He pauses, and then adds, “Vince told me all about you and your tryout with the Steelers last summer. And how you’re still working out with some of those big old boys from Cross Rivers High a few days a week.”
“Well, not gonna BS you, either, Coach,” I say. “It’s still in the back of my mind. The comeback part, I mean.” I pause. “Wait, you’re already planning for next season while you guys are trying to win a championship?”
“Actually,” he says, “I’m thinking about next week.”
Then the coach of the Stallions says, “How soon can you get to Birmingham?”
Before we finished up the conversation, he told me that he’d lost three more defensive linemen in the past two weeks, two to injury and one to an assault arrest, and that if he didn’t find a way to replace those guys, he was going to have to move somebody from his offensive line over to defense.
Clete Raymond finally says that if I’m willing to get back on the field and have him take a look at me, he’s willing to give it a shot, as crazy as he knows that sounds this late in the season, and a lot crazier for him than me.
“Understand, I’m not talking about next Sunday’s game,” he says. “Even as shorthanded as we are, Memphis just had their quarterback go down, and I throw better than their backup. So we’d have nearly two weeks of practice to get you ready for the championship game.”
He pauses and says, “Vince got ahold of the video from your Steelers tryout, I should mention that.”
I ask him if I can have a little time to think about it. He tells me to take as much as I need, just call him back by tomorrow morning.
Then he ends the call.
“This is even more bananas than thinking I could make the Steelers, even if it is one league down from the NFL,” I say to Taylor.
“Uh-huh,” she says. “Crazytown, absolutely.”
“I’ve only been working out with high school boys,” I say, “even if we have graduated to full pads the last couple of weeks.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Stop saying it like that, Tay. You know I’m right.”
“Absolutely.”
“Listen to me,” I say. “I don’t care what league we’re talking about. The pros are the pros. I know there are plenty of stories about guys being signed off the street, even late in the season. But not right before the playoffs! And, oh, by the way, not with somebody who’s never played a single down of defense in a real game of football in his life.”
She doesn’t reply.
Just takes her own phone out of the back pocket of her jeans and starts tap-tap-tapping away.
This goes on awhile.
“May I ask what you’re doing?” I ask.
“Booking an Airbnb in Birmingham.”
She turns and gives me one of those smiles.
“We aresodoing this.”
“Oh, we are, are we?”
“Uh-huh,” Taylor says.
ONE HUNDRED TWELVE
I’D PASSED MY physical the day I arrived in Birmingham. Once the league commissioner had allowed the Stallions to use the injury exemption that did enable them to sign me off the street this late in the season, I signed what was essentially a one-game contract.
The semifinal game went as Clete Raymond had predicted it would: the Stallions playing themselves into the title game by beating the Memphis Showboats.
In a little over an hour, right here in Birmingham at Protective Stadium, I’ll take the field wearing a gold Stallions helmet and red jersey with white trim. The two digits on the front and back signal my position on the defensive line: 77—my father’s old number.
