I hate off-season workouts. I hate them with a passion. I mean, I know I have to stay in shape even when the team isn't playing, but that doesn't mean it's a whole lot of fun. Trying to stay on a team when you're my age is tough. All these young kids figure they can come on in and kick the old man's ass. The only way to keep it from getting kicked is to be in better shape than they are and use your smarts to beat their youth.
And smarts is where it's at. You don't have time to think about things. You just have to react and make the right moves when the openings present themselves. Of course that goes for everything in life, and what happened recently made me hate off-season workouts a whole lot less.
I've been with the team since they've been around, and that's a pretty long time. After nearly 15 years, I'm the next thing to a coach, so when the off-season comes around I can work out whenever I want since I have my own set of keys to the place. I can come in during evenings and do the things I need to do to keep my aging body from collapsing once the season gets here.
That night I had just finished a really punishing upper body workout. Curls, chest press, butterfly, the whole nine yards. I was totally wasted out, sitting there wearing nothing but compression shorts and sweat when I heard the door to the locker room open up. I looked up to see who the hell would walk in this time of night. Wouldn't be anyone from the front office, since 9-to-5 is their deal in the offseason.
And it wasn't. This woman walked through the door, carrying a notebook, a small tape recorder and a digital camera. I still have manners, so I stood up as she walked through the door. She was on the short side, but not little, built like I like 'em. You know, nice tits, not some skinny little thing but a woman that looks like a woman. And even better, she was about my age. The young ones look good, but they're a waste of time, since they can't carry on a conversation and likely couldn't carry on much else when it comes down to it.
Ah, the reporter's notebook. Great. I hate dealing with print types, since they ask the dumbest damned questions, and keep asking 'em over and over, then they misquote you when they write their piece for the paper. On the other hand, she looked way better than the usual run of print weenies we see during the season. I liked her auburn hair, and the confident way she walked, and oh yeah, nice rack. Just being up front here. She certainly was.
She came up to me an introduced herself as a writer for a website that I'd never heard of. "We're trying to break through the noise by being a little edgy," she said. "In fact, womenontheedge.com is about women looking for new and exciting things. I have to be honest. I'm trying to break through and get a more prominent role, and I immediately thought of you."
That had me confused. "How in the world am I on the edgy side of things?" I asked. "I mean, I'm not exactly a kid here. I'm in my 40's playing on a minor league indoor football team. I'm not exactly pinup material. We're talking a gray-hair playing football here. How's that going to get women excited?"
"That's my job to create the excitement," she said. "You underestimate yourself. You've become an institution in this town, and it's a tough town to bond with. You're good at what you do, and you're better looking than you give yourself credit for." She smiled.
Oho, I thought. The game's afoot, to misquote Sherlock Holmes. I realized that this could get interesting before it was all said and done. "Okay, we'll see where this goes. Yeah, I've been around a while and I'm pretty good at what I do, and I've been doing it in the same place for a very long time. Fire away."
She sat on one of the benches, so I sat on the same bench facing her. She started the recorder, set it down, then got out a pen and opened the note pad. "First off, why are you still playing after all of these years? Football of any kind really takes a toll on the body, and you're still going pretty strong, and the body seems to be in pretty good shape."
"Thanks. You're not so bad yourself," I said with an eyebrow wiggle. She just gave a half-smile, but I could tell my remark had the desired effect. "Listen, to play the game this long means you have to love it. It's in my blood. And quite frankly, I have the perfect body type to play interior defensive line."
"How's that?" she asked. "You're big but not all that tall."
"When you're filling the inside hole on the run, height can be a disadvantage. It's about leverage. Too big doesn't work. What you need to fill it up inside the line is girth. I'm wide and strong and that's what fills the holes on defense. When I play inside, that's what I'm there for, to fill the hole properly to get the job done."
She bit her upper lip slightly while she took notes. I could have sworn she was sneaking a peak at my compression shorts. If she was, she could tell that I was getting somewhat interested in our conversation and whatnot. Especially the whatnot.
"That makes perfect sense to me, and I'm not all that up on football." She paused. "Next question. You've been a starter here most of the time you've been with the team, but not the whole time. Tell me about how you got your job back a couple of years ago."
"This could take a while. You can tell I just got done working out with weights, right?" She nodded. "You might wonder why I pump so much iron when the season is still four months away. Here's why.
"I started getting complacent about five years ago. I'd been starting for so long I was taking things for granted and started slacking off. I felt like I was still doing a good job and going strong, so I wasn't doing all the things I'd done in the past to make sure that the job was mine. The team was struggling a bit, and things weren't going that well, but I wasn't paying attention to that. I was in my own little world.
"That's when they signed someone that played my spot. He was completely different from me, taller and not as big. He talked a good game, and sure looked good physically. But he was what we call a shells player. Looking good in helmet and shorts is one thing. Looking good in full pads and in the game is a whole 'nother deal.
"Like I said, he talked a good game. He was a big-time bullshitter as a matter of fact, and wound up weaseling his way into the lineup and getting some of the snaps I should have been getting. I had been struggling a little bit, so there he was taking advantage of that fact. Seeing him out there was like a knife in my heart. That was my spot he was trying to take.
"Only thing was, he was struggling even more than I was, but the coach didn't see it that way. He'd gone out on a limb to sign this guy, so he got more and more reps and snaps than I did, and before you knew it, he was in a position to take my job away completely.
"Oh man, was that a wake-up call. I realized how much I had been slacking off and that forced me to take a look at myself. I didn't like what I saw. I'd gotten fat and lazy, and at that point I vowed never to let that happen again.
"So I hit the weight room, renewed my commitment to the team and to playing the game like I should, and I called him out in practice. And guess what? He folded like a cheap tent. He couldn't stand the pressure, couldn't stand the competition. But it took a while for the coach to see it.
"Then I got my break. He'd been talking smack, but let loose a little tidbit and I did some research. Turned out he'd jumped a contract with a team in another league. It wasn't much of a team, and the situation here was a whole lot better for him, but under league rules he wasn't eligible to play. Once I let the coach know, that piece of shit was gone. Jumped on his motorcycle and got the hell out of town as fast as he could go.
