Semi-Tough

I guess by now there can't be too many people anywhere who haven't heard about Billy Clyde Puckett, the humminest sumbitch that ever carried a football. Maybe you could find some Communist Chinks someplace who don't know about me, but surely everybody in America does if they happen to keep up with pro football, which is what I think everybody in America does. That, and jack around with somebody else's wife or husband.

Anyhow, Billy Clyde Puckett turns out to be me, the book writer who is writing this book about his life and his loves and his true experiences in what you call your violent world of professional football.

I happen to be writing it in my spare time between running over a whole pile of niggers in the National Football League.

And let me get something straight right away that bothers me. Just because I may happen to say nigger doesn't mean that I'm some kind of racist. One of the big troubles with the world of modern times, I think, is that somebody is always getting hot because somebody else says nigger instead of nee-grow.

Because of this very thing I said nigger just now to get your attention. It seems to have a certain shock value. But I don't think nigger in my heart. Not the way some people do when they mean a nigger is a lazy sumbitch who won't block or tackle or wash dishes fast enough.

It's just a word, anyway. Nigger, I mean. It's just a word that some dumb-ass plantation owner made up one time by accident when he tried to pronounce nee-grow.

I say nigger sometimes in jest, and most of the time I'll say it to a nigger who understands what I mean. On our team, in fact, we even have a play--a deep pass pattern--that some of us call Niggers Go Long.

I also use a few words like hebe and spick and some other things that might not necessarily flatter a person's name and address, but actually this is how a lot of studs talk in the National Football League. We're fairly honest. We might call a spook a spook, unless he's a spick.

What I'm getting at is that a football player is a football player and nothing else, as far as we're concerned. Now, if a nigger doesn't want to be a nigger in real life, that's something else. But I sure know several who can block and tackle themselves pretty damn white.

My best buddy, Shake Tiller, and me decided a long time ago about this racial question. We decided that nobody can help being what he is, whether it turns out to be as black as a cup of coffee at a truck stop or a white Southern dumb-ass like most of our parents. A man makes himself a man by whatever he does with himself, and in pro football that means busting his ass for his team.

So Shake and me joke about this racial business. Like, me and Shake have this thing that we say to people at luncheons or banquets when they come up to ask for our autographs and grill us about what it's like to play pro football.

"Aw, we don't like it so much," Shake or me will say. "Mainly, we just like to take showers with niggers."

A few years ago, when Shake and me first came up to the New York Giants--back there before we turned the Giants into a winner--I remember that there were some racial problems going on around the league.

Seemed like everybody was some kind of a holdout. There were salary arguments and pension disputes and a lot of courtroom business, and if it wasn't the white stud quarterback who wanted another $2,000,000, it was the spook flanker. There were days when there were more hell-raising agents in the dressing rooms than there was tape.

This was back when the owners and coaches had a saying they lived by. They said a team with seven spooks could make the play-offs and a team with nine spooks could get to the Super Bowl. But a team with ten spooks or more probably couldn't beat Denver.

Back then, the newspapers were full of some crap about the Giants' being overdue for some racial turmoil because they had slowly become a squad with almost as many spooks as Catholics. This was when Shake Tiller made his first big impression on the team, even though he was a rookie.

Everybody knew Shake could catch balls and give the Giants a deep threat like they'd never had before. But everybody didn't know Shake had a big old heart in him about like a grapefruit that went around feeling things in regard to the world in general.

It was up at Yankee Stadium one day after practice that Shake made this talk to the squad that, I think, helped us become a well-knit unit. Shake brought the racial turmoil out in the open, where the Giants could all look at it.

Shake stood up on a bench in the dressing room and said, "I think we got some shit we need to talk about, man to man." I recall that Puddin Patterson from Grambling, our best guard, was flopped out on the floor, picking at his toenails, and when Shake said that, Puddin belched real loud. "Puddin's with me," Shake said. "Anybody else?"

Nobody said anything, but T. J. Lambert, our big old defensive end from Tennessee, hiked his leg and made a noise like a watermelon being dropped on concrete out of a four-story building.

When everybody stopped laughing, Shake got into his talk.

"I think a man has a right to be whatever he wants to be," Shake said. "By that I mean, if we've got any niggers who'd rather be spicks, then I say we ought to buy 'em some sombreros and guitars. On the other hand, if we've got any Hebes who'd rather be Chinks, then I say that's all right, too. But I also think a nigger can be a nigger if he wants to. There's only one thing. If a nigger's gonna be a nigger, then he better be able to block."

Puddin Patterson butted in and said, "Say, baby, that don't seem fair. Cat don't have to block if he's tired, does he?"

Everybody laughed again.

Shake smiled himself and he said, "That's right, Puddin. You don't have to block anybody at all, but you know yourself that a sumbitch who don't block or tackle is nothing but a nigger Hebe spick with a little A-rab thrown in. By the way. We got any A-rabs around here?"

Puddin said, "T. J. Lambert smells like one--with a goat under each arm."

As far as I know, T. J. Lambert is about the meanest sumbitch that ever lived, much less stunk. He's about six feet, five and weighs about 260 without a towel wrapped around his freckled belly. I'd guess he takes a shower about every five days and some people say that this alone is what makes T. J. so mean.

We say the T. J. stands for "torn jock," because that's what T. J. does to anybody who carries a football in his general direction. He tears their jock off. Actually, the T. J. stands for Teddy James, but you'd sooner call T. J. an A-rab than his real name.

When Puddin Patterson said T. J. smelled like an A-rab that day in the dressing room, T. J. walked over to where Puddin was lying on the floor and cut another one that sounded kind of like a washing machine that was breaking down.

But I've gotten away from Shake Tiller's talk to the squad.

He said, "You studs don't have to listen to me, because I'm only a rookie, and I'm what a lot of you spooks might think of as a red-neck with a terminal case of the dumb-ass, but this team will wind up in trouble if we don't talk about it.

"So far as I can tell, we've got a real good bunch of assholes around here and some stud athletes, both black and white. That's really all that matters. I want to get it straight that me and Billy C. there don't give a fuck what color any sumbitch is if he wants to win.

"There's no way I can prove to any of you spooks that I'm not a Southern dumb-ass, because you don't know me so well yet. But I'll tell you this. The trouble with the world is not that a nigger can't get in a restaurant somewhere. The trouble is that a nigger can't get thrown out."

About right then, Puddin Patterson said, "Baby, you 'bout to make some sense."

"Well, I'm not up here to talk about the world," Shake said. "All I want to make clear is, a nigger who plays football can whitewash himself by knocking down more sumbitches than knock him down. And when he knocks down enough, he'll look around one day and find out he's rich and famous. Then he can go buy a Cadillac and a big house and start fucking up a good white neighborhood--or whatever it is you guys like to do."

Shake grinned in order to let everybody know that was a joke. The spooks, I mean. Some did and some didn't. A couple of them just kept on standing around with their arms folded, staring down at the floor. As if they were listening to an assistant coach who was reminding them they had to quit stealing socks and sweat suits.

Puddin Patterson said, "Say, baby, you don't have no idea what it's like to be black, you dig? So how come you standin' up there layin' out all this jive?"

Some spook voice from the back of the room said, "Tell me somethin' about it."

And another spook voice said, "Two, four, six, eight. Texas gonna integrate."

Shake answered Puddin. "All I'm talking about is trying to be a good football team. Is that what we're here for?"

Puddin said, "We doin' a job, baby. You catch them balls and I'll block them folks. Ain't nothin' else to it."

From somewhere again in the back of the room, a spook voice said, "Say, Puddin. You know what a Texan is?"

Puddin half-turned around. He laughed and said to the room, "Cat done told me it was a Mexican on his way to Oklahoma."

Shake laughed. "Here's all I mean. If any of us get the red-ass about something, then we ought to talk it over among ourselves without any goddamn agitators or business agents telling somebody he ought to be a flanker instead of (continued on page 120) Semi-Tough (continued from page 94) a guard. Or he ought to be doing more hair-spray commercials." Shake looked down at Puddin. "I'm gonna catch the football and run like a nigger, Puddin. You gonna block yourself white?"

Puddin didn't say anything.

