Archives for February 2018

Confession 1:  I am a football fan.  My father took me to Cal games at Memorial Stadium — one of the most beautiful places to watch more or less anything, tucked there against the slope by Strawberry Canyon, gold-and-green hills behind, the Bay, the Bridge and Mt. Tam to the west.  We’d go to one or two games a season, rarely victories (my Golden Bears were valiant, but not that good), and as I lost dad when I was ten, those are memories overlaid with power.

I was aware of the ‘Niners then too, but as an East Bay kid with a full sporran* of high school anomie and safe rebellion, the Raiders were the real deal, all felons and left handed QBs and chain-smoking stick-um slathered Fred Biletnekoff.  And yeah, Tatum’s embrace of that hit made me sick, but football, you know?

Then I moved to Boston, four years for college and then, after a few seasons away, for good.  I still claimed to be a Raiders fan, (Plunkett!), and as a Bay Area kid, I took more pleasure than previous allegiance entitled me to in the Montana across the bay.  But I paid attention to the Patriots.  I always thought Grogan was cool, and Hannah was such an archetypal football guy and so on.  They usually sucked, but they weren’t (mostly) dull.  I’ll pass over the Berry years in silence.

Then, of course, we got that other guy named Bill, soon to be followed by the 199th pick in that draft, a hopelessly unathletic kid, Tommy something.  You know the rest: it was easy to root for a hopelessly underdoggy team of Patriots in that 9/11 fall, a season capped by a most improbable playoff run.  Been high living ever since.

So I’ve been watching a long time and for many of those years Sunday was a pretty well defined ritual, at least one game, sometimes two, and hanging out with folks I enjoyed.  I watch a lot less now.  Because the Patriots have stayed good and I’m something of a front-runner, I check in for most of their fourth quarters, but it’s rare indeed that I watch a whole game through any more.

Partly I’ve lost patience with the action to hanging around ratio.  Partly I’m more jealous of my time than I was when I thought it came in infinite supply.  But yeah:  partly, increasingly, I’m seeing myself as an accessory to genuinely awful stuff.

Confession 2:  I know that football destroys minds and lives.  It’s impossible not to know that now, and if you needed any reminder, there’s a story in today’s  New York Times** by the wife of a former NFL player to put a face to life after too much grievous bodily harm.

When we married in 2009, I already knew he was an amazing father. He could play dollhouse with my stepdaughter for hours without a hint of boredom. This continued when we had two children of our own. When our son was born and I was focused on taking care of a baby, he would bathe the girls, brush and blow-dry their (tangled!) hair, then put them to bed. Afterward he would wash the dishes. He brought me coffee in bed each morning. I was spoiled rotten.

But since I had known him, he had trouble sleeping, and he has been prone to mood swings and depression. In 2010, things got worrisome, so I arranged for him to be evaluated by neurologists so that he could apply for disability benefits. …

I was right to be concerned.

Over time, I had started to notice changes. But this was different and, around 2013, things had become much more frightening.

He lost weight. It seemed like one day, out of the blue, he stopped being hungry. And often he would forget to eat. I’d find full bowls of cereal left around the house, on bookshelves or the fireplace mantel. The more friends and family commented on his gaunt frame, the more panicked I became. By 2016, he had shrunk to 157 pounds. That’s right, my 6-foot-2 football-player husband weighed 157 pounds (down from around 200 when he was in the N.F.L.). People were visibly shocked when we told them he had played the game professionally.

This is a gut and heart rending tale, made worse by the increasing pile of evidence that Rob Kelly’s is not an isolated case. 

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