Owen directly acknowledged the presence of the person whose injury they were discussing. “Just kick the ball and get off the field.”
“Aw,” said Murray, “it’s no fun that way at all.”
“So how can we list him?” Owen went back to Brown. “‘Questionable’?”
“Not yet. The injury is too bad for questionable. Better put him down as doubtful.”
“Godalmighty! In one week we lost the tight end who’s practically the franchise, and now the kicker. How the hell do they expect me to promote this team?”
“The kicker’s down, not out,” said Brown. “Just don’t list him as questionable yet.”
Owen, grumbling, departed.
Brown carefully removed the ice pack from Murray’s ankle. The swelling made the ankle appear grotesque. In addition, there was a dark pinkish hue that reflected some internal bleeding.
“Looks worse than it is,” Brown commented. He touched the ankle gingerly. Wherever his fingers went, small white prints appeared, only to resolve again into the angry pink. “But it’s way too early to tell how it’s gonna respond.”
Brown began wrapping adhesive tape in a figure-eight on Murray’s foot-around the ankle, across the arch, under the instep, back again over the arch, and around the ankle. “Too tight?”
“It’s okay,” Murray replied.
“What happens next?” Ewing was genuinely interested.
“Well,” said Brown, “lucky it isn’t his kicking foot or we’d really be in trouble. Still, the left ankle gets a lot of pressure. He plants all his weight on it when he kicks. I may just have to build a protective device for it.”
“You build one?”
“Lots of times. Out of fiber glass. Then cover it with foam rubber. Then adhesive tape. Can provide some protection for almost any body part, especially the arms and legs. Usually, one of the officials will check it before the game. . make sure we don’t build a weapon.”
Ewing looked around the trainer’s quarters. He was surprised at the number of cardboard boxes containing adhesive tape of various dimensions. “How much do you use, Brownie?”
“Don’t rightly know. Lots. We’re budgeted for $20,000 worth of tape for the season.” Brown continued to tape the ankle, then reapplied the ice pack. “But you fellas didn’t come out here to talk about the Mick’s ankle.”
“We wanted to talk to you about Hunsinger,” said Harris, in a far more friendly tone than he had used during Brown’s initial interrogation.
“We already talked about him.” Brown clearly was reluctant to undergo another questioning.
“This is not like the last time, Brownie,” said Harris. “We thought it might be helpful if we got a little more background on Hunsinger. Sort of find out more about what kind of guy he was. For one thing, the bottom-line image we’ve gathered from comments made about him is not very favorable. We thought we’d like a peek at the other side of the coin, as it were.”
“That’s right”-Brown sounded more relaxed now that he was reassured that this would not be a repetition of the interrogation- “nobody’s had much good to say about the Hun. Well, he wasn’t a Boy Scout.”
“So,” Harris hoisted himself onto an adjacent training table and sat there adding to the informal atmosphere, “maybe there isn’t a flip side of the coin.”
“Well, I’ll say this for the Hun: he sucked up more pain and played through it more than a lotta guys I know.”
“Was he hurt much?”
“Football’s that way. Read the team reports from the league office any given weekend. There’s usually more than three hundred players listed with more than four hundred injuries.”
“How could that be-a hundred more injuries than players?”
“Multiples. The Mick’s got an ankle. But he coulda been worse. He coulda got a left ankle, left neck, right hand. The worst I ever saw was Dorsett listed with general all-body soreness.
“But don’t get me wrong; the Hun wasn’t lookin’ for trouble. Some guys do. They don’t take enough care with their equipment. Take the shoe, for instance. For football, especially on artificial turf, a shoe is, or should be, protective equipment. But if it’s not designed right for support, or if it’s worn out, you can pick up a nasty ankle injury or what they now call ‘turf toe.’
“But the Hun always got the best shoes, the best equipment. He may not have been a knight in shining armor when it came to his own personal conditioning. But that was his own personal choice. He decided he’d rather have fun than stay in tiptop conditioning. He also decided it was foolish to take needless risks with less than perfect equipment.
“And, as you know, he played just about every game. Just about every offensive play. And I can testify he had to suck up more pain than the average guy to do it.”
“But what’s so odd about that, Brownie?” Harris pursued. “Don’t the players have a saying, goes something like-“
“You can’t make the club from the tub,” Murray supplied.
“Yeah,” Harris agreed. “Doesn’t everybody play even when they’re in pain?”
“You don’t understand-or you forgot: the Hun had a guaranteed contract. Owners and management always have that fear when it comes to players with a guaranteed contract: that they’ll sit it out when they could be playing. And some do. I’ve known my share of players who float once they’ve got a contract with guarantees built in.
“But that’s the way it is. There’s always gonna be a certain kind of player who’ll put out what he thinks he should do just to remain comfortable. Then there’s those who always give 110 percent no matter how much they’re paid.
“Then, see, the guys with guaranteed contracts who won’t put out are just bein’ shortsighted. No contract, guaranteed or not, is forever. So when the floater’s contract is up, that’s all she wrote. He’s out.
“That’s what the Hun knew. And that’s what separated him from almost everyone else. He knew no contract was forever. And he was one who gave his 110 percent and-mostly ‘cause of the years he put in-he played with more pain than any other player I’ve ever known. But not because he gave a damn for the team. Just because he knew no contract was forever. And he intended to get every penny he could from the game.
“And that pretty much explains the Hun.”
“Interesting,” Harris said. “Very interesting. But how did he do it? How was he able to keep on playing week after week, season after season with all those injuries and all that pain? Was he some kind of superman?”
“No; the Hun was no superman. But he had a king-sized determination. And we’d help him as much as we could.”
“How’s that?”
“Pills. Painkillers.” Brown noticed Harris’s eyebrow arch. “Oh, nothing illegal; the team doctor prescribed ’em. I just doled ’em out. The Hun got ’em after just about every game. Almost all the time, they did the job.”
“What did you give him?”
“Dilaudid.” Brown reached back to unlock the medicine cabinet. He removed a bottle from one of the shelves, took off the bottle cap, and shook a pill into his hand. He showed the pill to Harris and Ewing. “Dilaudid.”
“Little, isn’t it?” said Harris. “Looks like a BB. That could do the job? On a man the size of Hunsinger?”
Brown nodded vigorously. “Yup. That’s why it’s so little. Because it’s so powerful. Works like morphine. Got a real kick. It did the job, even for the Hun.” Brown chuckled. “But you’re right about one thing: it’s so little the Hun wouldn’t believe it could kill all the pain. He wasn’t one for moderation. As, for example, that poison he kept in the apartment-strychnine. Most people’d be content to use traps or some commercial product. Not the Hun; he’s gotta have the king of rat poisons.”
“So what did you do?” Harris asked.
“Huh?”
“What did you do to convince him one little pill would be enough?”
“Oh, yeah, right. Well, he wasn’t one to take no for an answer. So I used to give him two pills. . no, not two Dilaudid. The Hun may have been big but he was no horse.” Brown reached again into the medicine cabinet, searching for another container. “I used to give him two pills. But I kept reminding him that one was all he needed. The warning that one was enough, along with always breaking down and giving him a second pill, worked. As long as the Hun thought he was getting double strength, he was satisfied. But the second pill wasn’t much more than a