"I can't help it because the Old Skipper up there put some niggers in the world, Puddin," said Shake. "I guess if we all had our choice, we'd be rich, white, handsome and able to tap-dance. What I can help, though, is acting like I don't know any of you are here."

"We here, baby," somebody said.

Shake said, "To tell you the truth, I'm not eaten up with any goddamn hundred years of guilt about you sum bitches. You're just guys to me. And athletes. We've got to trust each other and be honest. And get drunk together, and get fucked together. That's the only way we can win together."

Shake paused a minute and stared at Puddin. "Are we gonna win together?" Shake asked.

Puddin slowly smiled and said, "You want to know somethin', baby? I believe a cat could hang around with you and get hisself some white pussy." There was honest laughter all around.

After a minute, Shake said, "I just don't think a team has to have the kind of trouble that some other teams have had between spooks and everybody else. I just think we all ought to work to have a winner, and if there's anybody around here who doesn't want to do that, then he can move his ass down the road."

Puddin said, "Everybody wants that, baby, but you sound like you think that if we don't win, it's gonna be the cats that fucked it up. You dig that?"

Shake grinned and said, "That's because we all know how lazy you folks are. Shit, we all know you'll quit a stream after two catfish. Right?"

Shake said he didn't have much else to say. He just wanted to bring it all out instead of keeping it buried, about feelings and all, and who everybody was, seeing as how most niggers were darker than whites.

I am white, of course. That's only important when you consider that I run with the football.

I'm white, stand about six, two--just under--and weigh about 218. If you're interested in what else I look like, my nose is slightly bent from catching a few licks and I've got about $1700 worth of teeth in my mouth that I wasn't born with. There are those who say I have a warm smile and don't look mean off the field.

I've got some shaggy hair that covers up most of my ears and hangs down in back, just below the bottom of my helmet. Barbara Jane Bookman says I can't keep my hair combed with a yard rake. It's dark brown. My hair, I mean. Not Barbara Jane.

The reason it's important that I'm white and play running back is that most of the great runners in history have been spooks. It used to be said that if a white stud came along who was as strong as Jim Brown and as quick as Gale Sayers, he could get richer than the Mafia playing football. I suppose I'm just about that person.

Old Billy Clyde's salary is up there in big figures now, and if you lump three years together, it's a real ass tickler. I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging, but I've been told to talk about myself in this book so that the casual followers of the game as well as the nonfootball readers would know something about me. That's what I'm doing in all honesty.

It turns out that I was a total All-America back in my college of TCU in Fort Worth, Texas. And so was my good buddy Shake Tiller, who has written the pilot film on split ends.

My running comes natural is the only way I can explain it. It seems that when I get a football under my arm, I have a tendency to not get tackled so easy. I can't truly make it very clear about my life's chosen craft. But what I'm getting at is that even today, after five years in the N. F. L., when our quarterback, Hose Manning, squats back of the center and hollers out a play like, "Red, curfew, fifty-three, sureside, hut, hut, hut," then what I mean is, if I get the ball, I have a serious tendency to turn into some kind of Red fuckin' Grange.

Shake Tiller has said that if I was black I would not be thought of so much as any kind of hell and it would hurt me in the pocketbook. He's probably right. I wish that I was black sometimes, not because it would make me any faster but because a lot of my buddies on the Giants are spooks who don't really enjoy being spooks. I don't think I'd let the world jack me around so much if I was a spook, but then, I can't actually say.

I have been so carried away trying to begin this book that I've forgotten to tell anybody why I'm writing it, or how it is getting itself written. I guess I ought to explain it so it will give me a semiclear conscience with my teammates.

The main reason I'm writing the book is because I got talked into it by an old newspaper friend in Texas. His name is Jim Tom Pinch, and if you've ever poked through a garbage can in Fort Worth, you may have seen his daily column, "Pinch's Palaver." Jim Tom persuaded me that it might be good for a pro-football stud to have a book that might have a healthy influence on kids. He also said he would help me with it.

People keep saying that kids are the hope of the world, and maybe even Texas. If that's true--and they're not all a bunch of vagrants--then I suppose I'm doing something worth while. Not to get too serious about it, but it might be true what Jim Tom says. That my ideas on football and relationships between athletes could help change the minds of several little old Southern motherfuckers whose families have taught them to hate niggers, Hebes, Catholics and whores.

The other reason for the book is that I happened to scare up a publisher in New York who was enthusiastic enough about it to give me a whole lot of what you call your up-front whip-out. Which is a shitpot full of cash, is what it is.

How I am writing the book is sort of funny, I think.

What I'm doing right now is sitting on my ass in me and Shake's palatial suite here at the Beverly Stars Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. I'm just sitting here on a sofa with my feet propped up on a coffee table. I've got a glass of young Scotch in front of me and this little tape recorder that Barbara Jane Bookman gave me. Everybody agreed that if the book was going to get written at all, I would just have to talk into this tape recorder every chance I got and say whatever was on my mind.

I asked Jim Tom Pinch who I would be talking to, and he said, "The world in general, your massive public, and your friendly neighborhood typist." So that's what I'm in the midst of, world. Hello, world. How you? I only hope the final version isn't too embarrassing for anybody.

Right now, Shake is down at one of the swimming pools reading the newspapers about us, or reading a book. He does a lot of reading, which is why it was easy for him to tell me about a book publisher. In our apartment on 65th and First Avenue in New York, there are enough books to support the 59th Street Bridge if it ever starts to sag. Shake reads just about everything he can, whether it's politics, novels or something interesting.

Barbara Jane is down at the pool with him. She's usually wherever we are and has been since about the fifth grade. We're all best friends, only better than that. Really close. Except it's a little different with Shake and Barbara Jane. They're about half in love.

So, anyhow, here I am, writing my book. But don't get to feeling too sorry for me because Shake and Barb are hung up in what you call your romance, and I'm only the cruise director. I happen to be in the pleasant company right now of the lovely Miss Cissy Walford, who has been on the traveling squad for a number of weeks.

(continued on page 236) Semi-Tough (continued from page 120)

The lovely Miss Cissy Walford is starting to blush as I speak her name.

She's sprawled out comfortably across the room from me with a vodka and tonic and a movie magazine. She has her legs draped over the arm of a big chair and she's wearing a pair of those expensive, crotch-tight, thigh-grabbing pants that must be made out of skin and she also has what obviously is a couple of dandy lungs underneath a silk blouse.

I guess I don't really need to point out that Miss Cissy Walford is some kind of good-looking, or she wouldn't be with old Billy Clyde. She's right up there in the majors with Barbara Jane Bookman on looks, and Barbara Jane, of course, is so damned pretty it makes your eyes blur.

The only thing wrong with Cissy Walford is that she's about half Eastern. She's got one of those lispy, semistutter, fake British accents that can really piss you off.

She's from out on Long Island somewhere with a momma and daddy who think Princeton still plays good football. They say things like they'd like to "go get a lob for dinner," meaning a goddamned lobster, and her fuckin' daddy wouldn't pick up a $30 lunch tab if he owned Wall Street, which he does.

Barbara Jane says Cissy went to school somewhere like Briardale in Westchester County and majored in Bloomingdale's and minored in Bonwit Teller. Those are stores where women go in New York.

Well, Cissy likes hanging around with old Billy Clyde, so I guess she can't be all bad. To tell you the truth, I think she's deep down a pretty good wool, and if it weren't for the fact that she's such a self-centered, spoiled bitch, with that nit-wit accent and her shit-heel parents, I'd probably marry her.

She just threw a pillow at me.

Missed, though. Kid never did have an arm.

Now I think I'd better get down to why we're all out here in California. The fact is that the New York Giants have got themselves a little old date this coming Sunday in the Super Bowl against none other than the dog-ass New York Jets.

This is some kind of joke back in New York, of course. Here are two New York teams in the Super Bowl, finally, and the game's being played in Los Angeles.

"Have you mentioned that we're gonna kick the shit out of the dog-ass Jets?" Shake asked me yesterday.

"That's a far-gone conclusion," I said.

"Put in there that I went on record as saying I would play the greatest game of my life," said Shake. "Put in there that I'll probably catch two or three balls behind Dreamer Tatum and at least once I'll dough-pop him on his black ass."

