I confess that a very satisfying moment for me as a player was watching two of my Falcon teammates turn a writer upside down and dump him head first into a smelly trash can. He wrote some bad things about them and they ambushed him the next day in the locker room. It wasn't done good-naturedly. They hated him and they wanted to dump him into that bin of fetid, used ankle tape and oozing gobs of human expectorant. It seemed appropriate after the words the writer had spit out at them. For the first time I'd ever seen, a writer was taken to task for the things he'd written. Most times writers will verbally lambaste a player and then appear the very next day strolling through the locker room, the domain of the players, with the diplomatic immunity of a statesman from some despicable terrorist country.

Of course, the writer who got trashed was correct in his assessment of the two players who got him. Essentially he wrote that they were boobs, and he was right. They proved it further by dumping him in the trash. He was a pretty decent guy too, and I'm kind of ashamed that I enjoyed it. But it was just the notion of one of "them" getting a little medicine to go along with the stuff they are constantly dishing out that made me forget myself.

cjr  |  archive  |  resources  |  contact  |  search  |  subscribe