And I Ran : Quitting the Football Team, and a Couple of Paragraphs on 1986 Topps Football Cards.

I was better at collecting football cards than playing football.

    Or I was apathetic to playing football. Organized football anyway. Or I became as such through no fault of my own. I was an overweight kid. A husky kid. You could play quarterback or running back or wide receiver if you were a husky kid; provided you were playing with your pals. Organized football was different for the bigger guys.

    When I signed up to play J.V. football for my grade school in 5th grade (Christ, who let’s 5th graders play full contact football now?), I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t expect to start. J.V. was 5th and 6th grade, and my talents playing football on the cul-de-sac in my neighborhood did not at all indicate that I’d be taking a starting job from a 6th grader. My aspirations were more along the lines of the standing-on-the-sidelines skill set. Riding the pine, if you will.

    Learning the game.

    The only question I had for myself is where I’d land as a back-up. I could catch a ball. Maybe tight end? I could tackle. Maybe defensive end? For my size I was pretty quick. How about a full back (yeah, we still utilized those on the regular back then) coming out of the backfield to get those one or two yards? Those all seemed like awesome options to the eleven-year-old me. I just had to go to practice, play hard, run hard, and fate would take its course.

    I ended up a back-up offensive lineman.

    The coaches took one look at me and my size. They shoved me over to the small group of similarly plump kids practicing their three-point stances and hitting those pads. Turns out size did matter in organized youth football. There went my dreams of being the next Eric Dickerson. The next Wes Chandler. The next Kellen Winslow.

    Instead, I got knocked around on blocking drills by 6th graders.

    I got made into a guard.

    Who in the fuck wanted to be a guard?

    Now, I’m not slagging off offensive lineman. As an adult who watches the sport of football, I absolutely understand how important it is to have a strong O-line. Preferably one full of top talent. But as an eleven-year-old I didn’t want to be some dumb guard. There was nothing exciting about that. I didn’t want to play offensive line. I didn’t want to pull. I didn’t want to stand there blocking, getting man-handled by some school’s defensive line, while my teams’ QB, running backs and receivers got all the glory.
    
    Yet by the opening game I was a goddamned guard.

    And not even a starting one. As I said, I was a back-up. I got into games when games were already decided. Most of the time I stood on the sidelines, drinking all the water and Gatorade, and then tried my best to hide in the crowd, as angry coaches paced before us, screaming “who drank all of the goddamned water and Gatorade?” hoping they wouldn’t notice my pee-pee dance.

    By mid-season I wasn’t allowed to stand near the water or Gatorade.

    But I did eventually accept my fate.

    On the street I could be whatever I wanted to be.

    But on the actual field I was a guard.

    Time to learn those pulling plays.

    But then THIS happened.

    As a result of my accident with the glass window, I missed the entirety of my second J.V. football season. I didn’t even play one down. Couldn’t. As I was too busy doing physical therapy and walking with a leg brace, hoping to rebuild some damaged tendons. There was even a question that I might not be able to play football come my seventh-grade year. Varsity Catholic grade school football.

    Where I’d be the low man on the totem pole again.

    Possibly gone.

    Now, in the Catholic league I played in there was a big difference between J.V and varsity football. The biggest one was that there were weight limits in each category. Lineman had limits. So did backs and receivers. Weight you couldn’t be under or over. I already said I was a big kid. Imagine being a big kid and having to spend a year not really walking or running because of a leg injury. You get bored.

    My boredom was healed by Twinkies.

    My boredom was healed by handful after handful of potato chips.

    The end result was that I was too fat for varsity football, even though the doctor cleared me to play.

    But the coaches needed players. Even bench warmers with a penchant for purloining Gatorade. The coaching staff's solution was to make me run. And run I did. All August, while guys were getting in three-point stances, hitting those bags and hitting each other, I ran. When the team had scrimmages...I ran. When the team huddled with the coaches to go over plays...I ran.

    And it paid off, I guess.

    I lost enough weight to make the team.

    As a back-up guard.

    Yeah.

    But it felt pretty good being back on a football team. At least at the beginning. Being a guard was...whatever. But I felt like I’d put that injury behind me. I thought it was cool that every Friday we got to wear our jerseys over our Catholic school shirts. Being on the sidelines meant that I had time to stare at the cheerleaders. Varsity cheerleaders. And when I got into a game, I thought I did all right.

    Except when it came to pulling.

    I could never figure out that shit.

    I was collecting a lot of cards back then. Baseball and football cards were as common as the coming of a season or the rising of the sun. That summer/fall of 1986, Topps put out a damned fine 396-card football set. A now classic, green-border, white-stripe football field design that just popped the minute you pulled them out of the pack.

    God I loved that design.

 

    And how about these inserts?

 

    Topps’ 1986 football card set has some pretty decent rookies.

    We all know this one.

 

    But then there are these guys too.

 

 

 

 

    1986 Topps was my third year collecting football cards. I also think the set is the third year in a great four-year football card run that Topps had going from 1984-1987. 

   

    Just some stellar designs. 

    Good enough to rival what they were doing with baseball cards during those years. In fact, I’ve grown into a bigger 1986 Topps Football fan than I am its baseball product that same year. That said, buying 1986 Topps wax boxes is impossible for me now. Because of that Rice rookie (and others), wax boxes will cost around $4,500-$8,000 now.

    That's a far cry from 35-cents a pack.

