Brian Doyle

Published: June 26th, 2016

Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon. He is the author of many books of essays, ‘proems,’ and fiction, notably the novels Mink River and The Plover.

For the first three days of practice everyone got the same blank white jersey because the coaches wanted to be sure everyone got the message that there were no stars or starters or privilege at all, and everyone was equal, everyone was starting from scratch, everyone was on the team.

On the fourth day the offensive players were given blank green jerseys, green for go, and the defensive players were given blank red jerseys, red for stop, and when one of the defensive players asked a coach why the jerseys did not have the name of the school on the chest he said that we had not yet earned the right to wear the name of the school on our chests, but he had high hopes that most of would indeed soon earn that signal honor.

On the fifth day, the last day of the first week of tryouts, the coaches went around the locker room after practice and collected red and green jerseys from players who were not, it turned out, going to have the chance to wear the name of the school on their chests.

On Saturday and Sunday we rested, although there was an optional workout scheduled for Saturday afternoon, which was of course not optional at all, and every single one of the players who still had a red or green jersey was there at the optional practice, except one boy who had to have his wisdom teeth pulled that morning. This boy appeared at the edge of the field at the very end of practice, and had to be kept from joining the last set of sprints by a smiling coach who held the boy on the sideline with his arm flung out against his chest just like a dad flings his arm out to protect a child in the passenger seat of the car when the car stops suddenly, a gesture that every mom and dad makes without thinking, a sweet sudden ancient gesture. Funny that I would remember that coach’s flung arm but I remember it as if it was flung against that boy’s chest yesterday, the boy genuinely itching to run with his face as round and swollen as a pumpkin or a rosebud or a pregnant women’s wondrous belly.

On Monday after practice we were told to shower and dress and gather in the gymnasium without the usual horsing around and lollygagging and acting like young fools and idiots and donkeys. We trickled out of the locker room in braces and gaggles and stood awed at the table of glowing golden jerseys being guarded by stern smiling coaches who knew full well what this moment meant. We gathered around the table and twice when a boy reached out to finger the glowing golden pile a coach barked sharply and the boy pulled his hand back as if it had been bitten. Finally the head coach gave a brief speech about the honor of wearing the name of the school on our chests, and he ceremonially pulled out the jerseys with numbers 19 and 51 on them, and presented to them to the boys who had been named captains of the offense and defense, respectively, the tradition being that the offensive captain wore Johnny Unitas’s number and the defensive captain wore Dick Butkus’s number, because numbers meant something, they had weight and expectation and stories behind them, and you did not wear them lightly, much as you did not wear the name of the school lightly, but played as hard as you could every minute, even if you did not play at all, in which case you would support your teammates as hard as you possibly could, and process the flow of the game as well as you could, so that when and if your number was called, you would be ready to leap into the brawl of the game, proud and terrified and trying not to worry that maybe you had heard the number wrong.

The coaches then delivered jerseys to each starter on either side of the ball, each number chosen carefully for a reason, and then the substitutes received their jerseys, with the numbers chosen now more by position than by story, each position generally having its own favorite numbers. I was a defensive back, and so my number would be in the twenties, and when my turn came I stepped up to the table, and the coach handed me jersey number 26. The jersey was surprisingly heavy and I stood there amazed at its presence in my hands and the coach must have thought I wanted more explanation and he said quietly to me that’s the great Herb Adderley’s number, son. There was never a better cornerback than Herb Adderly. He was not so big either but Lordy was he a great thief and if you are lucky some of that will rub off on you. Wear it with pride. And this I did, though I was a terrible football player, and our team did not do well, and most of what I remember was mud and cursing and being trapped inside my cavernous helmet, from which I could hardly hear and see as passes whistled overhead and fullbacks thundered by untouched and angry boys punched and kicked and bit each other in seething piles of mud. I savored that jersey, though, and I remember it to this day, folded glowing in my nervous hands, the first and last football jersey I would ever wear. After every game I would bring it home to my mom who would wash and dry and fold it and leave it in a secret place in the laundry room for me to carry upstairs. She knew that it was a precious thing and not something to leave on the staircase where someone could spill jam or blood on it or use it to mop up after the puppy.

You would think that at the end of the season there would be some sort of ceremony by which we returned our jerseys to the school but there was no ceremony at all. Some guys just left their jerseys on the floor by their lockers after our last game, and others tossed them into a barrel by the door, but a few of us folded them carefully, stained and muddy as they were, and handed them with something very much like affection to the assistant coach. He was a big bluff gruff grim stern guy who had a voice like a tornado and the awful habit of slapping you occasionally on your helmet so that your ears rang for hours, but this time he stood there silently by the door, with an expression on his face that I still remember, as a few of us handed him our folded jerseys and walked out of the locker room. I have been playing and working with words for forty years now, and I still cannot find quite the right word for the look on his face. You could bring words like respect and sadness and poignant and pride and amusement to the table, but none of them quite catch the way he stood there and looked at us and we looked at him and then we went home.