One thing my buddy Shake has never lacked any great amount of is confidence. I don't think anybody has ever truly embarrassed Dreamer Tatum, at least not in all the films I've seen. And I've never heard of anybody bringing him any bodily harm. Dreamer Tatum is a roverback for the dog-ass Jets, which means that he plays a combination cornerback and linebacker and sometimes covers deep pass routes. He got his name Dreamer in college at USC because he put guys to sleep when he hit them.

I'll tell you. Dreamer Tatum is a stud sumbitch on the football field. He's the only defensive specialist who ever won the Heisman Trophy. That's a trophy that's supposed to go to the best college player every year--and almost never does. Seeing as how me and Shake never won it.

But Dreamer deserved the Heisman the year he got it, which was really an upset over those fuckers who vote in the East and Midwest. And besides that, he's been All-Pro for all three years that he's been with the dog-ass Jets. Dreamer Tatum is what we call a pisser. All you can see in most any film of the dog-ass Jets is Dreamer Tatum sticking some poor sumbitch in the gizzle when the poor sumbitch has tried to run a sweep. All of a sudden the blockers go south and there's Dreamer knocking some poor sumbitch on his butt.

We don't know Dreamer so well. Shit, he lives out in Long Island somewhere, like most of the dog-ass Jets, and of course most of the Giants live in Manhattan or Greenwich or Scarsdale.

We know Dreamer well enough to say hidy, but that's about all. He moves up every now and then and falls into a classy place like P. J. Clarke's, which is where we go a lot. Usually it's when Dreamer is with some real-estate or insurance phony who only wants to be seen with him.

I hear Dreamer's really a good spook when he's not making somebody's hat ring, but my only thought about him right now is that he's on the other side from me in this game and that means we're at war.

As you might suspect, the newspaper are building it up about what's liable to happen when I run at Dreamer, or when Shake runs a root at him. Yesterday a guy in the L. A. Times quoted Dreamer as saying we were good in "an inferior league" and that playing the Jets would finally test how good we really were. The Times writer quoted Dreamer as saying, "I hope the Giants have got their hats on sunday, because we want to welcome 'em to pro football."

You try not to get upset by anything you read, of course. Most of it is bullshit. But you read it. Every football player does. Anyhow, Shake answered Dreamer in the paper this morning, and we all had a good laugh, even Cissy Walford, who doesn't understand any of it.

The paper quoted Shake as saying, "I just found out that Dreamer Tatum's real name is Obert Kimberly Tatum. The only Obert I ever knew was so dumb he couldn't figure out a ballpoint pen. And the only Kimberly I ever knew was an interior decorator. So now that I know Dreamer's straight name, I've got to wonder if he's the little bit of hell he's supposed to be."

I'll tell you something. The great miracle of our age is that the Giants are in the Super Bowl, with Shoat Cooper for a head coach. Him being the coach was a stroke of genius on the part of Burt Danby, the new owner, by the way.

When me and Shake were drafted, the head coach was Doyt Elkins, of course, who had originally been hired by the Maras, the old organization. I thought Doyt was a pretty good coach, considering that he communicated with the players only by memo.

We could have done all right with Doyt. But he went to the Cowboys and took the whole staff with him, except for the head scout, which was none other than Shoat Cooper. Burt Danby didn't even look for anybody else. He said the press liked Shoat because they got drunk together. Besides, Burt said, he was sick of coaches who made the game so mysterious.

When he announced at a press conference that Shoat had the job, Burt said, "God, I'm just so up to here with zigouts and fly patterns. I mean, the way they all talk, they just practically make me do a total face-down in the old salad. Shoat Cooper keeps it simple. And take it from an old advertising cock that if no one knows what you're saying, you couldn't sell welfare in Harlem."

What Burt didn't add was that Shoat Cooper came cheap.

I'm not sure where to begin to describe the country sumbitch. Shoat's big. He doesn't have much hair left. He looks like he's got about 12 six-packs of Pearl in his belly. And he's always looking around for somewhere to spit. He's got a slow, deep, country voice. A husky kind of voice, like somebody who just woke up, or like a deputy sheriff talking to a spook who forgot to park his pickup truck between the white lines.

I don't think I've ever seen Shoat act like he's excited. The one time back during the regular season when we were behind, which was at a half time when the Redskins had us down by 30 to 14 on some lucky passes, Shoat Cooper just acted like nothing was any different.

When we all walked into the locker room at Yankee Stadium and slammed our hats down, there was Shoat on a little stool in front of the blackboard, looking down at the floor.

Everybody was bitching and moaning for a few minutes, those that hadn't peed yet or done various things. Finally we plunked down and got quiet and looked at him. Shoat sat there, chewing on a toothpick, and then he got around to telling us about the first half.

"Well, defense," he groaned slowly, "seemed to me like you all just kind of stood around and let 'em eat the apple off your head." Then he spit.

Nobody said anything back for a minute or so, and then Puddin Patterson said, "They stuntin', Coach. On blast and cutback, that fuckin' Seventy-six is comin' from somewhere and I can't get a piece of him." Shoat said hmmmmm.

Puddin said, "I believe we can catch 'em, Coach. We gonna roll like a big wheel this half."

Shoat said, "Well, we ain't gonna catch nobody unless our defense gets together and decides that they ain't gonna let 'em piss another drop."

Puddin Patterson said, "Coach, where that Seventy-six comin' from?"

Shoat looked at the floor for a while, and then he said, "I tell you what let's do, Puddin. Let's you just go out there this half and concentrate on tryin' to hit ever sumbitch that's wearin' a different-colored shirt."

As for our running game, Shoat said, "If you run the football up somebody's ass, then it's them that has to get their hands dirty tryin' to pull it out."

Shoat Cooper had been a great player in the N. F. L. himself. The old-timers will tell you that there weren't many linebackers any better. Maybe Tommy Nobis was. Or Dick Butkus.

But Shoat in his day was some kind of pisser, they say. They say he craved action so much he would beat his head on the locker-room wall until they let him loose for the kickoff.

Shoat came out of Arkansas, like his name suggests. He was from Possum Grape and played ball at the University of Arkansas, where the freshman team is called Shoats. But they say that's not where he got his name. I hear that when he was growing up, he looked just like a baby pig, so somebody started calling him Shoat.

I guess he might smile when we win Sunday. But in the three years he's been our coach, he hasn't.

You would think that Shoat might have smiled once or twice during our regular season, since we're undefeated and untied and already have a diamond ring cinched for winning the National Conference.

Speaking of our ball club, this seems like a good time for me to go through our line-up and tell you a little something about each stud that you might find interesting.

At tight end, of course, we've got old Thacker Hubbard, who just walked into camp one day. He'd been drafted and cut by Detroit and nobody wanted him. Granted, he's slow. But he'll catch it if Hose Manning doesn't make him reach too far, and he can block. Thacker keeps to himself and does his job. He's from Idaho and likes sheep. He's about six, three and 235.

Seems like Thacker said something funny back during the season, but I can't remember what it was.

Sam Perkins is an offensive tackle on the right side of the line. Sam is just one of those spooks who never complain and give you a whole lot of effort. He's about six feet and 250 and he's been around long enough to know every kind of secret way there is to hold on a pass block.

Sam played college ball at Oregon State, but he comes from Los Angeles. That's where he lives in the off-season, somewhere around here, like Compton. He's got a real good off-season business designing women's clothes, they tell me.

Some people say Sam might like boys better than girls, and that's why he's never been married, but I hesitate to believe something like this about a friend. Anyway, I don't see how the Lord would make somebody an interior lineman, and black, and a fag.

Puddin Patterson is our right guard, as you already know, and of course Puddin is simply one of the all-time immortals. He must be the fastest big man that ever was, and he's such a good buddy that if I asked Puddin to kill somebody for me, he wouldn't say anything except, "Where you want this cat's body shipped?"

Because I like country music so much, Puddin calls me his "closet red-neck," but he knows I love his big ass, and Rosalie, and his two little cousins, too.

