Gym Candy

Mick started kindergarten a year later than most kids, which gave him an advantage in the Pop Warner football league by the time he began playing in third grade. He was an immediate star, having been trained by his father, and being a year older and bigger than the other players. His father began taking him to every football camp he could find. His mother worried that everything was about football, but Mick didn’t complain. Football was the only thing he wanted to do. 

Mick remembers the first time he realized his dad was not perfect. Mike worked an early morning shift at a radio station for a man named Ben Braun. Ben always called him “Mr. Third-Rounder.” He realizes that this meant that his dad was drafted in the third round of the NFL. It means that he might not have ever played. When he asks him if he ever played for the Chargers, Mike says that he only played a couple of preseason games before spraining an ankle. He came back too soon after the injury and then re-sprained it, which resulted in the team having to let him go.

That night, Mike comes in to Mick’s room and tells him that he doesn’t want him to believe that his NFL career meant nothing. He received a five hundred thousand dollar signing bonus, which he used to buy their house. When they are done talking, Mick realizes that his father is deeply unhappy. Afterwards, whenever his friends ask to hear a football story about Mike, Mick begins lying as he tells the stories, inflating his father’s accomplishments. 

In the fourth grade, Mick’s teacher asked the class to write a paper about their favorite activity. Mick wrote about football, saying that he liked it and thought it was fun, and full of excitement. A week later, the teacher, Mr. Pengilly, returned his paper with a grade of F. He tells Mick that he didn’t make the game come alive. It didn’t make him feel anything about what it is like to play football, and it doesn’t tell him why Mick likes football more than any other game. When Mick reflects on this later that night, he realizes that his paper had been a lie. Football wasn’t exactly fun, but it was always hard. It was the struggle he enjoyed. He thinks about some of his best runs as the team’s running back:

It was as if I were a hummingbird, darting through tiny holes, breaking into the open, flying down the field for a touchdown On others, I felt more like a bull, crashing straight ahead, legs churning, fighting for inches. And on the best, I was the bullet coming out of the barrel of a gun (16).

That night, he rewrites his paper, describing the struggle of the game, the constant fear of injury, and the indescribable payoff of winning. Mr. Pengilly gives him an A+. 

The next summer, Mick’s mother quits going to his football games. Mick is returning a punt when he is tackled so hard that he is knocked unconscious. It takes smelling salts to revive him. That night, his mother comes into his room and asks him if he’ll ever quit football. After he says no, she says that she can’t come to his games anymore. Every time he is tackled, she’s afraid that he’ll be paralyzed. Mick tells her that he doesn’t mind. After she leaves, he wonders what his life would be like without football. He can’t picture it. 

In the eighth grade, Mick gets a new Pop Warner coach: Mr. Rooney, a man who had played for the college football team at Oregon State. At Mr. Rooney’s first practice, he calls Mick out and asks him if he’s the “old kid who should be in high school” (21). Mick is humiliated, and it gets worse when Mr. Rooney asks if his dad was the one who played for the Huskies, with condescension in his voice. During practice, nothing Mick does is good enough for Mr. Rooney, who criticizes him constantly and calls him “Red,” which Mick hates. When Mick asks his dad about why Rooney is treating him badly, he says that once he ran over Rooney in the end zone during a game, and it ended up on the show Sportscenter. He thinks that he’s taking that out on Mick. Mick begins to act defiant during practice, breaking every one of Rooney’s orders a little bit. Rooney can’t bench Mick, however, since he’s his best running back.

There is a new kid on the team named Drew Carney, an impressive, strong quarterback who gives maximum effort at every practice. Rooney praises him every chance he gets. At the end of a practice, he makes Drew and Mick “pull the towel” on the fifty-yard line while the team watches. “Pulling the towel” is a one-on-one tug of war. Drew beats Mick twice. Rooney tells Mick that he is just like his father: he has all the talent in the world, but a terrible attitude. Then he says that if Mick doesn’t start practicing the way he should, he’s off the team.

At home, Mick tells his father that he hates Rooney and wants to quit. His father says that he has to stick it out. 

That night, Mick’s dad goes to a Mariners game. While he’s gone, Mick does a Google search for “Mike Johnson San Diego Charger running back.” He reads an article with the headline “ROOKIE GIVEN UNCONDITIONAL RELEASE.” The article startles him. It alleges that his dad was in trouble during his entire training camp with the Chargers. He fought with teammates and argued with coaches, missed team meetings and was arrested for drunk driving. He was also arrested at a dance club in Tijuana. Apparently, his playing was unremarkable as well, full of fumbles and missed blocks. “He didn’t have what it takes to succeed in the NFL. It’s as simple as that,” (28) his coach was quoted as saying, after cutting Mike from the team.

Mick can’t sleep that night. He is angry because his dad lied to him about his ankle injury. He thinks about all the times he bragged about his dad to his teammates. Now, he suspects that some of them must have known the truth all along. He imagines that they all laugh about him and his dad all the time:

I thought what a hypocrite he was, telling me that I had to play. What had he done? Drunk, and missed meetings, and gotten in trouble with strippers in Mexico. He was married to my mom then, too. She had told me that they got married while they were still in college (29).

Mike knocks on the door and orders Mick to come out. He shows him the computer, which still has the browser open. There in the browser history is Mick’s search from the night before. He accuses Mick of thinking that he’s a failure, and of snooping behind his back. Mick’s mother comes up and takes his father outside. Soon, Mick hears the family’s Jeep start in the driveway, and then drive away. 

Mick eats lunch with his mother. When they’re done, she says, “All those things you found on the Internet, I know they hurt you. But your dad didn’t kill anybody […] I want you to remember that it’s just football, okay?” (31).

Mick’s dad does not come home that night and instead rents a cabin in a town called Roslyn. Mick’s dad comes home and tries not to be mad at him, then gets angry all over again. When he comes home on Sunday afternoon, he takes Mick for a drive. He admits to Mick that everything in the article was true. He was able to cause trouble and mess around in college and still be the best, so he could get away with it. But in the NFL, everyone was just as good or better, and they cut him without thinking twice about it. When he saw Mick for the first time, he thought, “He’s not going to end up like me, wasting his talent” (34). When they finish talking, Mick feels better, but he knows that things will never be the same between them again. In the following weeks, they still throw the ball and talk about technique, but Mick does not ask his father for help.