The only reason I got to play Little League that one year was because my father went through a guilty phase that motivated him to pay for it. He even bought me a birthday present that year—an outfielder’s glove.

I hadn’t even been all that excited about baseball. But now I was dying to play football on a real team. I couldn’t bear the thought of waiting until junior high before I could play.

I had already begun to acquire a modicum of self-confidence. It started with those first words of encouragement from Uncle Si. He was quickly becoming the most important person in my life.

He wasn’t easy on me. He pushed me, hard, and almost never accepted excuses. Whenever I grumbled about how sore and tired I was, or voiced any other complaint, he would ask, simply: “What do you want—sympathy?”

My complaints froze in my mouth. I examined my motives for bellyaching, and it was true—I had wanted sympathy. When I realized this, I was ashamed. I attacked my training, driven by the anger with myself, and wouldn’t complain again that day.

But Uncle Si was never cruel or insulting. He believed in me. He said as much. And his actions lined up with his words.

Without my newfound confidence, I probably wouldn’t have asked Mom if I could start Pee-Wee Football that summer.

St. Louis was a big enough city, I was sure there must be a program.

I waited until a commercial before asking her, one night.

She fit her casual dismissal seamlessly in between lighting a cigarette and making a phone call, without missing a beat: “Don’t be silly, Pete. Those things cost money.”

Maybe my father was going through another guilty phase. I would have asked him about Pee-Wee, if I had known how to get hold of him.

I was in a melancholy mood when I trudged into The Warrior’s Lair the next day. When Uncle Si saw me he asked, “Everything okay?”

I didn’t want to lie to my uncle, but I didn’t want to complain either, so I said nothing.

“Hey, step in the office for a minute,” he said, cheerily. “Need to talk to you.”

I followed him into the office and we took our respective seats.

“I couldn’t help but notice how much you’re into football, lately,” he said.

I’d developed a habit of assuming the worst in most situations, especially when in a bad mood, so even as I nodded, I imagined the next thing out of his mouth would be a reprimand for letting it distract me from my training.

“I coach in the Pop Warner League,” he said. “Sign-ups are next month. Think you’d like to play?”

I stared at him wide-eyed.

He waved a hand over the desk. “I know your parents won’t pay for it. No big deal. I can take care of it, if you want to play.”

“Are you serious?”

He nodded.

Just like that, my mood went from one extreme to the other. I couldn’t stop thanking him, and it took a while before I calmed down.

“Oh yeah,” he said, opening a big drawer in the bottom of his desk. “I got something for you.”

He tossed me a brand new football.

I caught it and looked it over. “Seriously?”

“Yup,” he said. “Now you don’t have to depend on other boys to bring a ball when you want to play.”

“Thanks Uncle Si,” I said, taking grip on the laces. I felt guilty, like I’d been cheating or something. “I don’t get it. You’ve done all this stuff for me…”

“And you appreciate it,” he said. “That’s enough.”

He sent me to the locker room to get dressed for training. When I came out, ready to skip rope, he said, “You’ve been coming along pretty good, so far. I want you to keep practicing everything you’ve learned, and this summer we’ll start working in some kicks.”

UPDATE:  This book is published! Click here to buy on Amazon.

Click here to buy anywhere else.

Some boys my age were into sports. My father had paid for me to play Little League once a couple years before, and I had a decent fast ball. But I never had more than a passing interest in sports until that one day at the beauty shop.

I had to tag along with Mom on enough shopping trips and visits to places like jewelry stores, and beauty shops, that I was used to twiddling my thumbs in girly places. But on that particular day, I found a magazine in the waiting area that was not the typical crap about clothes, makeup, hairstyles and relationships. It was a special edition of some sports magazine, dedicated entirely to football. I flipped through it while I waited for Mom, casually looking at the photos.

There were pictures of players in action—throwing, catching, running, hitting, tackling…and big dudes on the line of scrimmage locked in Sumo-like combat, grimacing behind their facemasks from the effort of trying to overpower the other man. There were pictures of injured players being carried off the field. There was one picture of a certain player with a black beard, his helmet pushed back up on his head so that his weary eyes peered out under the lowest bar on his facemask. He was sitting on the sidelines, sweat streaking down his face, evidently waiting for his turn to go back out on the field.