Through our connections, me and Shake helped Puddin get a beer distributorship in Lafayette, Louisiana, where he's from, and we also put his momma in the pie-making business, in which she is about to get semirich.

One of the things I think me and Shake will do one of these days when Puddin retires from pro ball is give his old school, Grambling, a $10,000 scholarship in his name.

Puddin says that won't make up for the fact that we're white. He says, "You cats know how much better ball you'd play if you didn't feel so much guilt?" We tell Puddin to go play the saxophone, or whatever it is spades do.

At center we've got a peculiar old boy named Nobakov Korelovich from Notre Dame. He's got a monk's haircut, no front teeth, real white skin and a cross eye. Everybody calls him The Pope and he kind of grins.

The Pope goes about six, four and 260, and one of the fascinating things he can do--for money--is drink a can of beer in four seconds. He just sucks it out in a giant inhale.

The Pope broke in as a rookie last year, and I'm sure he would have made All-Pro if he hadn't beaten up a sportswriter from Chicago when we were out there playing the Bears.

It was on Saturday night before the game and some of us were in Adolph's having dinner and some drinks when the sportswriter saw us and came over to our booth and started kidding The Pope about Notre Dame losing to Tulane.

The Pope vaulted out of the booth with a big steak bone in his mouth and grabbed the sportswriter and lifted him up in the air by his neck. He held him up in the air near the piano bar and slapped him a few times, growling through the meat in his mouth.

Then he took the poor old sportswriter out on the sidewalk, right there on Rush Street, turned him upside down and shook him. He took the guy's money and threw it down the street and took the guy's glasses and ate them.

He just chewed all the glass out of the rims and swallowed it, growling some more, and went back into Adolph's and washed it down with some beer.

We got him calmed down and The Pope just sat there the rest of the night and said, "Fuckin' literary fuckers."

The sportswriter didn't press any charges. In fact, he wrote what I thought was a funny story in the paper the next day about how to interview Nobakov Korelovich. "Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Korelovich."

Our other guard is Euger Franklin. Euger is from Nebraska and he's about as close as anything we've got to what some people might call a troublemaker.

There's no worry about Euger in a football game. He's a strong-shouldered old boy with a hell of a physique and he's quick as a turpentined cat. He weighs about 240 and stands about six, one. Shoat Cooper refers to Euger as his "malcontent."

Since I've been around Euger, which is roughly three seasons, he hasn't been overly friendly with the white studs on the team. He never hangs around with any of us, even when there are other spooks in the crowd. Even Puddin Patterson, who sort of keeps Euger cool.

Euger is about the only spade on the team that you wouldn't get too funny with, in terms of race or anything. It's strange, too, because actually he's a lot lighter than the rest. Euger, in fact, could damn near pass as a Mexican or an A-rab.

Euger was a number-one draft choice of the Giants, and also an All-America and a Lineman of the Year at Nebraska.

He's married to a good-looking chick named Eunice, who's not a bad blues singer and who's been in the movies. He makes good money with the Giants. He's probably the highest-paid lineman we've got, next to Puddin. Or maybe higher, considering the bonus he got.

But Euger Franklin's been right there with every kind of spook movement that's gone on in the league. Like the white-shoe movement, which was when all the spooks decided they would wear only white game shoes. Things like that.

Our other offensive tackle is just a big old country boy named Dean McCoobry from the University of Texas. He's a rookie who hasn't said anything that I know of since training camp, when we made him try to sing The Eyes of Texas every night after dinner until he got the words right.

Dean's six, five and about 255. He's got buckteeth, wears glasses off the field and has a bit of a puzzled look on his semi--baby face. We call him Baby Dean and he collects match folders.

Our split end is Marvin ("Shake") Tiller, of whom you may have heard me speak. Shake Tiller. Pimp. Sex maniac. Dope fiend. Wanted for manslaughter in Joplin, Missouri.

We have a flanker who can't do much except outrun everybody, but that's really all he's supposed to do. He's Al ("Abort") Goodwin, the ex--Olympic hurdler.

I'll tell you. If you ever need anybody to run three and a half miles over brush and timber, you'd better get Al ("Abort") Goodwin. On a straight line, I don't think there's any doubt that Al Goodwin could outrun anybody in football. The thing he gives us is the deep threat. Real deep.

Al runs so fast down the side line that he very often gets 60 or 70 yards gone on a single pattern, but of course Hose Manning just can't throw it that far. Still, the defense has to assign one man to Al, basically on the chance that Hose will try to hit him once a game and he'll underthrow and the defensive back can intercept.

Al ("Abort") Goodwin is a real nice fellow who lives in Boulder, Colorado, teaches history at the university, is married and has four kids. He's never seen a day of the year when he didn't run some laps, or do some sprints, even in the snow.

Long before now, I should have mentioned our fullback, the guy who takes over some of my ball-carrying duties now and then and does a fine job of pass blocking for Hose Manning.

Our fullback is Booger Sanders from Alabama, and he's one of the best sumbitches who ever breathed air.

In the eight years he's been up from Tuscaloosa, Booger's had a lot of bad luck with his career. He's had every physical thing happen to him from a broken back to the clap. And two wives have just hauled off and left him.

Booger's kind of short and stumpy, but he's run under more than one tackler in his day. This is the first season that things have gone smooth for him. No injuries. And he's come up with a nice girlfriend who might not rob him.

Now we come to a fellow I just can't say enough about. This is our cerebral leader, Mr. Quarterback himself, otherwise known as Hose Manning. Shoat Cooper calls Hose Manning "the best milker on the farm," meaning he's the best quarterback in pro ball. I agree.

It's a known fact that a football team can't go very far without a good milker, and in my five years with the Giants, we didn't really start going anywhere until we got Hose from the Vikings two years ago.

We got Hose from Minnesota after a turn of very sinister events that spring, when the Vikings thought he would never be able to play ball again after he was in a terrible car wreck back in his home town of Purcell, Oklahoma.

The story behind the trade is semifascinating and I think I'll reveal it. It would make a damn movie is all it would do. Hose had gone home to Purcell, like he always does in the off-season. He'd gone home to look after his chain of filling stations. Purcell is a little town near Norman, which is where the University of Oklahoma is. Purcell is also where they have the annual Old Fiddlers' Contest, which is an event where old fiddle players from everywhere gather for a few days and fiddle their asses off.

Down there that same spring to scout Oklahoma's spring training one week was Tom Stinnywade, the Vikings' chief scout. One day Stinnywade had nothing else to do but drive over to Purcell to hear some of the old fiddlers who were having their contest at the same time as Oklahoma's spring practice.

By a strange coincidence, Stinnywade happened to be passing along the highway just outside Purcell at the exact time that Hose Manning's Cadillac got hit from the blind side by one of those old yellow-dog school buses. You've seen those old yellow-dog buses. The kind with the straight-back seats. The kind junior college teams go to games in and throw Kentucky Fried Chicken bones out the windows of.

When Hose's car got hit, it turned over two or three times, they say, and rattled all the dishes in Grayford's Truck Stop Diner on the other side of the street. Tom Stinnywade actually saw the crash, hopped out of his own car, ran over and saw Hose lying on the ground, unconscious.

What Stinnywade did next is the key to the whole thing. Instead of seeing how bad Hose was hurt, Stinnywade ran into Grayford's Truck Stop Diner and called the front office in Minneapolis and got hold of Herb Fannerbahn, the Vikings' general manager.

"Trade Manning," Stinnywade said. Or something like that.

Now the plot thickens.

Herb Fannerbahn phoned up Burt Danby in New York and asked him if the Giants had found a quarterback yet. Burt obviously said no. Fannerbahn asked if Burt would like to have Hose Manning. For the Giants' first four draft choices.

Burt Danby is sometimes not so stupid and he told Herb Fannerbahn he'd get back to him within an hour.

Burt then phoned up Shoat Cooper, who was down on his ranch near Lubbock, Texas. The Vikings want to give us Manning, Burt said, but there must be something wrong. Could Shoat find out what it was?

It just so happened that Shoat Cooper had a friend in Purcell that he could call. It was a waitress in Grayford's Truck Stop Diner named Louise the Tease. Shoat had done some scouting in his day and, like most scouts, he knew every beer joint and truck stop and waitress in America.

