If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven’t done anything today. – Lou Holtz
Nobody could stop Charles Moore. Couldn’t begin to slow him down. Nobody.
He was the toughest man I ever saw. My Grandpa Charlie.
The middle finger on his left hand was permanently bent at a ninety-degree angle. ‘Never had time to get it fixed,’ was all he said, when I asked him about it.
His head was sure on straight.
Not to sound cocky or anything, but I thought nobody could stop me. Nobody could hurt me. I’d never been seriously injured in my life.
And when I walked out on the field, I knew I was going to win.
Or die trying.
I remember I got a letter from some rival alum telling me if I went to a big school like Ecotopia State, I’d get lost in the depth chart.
Just be another number.
I called the assistant coach at Ecotopia who’d been recruiting me and told him about the letter.
He said, “Tell you what. If you are scared to compete, we don’t want you.”
I thought about that for about a minute and said, “You’re right.”
I signed with them the next day.
Numbers are important.
I wore number 88 since pee wee league, all the way through high school. 88 had been very good to me. Never been injured. Made some plays. A lot of plays actually. My mom’s got the clippings.
I wanted to wear the same number in college, but 88 was given to another member of the freshman class. This guy played the same position I did and he was rated higher than me. He came from the big city where he’d gotten a lot of ink. Coming in, he was simply The Man.
He had everything I wanted. Including 88 and I guess I was jealous. Coach gave me jersey number 10, which I learned was approximately my position on the depth chart that first summer camp.
I looked even skinnier in 10. Slower, too.
I moped around all night and into the next day. Until the next practice. Couldn’t get 88 out of my mind. Stayed there like a toothache. All I could think of every time I put on my uniform… I am better than that guy wearing my number. I knew it was stupid, I guess, but I was steamed.
I got the number 88 from my Grandpa Charlie Moore, who – every Sunday – drove a glistening turquoise and white Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight to church. Where we prayed faithfully.
In the fall for the Steelers, in the summer for the Pirates.
Grandpa was a coal miner. He had his own mine a few miles outside of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. The Groundhog Capitol of The World. The mine was nothing more than a hole in the side of a mountain, a small mountain at that.
Railroad tracks disappeared into darkness. Grandpa would harness a blind-folded donkey – named “Donkey” – to a large cart, like an old dumpster on wheels. A few picks and shovels. I remember dynamite. He wore a spotlight on his old, dented helmet.
He’d fade away into the shaft, like a pencil sketch slowly erased.
And when he came back out, he’d be covered in soot, solid smudge from battered helmet to steel-toed shoes. Eyes blinking in the sudden sunlight. He’d lead the old donkey over to a chute and drop a load of coal into the back of his old dumptruck. Grab a bite to eat, a swallow of water and head back inside. Grandpa and Donkey working together until the big truck was full.
The doors of the red truck showed some faded gold lettering which read Groundhog Fuel & Transportation Company. When the truck’s bed was brimming, Grandpa would brush off as much grime as he could and drive into town. He had a route, regular accounts. He’d go from house to house with his truck and deliver a load of coal down a chute into somebody’s basement. Enough to hold them for another month.
The man worked hard.
Grandpa was proud of his Oldsmobile and I was proud of Grandpa.
88. Not getting that number was the best thing that ever could’ve happened to me. Turned my life around. I was driven to show everybody I was the only guy who should be wearing 88.
Wanted to prove it.
I believe in mind power. If you think you are going to fail, you are going to fail.
I am not going to fail. I am invincible. That’s what I tell myself. Over and over again.
You can hear the ligaments and tendons pop when they snap in your knee. Sounds like somebody’s throwing little firecrackers at you. Pop! Pop!! There is a moment of clarity between the injury and the arrival of the pain.
Call it a snapshot. You understand everything, but do not know what any of it means. That frozen moment is a brief, incandescent transition between your life as you used to know it, and your life as it has become.
You are not the same.
You scream to forget the pain, which arrives entirely new, too. You go into shock, so you won’t have to deal with reality just yet.
You’re in a daze, occasionally awakened by a sudden shot of pain. Which you don’t so much feel, as hear with your nerves.
You’re not hurt, you’re not hurt, you’re not hurt. I keep repeating to myself. Screaming, I think. Maybe not.
I am not number 88 anymore.
Numbers have stopped meaning anything to me. Grandpa Charlie is dead. A cave-in. Guess he’s done caring about the Oldsmobile.
Was never about the damn number anyway.
It was all about respect.
Wish they’d just give me a number, any damn number.
And put me back in the game.