The field of battle.

Football players were like modern day knights, I decided; and the game of football was the new chivalry.

This realization impressed me to the point that, from that day, I began to learn about the game.

Mom almost always stayed out late on Friday and Saturday nights, sleeping for most of the day on Saturdays and Sundays. So, with no Allyson to monopolize the TV anymore, I was able to binge on football every weekend. What I saw confirmed my epiphany.

Each game was a battle. Head coaches were the generals, devising the strategy. The quarterbacks were the field commanders, who led the valiant knights against the enemy. The opposing knights employed certain tactics on every play. Some knights were heroes, and some were villains. Some of the teams were even named after historical warriors or badasses. Just in the pros, there were Cowboys, Redskins, Chiefs, Patriots, Buccaneers, Raiders, and Vikings. It was a thrilling, fascinating milleu.

PJ didn’t care much for sports. I began to drift away from him, hanging out, instead, with other boys who loved football. Outside of school, I played catch or a sandlot game whenever there was opportunity. In a very short amount of time I learned and understood the rules.

Prior to this phase of my life, there were times when other boys asked me to do these things, but I had no interest, and sucked at it when I did try. They told me to try throwing with my thumb on the laces, but I still couldn’t launch a spiral.

What a difference motivation makes. In less than a week after taking an interest, I could throw perfect spirals with accuracy. I still couldn’t punt very well, but for my age I had a cannon for an arm.

Soon I was part of “the football gang,” which included Jay, Rogellio, Lamont and Scott.

Football was soon all I could talk about. Uncle Si noticed my obsession, but didn’t have a problem with it as long as I trained hard.

I did train hard.

Once Uncle Si was satisfied with my footwork and stance, he taught me defensive skills. This included blocking, “slipping” punches, bobbing, weaving, and the art of simply maneuvering to keep out of range. This part of my training seemed to take forever, but he finally decided I was ready to start learning some offense.

First came the jab, then the cross, then the hook, then the uppercut. He made me practice them until it felt like my arms would fall off. Then he taught me how to put them together in combinations, emphasizing the jab over everything else. He had me practice in the mirror, and corrected mistakes in my form until I maintained good defensive posture even when executing a combination. Then he moved me to the bags.

I still had to skip rope and run my circuit drills, but now most of my training time was spent at the double end bag. This was an inflated bag suspended between one bungee cord above and one below. After you hit it once, it was hard to hit it again because of the way it bounced and oscillated. Thankfully, when Uncle Si saw I was getting too aggravated, he would move me to the heavy bag and let me take out my frustration on it.

In time, I got where I could judge how the double end bag would move, aim and time my punches to hit it repeatedly and consistently. And just as I was mastering it, Uncle Si pulled me off of it. He brought me into the roped-off area. I put my training gloves on, and my mouthpiece in. He wore punch mits. What we did wasn’t exactly sparring. He would catch my punches with the mits, but also take swipes at me I would have to duck or dodge. It was still just western boxing—hands only—but I was finally putting offense and defense together. The next time he had me work the double end bag, he had changed the bungee cords so it didn’t move in the exact same patterns I had grown used to. He did stuff like that a lot; and I assumed the purpose was just to cause me frustration. But what he didn’t tell me (and what I didn’t appreciate at first) was that I was learning to adapt quickly on the fly.

Uncle Si drove me home after training every night, and after Mom got the job at the jewelry store, he had begun feeding me, too. No more hotdogs, or meals composed of potato chips. My diet now consisted of a lot of green vegetables, with mostly beef for my protein.

I didn’t like all the vegetables, but I noticed the difference after just a week. Although I usually passed out from exhaustion after my evening shower, and slept like the dead through the night, I had a lot of energy after breakfast each morning.

That helped make me even better at football. But as that school year wound down, I was overcome with the hunger for real football. Sandlot just wasn’t enough.

UPDATE:  This book is published! Click here to buy on Amazon.

Click here to buy anywhere else.