Shoat called up Louise the Tease and asked her if she had heard anything about Hose Manning lately.

"All I know is what I can see out the window right now," said Louise the Tease, "which is Hose Manning lyin' in a ditch."

Shoat asked Louise the Tease to do him a big favor, like run across the street and see if Hose was alive, and, if so, did he have all his arms and legs and hands, and, possibly, could he call an audible?

"I'll go see," said Louise the Tease. "But personally, I wouldn't give you two cents for him. He taken somethin' from between my thighs once and now he don't never come around."

Louise the Tease called Shoat back in less than five minutes and said Hose seemed to be all right. She said he even managed to smile and suggest something she could do that would make his crotch feel better.

Shoat phoned this news to Burt Danby, who immediately phoned up Herb Fannerbahn and made the trade.

And that's how we got our milker. I don't know whatever happened to Tom Stinnywade. Last I heard, he was an assistant coach in a vocational high school on Chicago's South Side. And Herb Fannerbahn is a tour guide now at Hoover Dam, I think.

Hose Manning fit right in with us, of course. He not only gave us the arm we needed but he's a fine punter and field-goal kicker. A real all-round stud who nearly won the Heisman Trophy when he played for OU.

Hose is a tough leader. And he's not bad-looking for a guy with an Oklahoma face. He's got deep creases in his face and what's left over from a childhood case of semiacne. He's got black, stringy hair, and he's about the only quarterback left who wears high-top shoes. He's over six feet and weighs about 200. He's got a quick release and he throws what we call a light ball. The nose is up and it's easy to catch.

The only thing Hose lost in that wreck was one kidney. But, like he says, "If I'd lost it earlier in life, think how much less I'd had to piss."

As for our defensive unit, I don't know so many personal things about very many of those studs, other than T. J. Lambert.

In pro ball, the offense and defense are like two separate clubs. We never work together. The defense is always down on the other end of the field figuring out its own problems.

Shoat Cooper's number-one assistant is an old fellow named Morgan Buja-kowski and he handles the defense. Shoat calls Bujakowski "Ol' Army" because he played at both West Point and Texas A&M during World War Two. Most of the players call him the star-spangled Polack because he's still got a crewcut, keeps his shoulders reared back and wears an old Aggie cavalry hat to practice.

The star-spangled Polack likes to kick players in the butt and tell us that we don't know what real football is. He says face guards have taken fear out of the game.

What I'll do, I think, is just run through the defensive line-up for you, sort of quick.

T. J. Lambert, of course, is on one end, and you've already gotten acquainted with that great American poet. On the opposite end, we've got F. Tolan Gates, who's from Stanford. He's a good fellow whose family is about half rich.

At one defensive tackle we've got Henry Knight from Arkansas AM&N, which the star-spangled Polack once said stood for Agricultural, Mechanical and Nigger. The other tackle is Rucker McFarland from North Carolina State, who met his wife on a float in the Peach Bowl parade. That's our down four.

Our three linebackers are Perry Lou Jackson, Salter Bingham and Harris Jones. Perry Lou's from Texas Southern. You might have heard of Perry Lou's older brother, Bad Hair Jackson. He got famous a couple of years ago for killing four prison guards at Huntsville. Salter Bingham played at UCLA and his sister was a well-known actress named Stepanie something. Harris Jones comes from Michigan State, where some people might recall that he was better known as a basketball player.

In the secondary, I'd guess that we've got more speed than a bunch of hookers at a convention.

Jimmy Keith Joy and Story Time Mitchell give us the two toughest corners in pro ball, I think. Jimmy Keith Joy is from Kansas State and Story Time Mitchell is a rookie from Purdue whose whole life got changed by football. In the spring of his junior year at Purdue, Story Time Mitchell got caught being a lookout on a grocery-market holdup. The school decided, however, that it wouldn't be a good thing for an All-America, which he was, to have to go to jail. And the team voted that he ought to get to stay on the squad, figuring it would help rehabilitate him, and that way he could also keep returning punts and intercepting passes.

Story Time Mitchell has played real good for the Giants and stayed pretty much out of trouble with the law, although his roommate on the road, Perry Lou Jackson, says, "It sure is a lot of trouble all the time to have to take a shower with your money in your hand."

This leaves only our free safety and our strong safety, and they happen to be absolute streaks named Varnell Swist and Bobby Styles. Varnell Swist is from San Diego State and I don't think there's a better free safety in football. And Bobby Styles is from LSU, where he was a running back. In Baton Rouge, they say, the radio stations still play a recording of Bobby's great run that beat Ole Miss a couple of years ago.

Well, this just about takes care of everybody important on our team, except for Randy Juan Llanez, our utility stud. All I can say about Randy Juan is that he comes from somewhere in South America, played college ball at Florida State and says he learned to run fast in riots after soccer games.

So there they are, folks, the New York Giants. Get 'em, Giants.

Which brings me around to giving you some description of the dog-ass Jets, champions of the American Conference and the teammates of Dreamer Tatum--who personally broke two Oakland jaws in the course of the play-off. It's hard to pin down their dog-ass personality, but you might say that they are cocky on the field and half rowdy off it--in whatever bowling alleys or low-rent districts they hang out. But I have plenty of respect for them, both as athletes and as people.

If the Giants never won anything but a coin toss or two for the last 15 years, the Jets were in about the same bad shape when Joe Namath retired a few years ago. But then the Mastrioni brothers, Angie and Tony, bought the team and hired Rudi Tambunga for coach. Rudi has managed to rebuild the Jets with some good drafts and some stud trades.

One of the slickest moves the Mastrioni brothers made four years ago was getting the dog-ass Jets to lose their last five games so they could finish with the worst record in the whole N. F. L. and be allowed to draft Dreamer Tatum.

In case nobody knows it, the last-place team gets the first draft pick. I heard a story that the dog-ass jets celebrated their final loss to the Patriots in Shea Stadium by carrying their quarterback, Boyce Cayce, off the field because he had thrown four interceptions for touchdowns.

"This is a great bunch of guys," the papers quoted Rudi Tambunga. "I'm proud to be associated with a bunch that wants the first-round draft pick as much as the management does."

After the dog-ass Jets got Dreamer Tatum, they made a stud trade with Dallas and got Jessie Luker and Gruver Allgood to pep up the offense.

Jessie Luker is a hot dog from Alcorn A&M who's got hands on him like snowshoes. Instead of his name on his jersey across the back, he's got See You Later stitched on there for guys to read when they're chasing him. In the regular season, he caught the most balls of anybody other than Shake Tiller.

Why Dallas gave up on Gruver All good has baffled a lot of people. He gained only 1035 yards last season for the Cowboys and took them to the Super Bowl, where they lost down in Mexico City to the Chiefs, 56 to 3.

Gruver was popular in Dallas, despite his two arrests on sodomy. And that scandal he got into when he got caught stealing women's underwear off the clotheslines in back yards. He's sure done a fine job for the dog-ass Jets, and he's stayed fairly clean in New York.

There's another old boy who makes the dog-ass Jets what they are and that's Boyce Cayce. I don't think he's any Hose Manning, but you'd have to put Boyce in your top half of quarterbacks around the league. The sportswriters have been calling him "the grand old man" for several years, although he's never played on a great team until now. Boyce started out with the Rams about 12 years ago, I guess, and since then he's been with the Redskins, Saints, Oilers, Raiders, Browns, Bears, Dolphins, Chiefs and Broncos.

The dog-ass Jets got him four years ago and he sort of became a different person. Rudi Tambunga has handled Boyce real good. They say Boyce has cut down a lot on his fights in bars. He hasn't stolen a city bus in a long time. You don't hear so much about his drinking in public or his betting.

• • •

Now the Super Bowl is history and I guess it's time for me to settle down and tell my side of what happened in that extravaganza. I happen to be sitting on the beach in this place in the Hawaiian Islands called Kauai, where I always go after a hard season. It's a semiparadise, hidden away from everything. It doesn't have a telephone or a television or a newspaper or any assholes around. All it has is an ocean, a beach, a mountain, a valley, some lagoons, some waterfalls and no police that I've ever seen. Anyhow, here I am with my little old tape recorder and certain semipainful memories. I have thought about the game and replayed it a few thousand times in my head.

