Finding a job as a professional trainer was a larger problem than Jack had anticipated. He might not have caught on anywhere had it not been for a few Texas coaches and trainers-friends of Jack’s-and their interest in and intercession for him. But through them and their sports contacts, Jack uncovered several promising leads. Nothing outstanding, mind; after all, he was just a fresh college grad with no professional experience.
Interviews with some Canadian football teams proved largely unproductive. Some offers were made, but the money was always less than he needed for sustenance as well as to satisfy debts he had incurred while attending college.
Finally, he was hired as an assistant trainer for the New York Rangers hockey club. It was a sport with which he was largely unfamiliar, but hockey players needed conditioning and incurred injuries just as did football players. Hockey players, since they were on skates, did not hit, clutch, and hold each other as violently as did footballers, but there were the boards around the rink into which the skaters were regularly slammed. And in those days, players did not wear the helmets and masks popular today. Pucks traveling around a hundred miles per hour wreaked their own special damage on exposed heads and teeth.
It was while Jack was with the Rangers that he met and grew to admire Gordie Howe, the durable and memorable winger of the Detroit Red Wings.
It was also while in New York that Jack met several of the better boxing trainers, known more popularly as corner men. New York then was the world capital of prizefighting. Some of the trainers were generous enough to teach Jack how they taped their fighters’ hands; how to get the protection where it was needed without cutting off circulation or restricting movement; how to slip the strips between the fingers. From that time, Jack’s football players would have their hands taped after the fashion of prizefighters.
After serving his apprenticeship with the Rangers, Jack was hired by Ball State University through the good auspices of then assistant coach Buck Bradford, who had followed Jack’s career from his high school days. Bradford, who had great confidence in Jack’s ability, integrity, and understanding of athletes, took him along as Bradford became head coach at Texas A amp; M, then Oklahoma, and now the Cougars.
Jack Brown watched his profession evolve over the years he practiced it. In his early days, it was carrying water and fixing bandages over cuts. Then it moved on to ice packs, towels, hot packs, and massages. Trainers were expected to acquire something of a pharmacist’s expertise in pills and linament.
Then came the National Athletic Trainers Association and its board of certification. At one time, the title, Certified Athletic Trainer, was, in an exercise of cronyism, passed on to a very few veteran male athletic trainers. Now, the initials AT,C after one’s name were highly sought after and awarded only after long and demanding scholarly study and practice.
Those associated with Jack Brown professionally knew that he admirably fulfilled the responsibilities of an up-to-date athletic trainer, whose functions were to prevent athletic trauma and treat any conditions that might adversely affect the health or performance of an athlete. Such functions included management-first aid, evaluation, treatment, and rehabilitation-of athletic trauma or other medical problems that affected the athlete, as well as counseling the athlete in such health-related areas as nutrition, relaxation, and tension-control and personal health habits.
Trainers were expected to be able to manage and operate such therapeutic agencies and procedures as hydrocollator, hydrotherapy, dinthermy, ultrasound, cryotherapy, cryokinetics, contrast bath, paraffin bath, and infrared, manipulative, and ultraviolet therapy.
In short, Jack Brown exemplified the modern athletic trainer who has made the long journey from water- bucket brigade to just this side of a medical degree.
But of all the expertise he had acquired in his years as trainer, that of which he was most proud was, oddly, taping. No mean skill, it involved not only the routine taping of ankles-required even for practices-but the building of castlike pads, made of fiber glass, covered with a protective layer of foam rubber and held together with tape.
Like most trainers, Brown was dedicated to his players, to their conditioning and rehabilitation. He could never forget the disease that had robbed him of a playing career and from which, for him, there had been no rehabilitation. He found no greater joy than to nurse an athlete from a position on the shelf to a spot in the active lineup.
That was why he simply could not understand Hank Hunsinger. Brown had encountered bad-tempered people in his long career. He had known athletes who were the antithesis of the grateful lion from whose paw Androcles had pulled the thorn.
But Hunsinger-bent to destroy other athletes-was something else. Brown had never taken any courses in psychology, and had never regretted the lacuna until he met Hunsinger. The Hun was sick, Brown had at length concluded, but it was a sickness that was impervious to massage, a whirlpool bath, or the panacea of taping. And while Brown fretted over what to do about this condition, Hunsinger roamed about seeking teammates to devour.
Most recently, the victims were the two rookies, Hoffer and Murray. Hoffer, after a bad start, seemed to be handling Hunsinger adequately. But Murray seemed to be more easily led into Hunsinger’s world of wretched conditioning, debauchery, and chemical dependency.
There was no turning away from it; something had to be done. But what? Since the bad influence Hunsinger was having on the team resulted in poor conditioning and, as a result, in injuries, it seemed to Brown it was up to him to rectify the situation.
That would mean, as far as he could figure, something would have to happen to Hunsinger. But after all these years of repairing and healing bodies, could Brown bring himself to a denial of everything he stood for?
Harris, Ewing, and Koesler stood outside the training cubicle wherein a player was consulting with Brown.
Koesler studied the closed door. A series of cartoons had been taped to it. Many had turned yellowish-brown with age. Two were at his eye level. Both were by an artist named Cochran and looked as if they had been clipped from
The other depicted a coach saying to a trainer on the sidelines, “Jones has a broken leg. Go out and spray it.”
He could abide someone who lived his life by cartoons. Koesler felt he himself frequently did.
Shortly after he had asked them to wait until he had finished, Brown dismissed the player and invited them into his office.
The initial interrogation of Brown proved predictable. He knew of Hunsinger’s obsessions, his astigmatism, that he showered again at home after the games, and that he had a supply of strychnine in his apartment. Brown gave no indication that he knew of Hunsinger’s colorblindness.
Neither Harris nor Ewing expected any more. The only real surprises so far had been Hoffer’s explanation of how Hunsinger had acquired the strychnine, and Murray’s admission that he knew the dead man had been colorblind.
One more question and they would move into the second phase of the interrogation: getting the subjects to talk about each other.
“One more thing,” said Ewing, “would you tell us what you did yesterday? Be as complete and thorough as you can.”
Brown reflected momentarily. “I got to the inn about six-thirty in the morning. I always get an early start, especially on game days. The guys started showing up about seven-thirty. We had something to eat. Then I started taping. The guys take turns eating and getting taped. Then about ten, I came here to the stadium to get ready to apply the special braces, get out the medication-things like that.
“The team started getting here about noon. We did the final taping. Then there was the game. After that a few guys needed some first aid. I checked out some injuries that would need the doc’s attention. Then there was the cleaning up.
“I left here about eight, eight-thirty and went right home and had some dinner.”
“I see,” said Ewing. “Was there anyone at the inn when you got there at. . uh. . six-thirty?”
“My assistant got there just a few minutes after I did.”
“How about when you left here last night at about eight or eight-thirty?”
“Again, my assistant.”
“How about that period in midmorning?” Harris asked. “What was it-you said you left the inn to come here
