But in between there's practice. There is no glory in this. For starters, it's hot and the coaches love it when the heat creeps up around ninety and the haze comes off Lake Erie like a curtain. Some guys drop and start crying for their mothers or complain about phantom knee injuries, bad backs or sore shoulders. All this whining about pimples and goddamned sore pussies.
Coaches love to push the soft and gutless few who dare to drop on the field.
Stork calls them bench warriors. They are weak and will eventually quit when somebody splits their chin or bloodies their nose. But every once in a while some nancy boy sticks it out and manages to make the team only to spend the rest of the season riding the pine in his lily-white uniform, waving at cheerleaders and complaining when it rains. Letters have started to pour in from colleges, Ohio State, Penn State, Ole Miss, Michigan, even places like Denison and Grinnell, which my friends tell me are loser schools full of ugly chicks and Christians. I keep the letters in a shoe box under my bed.