I still can't believe how nervous we were and how overeager we were at the start. Whatever the record was for tight assholes, the Giants broke it.

Shake tried to make some jokes just before we came out of the dressing room for the opening kickoff, but nobody laughed too hard. "Remember this, gang," he said. "No matter what happens out there today, at least six hundred million Chinese don't give a shit."

The dog-ass Jets won the coin flip and got to kick off, which is what we wanted to do. In a big game, we'd rather kick than receive. That's to get in some licks on defense and let the other side know you've come to stack asses.

Everybody who was there or watching on television knows how fired up the Giants were just before the kickoff. That wasn't any act, the way we were jumping up and down and beating on one another.

The guys on our side line said later that everybody on our bench was hollering "Come get your dinners" at the dog-ass Jets and pointing down at their crotches.

Randy Juan Llanez and me are always the two deep backs on kick returns. I want to mention that in case you might have read some foolishness in Sports Illustrated about Shoat Cooper making a grievous mistake by using me on the opening kickoff. I've only been returning kickoffs my whole life.

It was unfortunate that the kick was a sorry one and scooted along on the ground, bouncing sort of goofy. Because Randy Juan Llanez never actually got hold of it before he was dough-popped by two or three green shirts on our ten-yard line.

I remember thinking instinctively, "Uh-oh, Jesus shit a nail." And I knew damn well I would get hit as soon as I retrieved the ball on our goal line. It's true, as Sports Illustrated wrote, that "the jolting blow momentarily separated Puckett from all that made intellectual sense--as well as the football."

Dreamer rang my hat when he busted me, all right, and then went on to recover the ball for a dog-ass touchdown on the very first play of the game. But I can't help laughing now at what he said to me after he came over and helped me up and patted me on the ass. Old Dreamer said, "Stick that in your fucking book."

Throughout the whole first quarter, even the first half, I guess it would be fair to say that we were in some kind of a daze.

For a long time, I didn't think Hose Manning would be able to draw back and hit the ground with the football if you held the turf up in front of his face guard. Shake got open three or four times, but Hose threw the ball only about 20 feet over his head, as if Hose were afraid an interception would give him syphilis.

Hose wasn't getting very good protection, I've got to say. Our line was trying to zone block or scramble block or some idiot thing that wasn't working. On situations where I had to stay back and protect, it looked like a junior high school recess coming at me.

"Sumbitch," said Hose once, trying to get up after the whistle. "I thought you could only have eleven fuckers on a side."

What got us was they were playing us normal, just like Shake and me felt they would. Dreamer played the wide part of the field, like any rover, even when Shake would split out toward the near side line. Obviously, they were guessing that a good pass rush on Hose was the best defense against Shake Tiller.

Their defense jumped around a lot, trying to confuse us, when Hose would be up at the line calling signals. Dreamer would move up on the line of scrimmage, like he might be intending to come on a blitz, but he would back off.

It caused a couple of bad snaps and one or two delay penalties when Hose would try to call an audible. Once Hose called an audible for Booger Sanders to follow me through right guard, but Booger couldn't hear the play.

It was actually kind of funny. Hose started his cadence at the line and then changed his play. When he was calling out the new play, Booger hollered "Check," meaning he couldn't hear the play. Hose called out the signals again and Booger shouted "Check" again. So old Hose raised up from behind the center and turned around to Booger Sanders and pointed at Puddin Patterson's butt and said, "Right fuckin' through here, you country cocksucker."

The dog-ass Jets broke up laughing, and so did the rest of us, and we got a five-yard penalty for delay of the game.

For a while, it was a little bit unsettling to have Dreamer Tatum talking to us on the line of scrimmage. Dreamer would say things like, "Hey, Billy Puckett, run at me, baby."

Or he would say to Hose Manning, "Watch it now, Mr. Quarterback. Dream Street comin' this time. Dream Street comin'."

You have to be a stud athlete that everybody expects miracles from to know what it's like to get as humiliated as we were in the early part of the game.

I'll grant you that we looked rotten, all of us, but I want to point out that it just isn't true what all the newspapers and Sports Illustrated said about Shake Tiller--that he might have been suffering a slight case of overconfidence.

Some people have reasoned that this is why Shake dropped a couple of balls that Hose finally threw in his vicinity. And the reason he fumbled the one ball he did catch in the first quarter. Which resulted in another touchdown for the dog-ass Jets.

When Shake fumbled that ball he caught in the first quarter, for what would have been our initial first down of the game, it was frankly because Dreamer Tatum knocked his eyelids off.

Shake grabbed it over his shoulder--it was just a little old quick-out--but just as he stopped to throw an inside fake, Dreamer, who was steaming up on him, caught him a lick. The ball squirted straight up in the air, on our 45, and here came one of their dog-ass linebackers, Hoover Buford from Baylor, of all places, to pick off the ball in mid-air and practically trot to the end zone.

The Baptist sumbitch could have stopped to take a leak and nobody could have caught him. I'd hit into the line and was too far away, and Hose, of course, is not exactly what you'd call your Metroliner.

Al ("Abort") Goodwin would have had a chance, provided he knew how to tackle, but Al had sprinted his usual 50 yards down the side line.

A few minutes later, the Jets scored on a 70-yard bomb from Boyce Cayce to Jessie Luker because Jimmy Keith Joy had slipped and fallen down.

Until T. J. Lambert smothered Boyce Cayce that time and got us a fumble on their 35, we were on the brink of give-up because nothing would go right for us.

That fumble T. J. captured, which I think he got because he farted so viciously that no dog-ass Jet wanted to go near the ball, enabled us to get a field goal and at least get something on the scoreboard.

I didn't want us to take the three when we only had fourth and one on their two-yard line, especially when we were down by 21, but Shoat Cooper wanted on the scoreboard.

That was Shoat's play and not Hose Manning's, so all of those Giant fans who threw all of those cushions and garbage at Hose when he came off the field ought to feel pretty apologetic about it.

I still think I could have stuck it in there for six, but we did what Shoat ordered. Shake Tiller held the ball and Hose Manning kicked it through there and we got our three.

I was all set to block Dreamer when he rushed, but he didn't rush. He faked like he would, and then raised up and laughed. And before he jogged off the field, you may have noticed how he patted Shake on top of the hat and shook Hose's hand to congratulate him. Would that piss you off at all?

Anyhow, that was the score, 21 to 3, when we went in for the strangest half time I've ever encountered.

I'm afraid that for about the first ten minutes we were in the dressing room, we acted like a crowd of convicts who didn't like their fat meat. Just about everybody kicked something and slung his helmet against the wall or on the floor. It was T. J. Lambert, of course, who made the most noise.

"Tootie fruities!" he hollered. "We're all a bunch of goddamned tootie fruities." T. J. snarled and puffed and built up to a roar and called out, "We're through takin' shit!"

There was general movement through the room, with guys going to get a Coke out of a drink box or going to take a dump or a leak.

"Hose Manning!" T. J. yelled. "You know what your fuckin' old offense looks like out there? It looks like a barrel of hog shit!"

Hose was over opening his locker and getting out a clipboard with pages of plays in it. He sat down quietly on the bench and started looking through the plays and smoking a cigar.

T. J. carried on. "By God, my defense ain't give 'em nothin' but one diddy-waddle pass and they don't get that if my nigger don't slip down back there," he said. "Jimmy Keith Joy, you Aferkin sumbitch, where are you?"

From across the room, you could hear Jimmy Keith's voice. "Yo, Daddy," Jimmy Keith hollered.

"Jimmy Keith, get your ass up here in front of everybody and take a fuckin' oath that there ain't no other tootie fruitie gonna get behind you the rest of the day," T. J. said.

Jimmy Keith Joy hobbled over into the center of the dressing room. "I got 'em, Daddy, I got 'em," he said. "Every thing's groovin'."

"We ain't takin' no more shit!" T. J. Lambert hollered, a lot louder than he can fart. "Giants has got one more half to be men," T. J. said. "Them fuckers ain't won nothin' yet."