    But back then, it was understood, coming home from a practice, that if my old man had to stop at the Thrift Drug for a pack of smokes, I was buying myself a pack or two of 1986 Topps football cards. Being on a football team again, the cards helped me connect more to the sport that I was playing. I wasn’t just opening packs hoping for the Marinos, Montanas, Dickersons, or Elways (although those were nice). I started paying attention to the cards of guys on the O-Line.

    Guys like this.

 

    And this.

 

    I began to understand the offensive line’s role in determining the course of a football game. Though I was still shaky on guard’s pulling.

    How make or break a good O-line could be for a team.

    Looking at those cards I was finally getting excited about my position.

    My own roll on the team.

    I was getting excited about maybe starting come eighth grade.

    But...something wasn’t right.

    The running in practice didn’t end for me once I lost weight, the way it did for other kids that were on the fence. Obviously, I participated in drills during practice. And scrimmages. Because we’d be playing real games come Saturday afternoon. But the coaches still made me, and me alone run. Despite having a bum left leg, and injuries that were barely over a year old, some of the coaches felt that, maybe, I was dogging it. I wasn’t. I simply couldn’t run as fast as I used to. And with damaged tendons I ran clumsily at times. I tripped. I fell.

    The head coach saw that as goofing off. As me not being dedicated. And he was a real ballbreaker. Or he was a barker. A little man with short-guy syndrome and a bowl haircut named Rick Miami.

    He looked kind of like this guy.

 

    I couldn’t blow that guy off even if I wanted to. Miami wasn’t just my coach. He was also the school’s sole gym teacher. Not only did I see him evenings at practices, I had to put up with him two times a week in gym class. And, well, I had a reputation in gym class for being...kind of...a goof off.

    For lack of a better phrase.

    Because of my reputation in gym, I couldn’t articulate myself to the contrary of Miami’s accusations. So, he and the other coaches punished me. I ran. I ran until I was exhausted. More than just running, Miami had three 8th grade goon linebackers trail me as I ran the track. They were to keep pace six feet behind. But often they got closer. They called me a pussy. They called me a wimp.

    Instead of being on a football team I felt chased.

    I felt like prey.

    I bet that shit never happened to Russ Grimm.

    So I did what I did best.

    I quit.

    I think maybe it was the third or fourth week of the season. After another insulting practice of being chased by helmeted hooligans, and me not even getting in the game for a single down on that Saturday afternoon, I hauled my football gear, my helmet, that jersey that I was proud to wear on Fridays, right into the school’s gym first thing the following Monday morning. Miami was in there alone, sucking on a coffee, and probably stroking his trophies. I walked to his office and dropped my gear right in his doorway. Instant anger on the man’s face.

    No one quit on Rick Miami.

    And our conversation?

    It probably went something like this:

    Miami stopped fondling his trophies and looked at Grochalski’s gear on the floor. “What do you think you’re doing?”

    “I’m quitting,” Grochalski said. He trembled with fear. But his resolve was unshaken.

    “Quitting?” Miami took a pull on his coffee. “Pick the gear up and get out of my face. I didn’t waste my time just to have you quit on me.”

    “Yeah, but, I am quitting.”

    Having nothing else to say, young Grochalski left the coach’s doorway, and began leaving the gym. It was when he got to the gym doors that he heard Rick Miami get up from his worn, leather chair. Grochalski turned to see Miami glaring at him from his office doorway. “I said pick the gear up.”

    Grochalski looked from Miami’s pointed finger down to his gear on the floor. “No,” he said.

    “No?” What are you deaf and stupid? Grochalski wanted to say. It was one of his favorite movie lines. Instead, he shook his head.

    “You’re a quitter,” Miami said. “Nothing but a quitter. What would your dad think?”

    “He’s the one who drove me to school today,” Grochalski said.

    Miami’s face reddened. “What about your teammates? Huh? You want them to think you’re a quitter?”

    “I don’t even think half of them know my name.” Again, Grochalski made for the wide gym doors. This time he didn’t look back.

    “But...” Miami didn’t know what to say. He was losing his best benchwarmer. The guy he could count on to drink that water. The Gatorade Kid, as Miami lovingly referred to the boy. His quitting was an outrage. An affront! “You’ll be sorry, Grochalski,” Miami spat. “Yeah...you’ll be begging me to let you back on the team. If not this year. Then next year when you’re in eighth grade. You would’ve been starting then.” Miami made his way over to the gym doors. But Grochalski had already gone up the stairs toward his classroom. “You hear me? Starting! But not now. Not now, Grochalski. And you know why? Because you’re a quitter? And no one likes quitters. No one respects quitters! You know that Grochalski? Grochalski? Grochalski!”

    Or something like that.

    I did face a little bit of blowback. All those teammates that I “let down” they took it out on me by giving me those shoulder shoves in the hallways. Especially on jersey Fridays. One of the coaches was my math teacher, and any time I spoke in class when my hand wasn’t raised, it was me talking out of turn, even if I was answering a question for another student. Miami dogged me all year in Gym too. He gave me the grade of S or NI (which in Catholic school lingo was a C or D).

    But it didn’t matter to me.

    I was free of that horseshit.

    And like I said at the beginning.

    I was better at collecting football cards than playing football.

    1986 was a good year to collect football cards.

    And to this day I have no clue why guards pull.

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

Next Friday: Going to take a look at....Basketball cards