises and treatment as needed. Continue anti-inflammatory medications and treatment in the training room for his left achilles tendon.”
I’m given jersey number 14: standard-issue training camp receiver number. The eighties numbers go to active receivers and tight ends. The rest of us get numbers in the teens—the leftovers, basically. I jog out onto the field for morning practice and my new teammates look at me and do a double take. Last night number 14 was a short black guy. Today he is a tall white guy.
Before practice starts I meet my new position coach. Steve Watson, aka “Blade,” was a star receiver for the Broncos in the 1980s. He played his entire nine-year career in Denver. Blade is tall and lean with a full head of dark hair and a friendly disposition. Some old-time football players hobble through life and look like they’re about to take a knee at any minute. But Blade’s still springy and spry. He welcomes me with a handshake and a smile and offers a few words of encouragement. On my way out to the field I meet Coach Shanahan, too. I’m obviously nervous. He’s a small man but outsized, with a presence as big as the Rockies. I stammer through a greeting, thank him for the chance, and take a deep breath. I’m going to need all the oxygen I can get.
Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile Page 3