A group of us around Hose Manning's locker got a mite testy. I guess Shake Tiller started it.

"How much did you bet on the Jets?" Shake needled Hose.

Hose only looked up at him.

"Why don't you try throwin' balls in the same stadium the rest of us are in?" Shake asked.

Hose drew on his cigar and squinted and said, "And when did you forget how to run your routes, playboy?"

Shake said, "I can't run 'em in the stadium tunnels. They call that out of bounds, where the ball's been going."

Puddin Patterson interrupted. "Let's stay together, babies," he said. "We can move it on them cats. I can feel it. We gonna sail like a big boat this half."

Shake said, "Bite my ass, Puddin. You haven't been off your belly all day. Sixty-four's all over you like the crabs."

Puddin said, "We gonna move it this half. We gonna fly like a big balloon."

"Yeah, and I'm gonna be the first nigger on the moon," Shake said, spitting on the floor.

I said for everybody to cut the crap and let's talk about what might work.

"A runnin' back wouldn't hurt us any," Hose said, calmly. "You haven't showed me a lot of Jim Brown out there."

"Line gonna move them cats this half," said Puddin. "We gonna spin like a big record."

"Nothing wrong with us that a Namath or a Jurgensen couldn't fix," said Shake.

We had to get together, I said. "We got two quarters to play football and that's plenty. We only need three sixes if the defense can shut 'em down."

Hose said, "I think the counter will give us something if Puddin and Euger can start gettin' a piece of somebody."

"Fuck Euger," said Shake. "Seventy-one's spittin' his ass out like watermelon seeds."

"We gonna stuff 'em like groceries," said Puddin.

It was from the other side of the room that we all heard T. J. cut one that sounded like a drum roll and then heard him call out: "Where the hell are the goddamn coaches? Shit, I wouldn't blame 'em for not wantin' to hang around this bunch of tootie fruities."

It must have occurred to all of us at the same time. The coaches weren't there. Shoat Cooper wasn't there. The star-spangled Polack wasn't there. None of the coaches were in the dressing room at the half time of the Super Bowl.

The only indication that a coach of some kind had even been there was on a big blackboard at the far end of the room.

Written in big chalk numbers was a message of encouragement, I think you could call it.

The blackboard said:

24 to 21

None of us saw it when we first got to the dressing room, because we were too busy throwing our hats and cussing one another. And who would have thought that the Giants' coaches would have sent us a simple message instead of their own selves? We never did get around to discussing among ourselves what we ought to try to do.

Football studs, by the way, get a considerable laugh out of the things they read in the newspapers and magazines after a game. We're always reading about our strategy and adjustments, and invariably it's wrong.

For instance, the New York Daily News said:

The half time was devoted to a serious discussion of the options the Giants had. Shoat Cooper and his war council of Hose Manning, Billy Clyde Puckett and Shake Tiller calmly agreed to go with less deception in the last two periods.

In the first half, Manning had not been able to throw effectively into the seams of the Jets' sliding zone. Thus, the Jets had taken away Manning's favorite weapons--the double zig-out, the hitch and fly and the post and go, all to Shake Tiller.

The different look of the Jets' defensive line, which shuffled in and out of a five-two, a four-three, a four-four and a gap six, created disorder among the Giants' blockers.

"Our stutter rush, or what we call Fox Trot Green, gave 'em plenty of trouble," said Dreamer Tatum.

The rush not only stifled the Giants' passing game, it kept guessing exactly right on where Billy Clyde Puckett wanted to run. He had no room. He was virtually shut down, and you could see the frustration written on his square jaw as he came to the side line, time after time.

Wisely, however, Shoat Cooper went to Plan B. After half-time consultation with his war council--Manning, Puckett and Tiller--the Giants switched to Man blocking from their linemen and decided to employ basic muscle.

Although their lucky white jerseys with the blue-and-red trim were now soiled and tattered, and their proud blue helmets were dented and smudged by the relentless thudding of the Jets' defense, the Giants' attack came alive in the second half and prevented no less than an outrageous embarrassment.

Now, is that some cheap crap or isn't it?

The half-time festivities were practically over and we were getting ready to take the field when Shoat stuck his head in our door. He said, "You got thirty more minutes to play and you can do one of two things. You can play football the way you're capable or you can go back out there and keep on lookin' like a bunch of turds what dropped out of a tall cow's ass!"

• • •

There's no point in me trying to argue that we weren't lucky right after the second half started. Their kickoff went through our end zone and we got the ball on our 20, and it was important for us to show the Jets that we had come back with some spunk. What we needed to do was get a good drive going, and more than anything we needed to get us six.

In the huddle on first down at our 20, Hose said, "OK, ladies, let's tend to our knittin'. Lots of time now. Plenty of time. Let's block now, bunch. Everybody blocks. Ain't that right? OK, bunch. Here we go. Gotta be smooth now, bunch."

Shake Tiller finally said, "Why don't you call a fuckin' play so we can get on with it?"

As everybody knows, the drive was not exactly semiperfection. An interference call on Shake Tiller didn't hurt us any, and neither did another one on Thacker Hubbard. Something else that didn't hurt was the quick whistle that saved us the ball at mid-field after Booger Sanders fumbled.

"We got a little luck goin'," said Hose. "A little luck, bunch. A little luck's out here with us now. OK, bunch. It's all there to be had. It's all there waitin' for us. Just a stroll in the country, bunch. That's all it is. Just pickin' up flowers."

Shake said, "Hose, you want to can the shit and call the game? We know why we're here."

That was a hell of a catch Shake made on a wobbly pass that Hose threw that got us down to their 31. Just a typical one-hander from the repertoire of old 88. I guess this was the first time that we felt like we had moved the ball, and we were sure in sniffing distance.

I made a little yardage on a sweep, thanks to Euger Franklin's blocking, and Hose scrambled for about ten, and now we were down on their seven and Hose called time out.

Me and Hose went to the side line to chat with Shoat, and this was the first time that I actually think I heard the crowd. It was almost as if I had just woke up. Say what you want to, but a big old thing like the Super Bowl causes nerves and numbness.

"What's workin'?" Shoat asked Hose.

"That interference play ain't bad," Hose said, winded but grinning slightly.

Shoat said, "They's men in the trenches and if we could score down in there, it would let 'em know they's men on both sides."

Shoat took the toothpick out of his mouth and said, "Try old Stud Hoss here. We ain't goin' for no more threes."

I got two yards on a slant and I got four more on a wide pitch, and we had third down at the one. Actually, Dreamer tackled me on the three, but I crawled to the one and the zebras let me have it. Then, on third down, Hose called me on a quick hitter and I went nowhere. That left it fourth and about a foot to go.

Hose called time out again. Over on the side line, Shoat chose to recite some coaching wisdom for us. "They's one thing you always do when you're down to the nut cuttin'. I never knowed anybody from Bryant to Royal to Lombardi who didn't say to go with your best back on his best play. Let's stick Stud Hoss here in there behind Puddin and see if we can get just enough of a crease. Tell that toothless Catholic sumbitch to give you a good snap."

Some people say that this was the biggest play of the game. Whether that's true or not, it was sure the one that caused the most fuss.

It's always a close call when a back tries to leap up and dive over the line and then gets shoved back. Was he over or wasn't he? I climbed right up Puddin's ass, and I remember hearing a lot of grunts, and I surely remember the lick that Dreamer and Hoover Buford put on me, up there in the air, on top of the heap.

The question that the head linesman had to decide was whether I had crossed over the goal before the ball jarred loose, and I was thrown back, and there was that scramble and fistfight for the football.

One zebra signaled a touchdown. Another one signaled a fumble and a Jet recovery. Another one signaled time out. And, meanwhile, six or eight Giants and six or eight Jets got into what you call your melee.

Both benches emptied out onto the field, and whistles were blowing, and guys were cussing, but the one thing I could hear above all of it was guess what? You got it. T. J. Lambert cut some that really and truly belonged in a zoo. As much as anything, I think, it was the odor that broke it all up.

I didn't get into the fisticuffs, because all you do in something like that is get injured. Neither did Dreamer. What we actually did was sink to our knees, off to one side, and laugh.

