Free Walter & Me by Paul Brown, Eddie Payton, Craig Wiley Page A

we pulled it off. I mean, Santa sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. But he must not have known about all the whoopin’s we got from Daddy that year, for goodness’ sake. Walter and I looked at each other and knew what the other was thinking, but we were keeping our mouths shut about it. Santa done screwed up. But that gear was ours, and we were gonna play us some football.
    Walter and I were pretty small when we started playing football, but that Christmas gear made us feel like Goliath. In reality, we must have looked more like little David in his oversized armor, but it was good enough for the front yard where we mostly played as youngsters. Nothing organized with coaches and refs and such, just playground ball. We’d get out there with some of the other neighborhood kids, divide up teams, throw the ball up over our heads, and it was on. From age nine all the way up until I was 14 and heading into high school, whenever we played football, it was pretty much only out there in the front yard, except for when we were playing in the school yard at recess. Playground ball was all there was for Walter and me. We didn’t play organized football together until we were in college (more on that later in this book). There was no Pee Wee ball where we’re from, no junior high ball, nothing organized until high school—at least for black kids. As an adult, I often found (and still find) myself wishing Walter and I would’ve been two years apart in school instead of three. Walter didn’t play until he was a junior in high school, and I was already in my sophomore year in college. With Walter and me in the same backfield at Jefferson High, we’d have been unstoppable.
    Even though Walter wouldn’t be there, I still wanted to play high school ball pretty bad. And if you wanted any chance of playing in high school back then, you had to either get so big in stature or so good on the playground that head coach Charles Boston had no choice but to take notice of you before you even got there. I wasn’t very big as a kid, so I figured I had to tear it up in my front yard and hope Coach heard about me through the grapevine. I also figured I’d get an edge if I helped tote helmets, towels, and stuff for the high school team, just to show Coach I cared. Well, Coach noticed, but that wasn’t the only benefit I got from carrying their equipment. I also learned a lot from the team by just being around. I’d do my duties and then sit and watch practice, and I’d take all of that with me back to the playground. We’d play touch football from time to time, but we mostly played tackle, so what I was learning from the high school boys translated perfectly. And I was starting to get pretty good, if I do say so myself. I’m sure all the boys I knocked around at the time would say the same thing.
    We’d mostly play a game called “You It.” It was a simple game, and I absolutely loved it. You’d take the ball, throw it straight up as high as you could, and the guy who caught it would try to score or, if we didn’t have a clearly marked goal line that day, just run until he got tackled. That was it, and it was beautiful. I’ll never forget the first time I played. The game had started and some guy was running with the ball. I hit him with everything I had, and the ball popped up into the air. Everyone got up off the ground to catch the ball (except the guy I clocked, of course), but it landed it my arms. That thing could have been a bolt of lightning, because I definitely felt juiced. I took off running, cutting this way and that. One guy missed, and I flew on by. Then another tried to grab me, but I shook him, too. Then a third guy. Then a fourth. No one could touch me. I made it to the other end leaving nothing but footprints and wannabe tacklers behind me. Touchdown!
    From then on, football was easy. I could always just make ’em miss. And once I did that, it was over. There was just no way one of them cats