When the fight stopped, the zebras talked a long time and finally decided to give us a touchdown. I don't like to think that their decision was swayed by the fact that T. J. stood right in the midst of them, snarling and cutting some short, sweet ones. But it might have been.

I understand that even on slow-motion instant replay, nobody could tell whether I scored or not before the fumble, but we got to count it, anyhow. That's the main tiling. It was 21 to 10, after Hose made the conversion, and we were back in the ball game.

It was surely that drive to start the second half that made us a lot more eager to do battle. In pro football, being down by 21 to 10 is not nearly so bad as it seems, particularly when there's still a quarter and a half to go and you've suddenly got some momentum.

Of course, it took a little of the juice out of us when they came right back and drove 80 yards to our one-inch line and had a first down. And I'll never know how T. J. Lambert got back there and took the ball away from Boyce Cayce just as he was handing it to Gruver Allgood without being called for off side. That was certainly one of the biggest plays of the game, even though Sports Illustrated failed to mention it.

Of course, insofar as big plays go, you can't say enough about Jimmy Keith Joy's redeeming himself by recovering the punt they fumbled several plays later. Hose Manning really got into a good punt and it didn't hurt any that the ball took a Giant bounce past their twin safeties and rolled damn near the length of the field, or all the way to their 12-yard line.

Old Jimmy Keith Joy was chasing that sumbitch all the way, you might remember, as if a carload of red-necks were after him. And even though Jimmy Keith and Jessie Luker sort of wound up in a tie for the ball, I think the referee made a good decision when he awarded it to us on their 15. I knew with two successive breaks like that we would score quick.

In the huddle, Hose Manning called for Shake Tiller to split out by Dreamer Tatum, fake a hook and then beat him to the flag. "Drill it on the break," said Shake, "and my numbers'll be there."

It was really a pretty play. Shake put his move on Dreamer and left him hollering "Aaaaah, shit," and Hose blew it right in there at Shake's numbers and we had us another six.

When the fourth quarter started, it was some kind of a ball game, 21 to 17.

It was just about then that Dreamer Tatum intercepted Hose's screen pass and went 55 yards for his second touchdown of the game.

I don't mind saying that this gave us a sick feeling, to be on the verge of catching up, and then to have something like that happen. To pull up to within four points of somebody and then suddenly to have something terrible like that occur and fall back by 11 was almost enough to make us want to vomit.

We probably would have, too. We probably would have just sat down and thrown up and cried pretty soon if Randy Juan Llanez hadn't taken that kickoff and run it right up their ears.

Some things I've read say that television clearly showed he stepped out of bounds twice, at our 40 and at their 22, but all I know is that Randy Juan Llanez got credit for going 98 steps to their alumni stripe, and it was six more for our side.

And if he's not the greatest little spook spick I've ever known, then you can go browse through your taco huts and find one to top him.

I'm embarrassed that I made such a spectacle of myself when Randy crossed the goal line. I was running right behind him all the way. And I was so happy when he scored that I guess I must have looked like a dress designer the way I wrestled him down to the ground and hugged on him, celebrating.

All I remember is that I was overcome with joy and Randy Juan was squirming and squealing underneath me. He said his ankle was pinching.

I really wish I could tell you that we knew what we were doing there at the last. I'd like to be able to divulge that we said a lot of dramatic things to one another in the huddle. I wish I could say that every time we went into the huddle on that 85-yard drive, which was against both the dog-ass Jets and the dog-ass clock, that we were fresh enough to be witty or clear-thinking or exceptionally heroic in one way or another.

All I can truthfully remember is that I was so whip-dog tired and bruised up that I was just going along on what you call your instinct.

I recall hearing Hose calling an audible at the line, now and then, like, "Blue, curfew, eighty-three," and at the same time I recall hearing Dreamer Tatum yelling defensive signals, like, "Brown, bruin, fox trot," and then The Pope would snap the ball and I'd run somewhere and take another lick.

That was a hell of a call Hose came up with when we had fourth fucking down on our own 37 and two to go. I knew we had to go for it, because of the clock. If we punted, we might never see the ball again.

Hose didn't make up a play so much as he made up a change of positions. He put Shake Tiller at tight end and he put Thacker Hubbard into a full-house backfield with me and Booger Sanders. The only guy he split out wide was Randy Juan.

Then he called tight end deep, only man down. This meant that it was going to be a deep pass for Shake Tiller, out of a run formation. It was going to be that or nothing.

"I got to have good boards on this one," Hose told Shake.

"Just throw that sumbitch. I'll get there," said Shake.

If Hose had thrown a real good pass, of course, it would have been a touchdown, because the play had everybody fooled, including Shoat Cooper. Nobody was within ten yards of Shake.

As it was, we got only 35 yards after Shake jumped up and caught the ball over his head and came down off balance and toppled out of bounds. Instead of semidead, we were down on their 28.

He caught the ball near our bench, and you would have thought he had just been elected Roman emperor, the way our bunch mobbed him.

I want everybody to know that I was fairly astounded later on, when I found out that I carried the ball six straight times from there. I don't at all remember the ten-yard sweep where they tell me I flat ran over Dreamer Tatum, cunt on cunt. And he had to be helped off the field for the first time in his career.

We called time out then, and I just sat on the ground. The Scoreboard clock showed just four seconds left. There must have been a lot of roaring, but I couldn't hear a sound. It was really weird. It was like I was swallowed up in this great movie all around me, but it was a silent movie.

That last carry wasn't 23 blast like Sports Illustrated said but what we call Student Body Left, a play where everybody pulls left and I run a slant or a sweep, depending on how our blockers clear the path.

I was so tired and numb then that I don't remember it. They tell me I climbed right over Puddin's big ass and then dived like a silly damn swan over the alumni stripe and onto my face guard to win the game.

What happened for the next few minutes is also pretty much of a blur. Let's see, now. They carried me off the field, of course, and I damn near got stripped naked from little kids clawing at me.

I can still hear Shoat rapping on my helmet and saying, "We clone fucked 'em. We done fucked 'em."

T. J. Lambert lifted me up in the air and said, "Remind me to buy you a sody pop."

Burt Danby had tears streaming down his face and went so far as to kiss me on the goddamn lips.

Well, as happy as I am to be on the winning side in the Super Bowl, I can't brag that 31 to 28 is much of a whipping. And I surely don't agree with Sports Illustrated that it was "beyond question the most memorable sporting event of the century, apart from the most recent America's Cup."

I'll say this. I think the sportswriters made a good choice when they voted Dreamer Tatum the Player of the Game. I'd liked to have had that trophy as well as the cabin cruiser and the year's supply of bubble bath. But Dreamer deserved the award.

There wasn't anything in the newspapers about Dreamer coming over to our dressing room to congratulate us. After he had showered and got dolled up, and after the crowd had thinned out, he came over. It was semibig of him, I thought.

He was wearing a leather jacket with a belt, a pair of pink velvet knickers with riding boots that had spurs on them and a bush hat made out of fur.

"Nice goin'," he said. "Had you cats in the box, but we let you out."

I thanked him for coming over. "It could have been different real easy," I said. "A lot of things could have happened the other way."

Dreamer smiled. "Say, I learned somethin' a long time ago about football; baby," he said. "What could have happened did. That's what I know." Dreamer also said that me and him ought to get to know each other better in New York. Maybe chase some wool together.

I told Dreamer that when we all got off the banquet circuit, we'd sure do that.

"You the champs, baby," said Dreamer, leaving. "Scoreboard done said so."

I thought to myself that Dreamer Tatum was some kind of a stud, all right, and I hoped I could have that much class when I lost the big one.

Say, I learned somethin' a long time ago about football

Baby…What could have happened ... Did!

Billy Clyde ... what's it like playing pro football?Aw, we don't like it so much! Mainly, we just like to take showers with niggers!

That fumble T.J. captured, which I think he got because he farted so viciously that no dog-ass jet wanted to go near the ball, enabled us to get a field goal and at least get something on the scoreboard.

You got thirty more minutes to play and you can do one of two things...You can play football the way you're capable or you can go back out there and keep on lookin' like a bunch of turds what dropped out of a Tall Cow's Ass!