Tamba Hali

by David Seigerman

  And yet when the play was done, while his teammates danced in celebration and 109,000 fans shook Beaver Stadium to its foundation, Tamba Hali took it in stride. Joyous pandemonium erupted around him, and he simply strode off the field, like a businessman walking out of a meeting. No high fives, no fist bumps, no posing for posterity in the middle of a moment that will live on in Penn State lore. He had done his job—he put his hand on the ground and he went and got the quarterback—but there was still work to do.

  Over the next six months, Tamba worked his plan. He went to the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama—a postseason all-star showcase, where senior prospects would practice and play a game in front of every talent evaluator in the NFL. Tamba was the game’s Defensive Most Valuable Player.

  Soon after, he went to the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis, where more than three hundred prospects are tested and measured and interviewed by NFL coaches and general managers and scouts. They timed him in the forty-yard dash, counted the number of times he could bench press 225 pounds, checked his height, weight, hand size, and wingspan. They subjected him to the Wonderlic intelligence test and a battery of probing interview questions. Tamba performed well enough there to move himself into consideration for a first-round pick.

  Sure enough, in April, the Kansas City Chiefs invested their first-round pick—the twentieth overall pick in the 2006 NFL Draft—on Tamba Hali. His mission was nearly complete.

  While Tamba worked the football end of things, he had a small army of influential friends working the diplomatic side. He was going to get Rachel out of West Africa. The fighting there had stopped back in the summer of 2003, so she wasn’t in immediate danger, but Tamba and his mother had waited long enough.

  Coach Paterno made the kind of calls he’d told Tamba about in Dennis Heck’s office back in Teaneck, reaching out to any connections he had who could help speed along the process. His son, Scott, was an attorney and also worked vigorously on Tamba’s behalf. Lamar Hunt, the owner of the Chiefs, pitched in, as did Carl Peterson, the Kansas City general manager who had spent his team’s coveted first-round pick on Tamba on that second-to-last day in April.

  Rick Santorum, a senator from Pennsylvania, pulled whatever strings he could in Washington, DC. So did Jack Kemp, a former congressman from New York who was Bob Dole’s running mate when Dole ran for president in 1996. Kemp also had been a professional quarterback, playing in the Canadian Football League, the American Football League, and even a few seasons in the National Football League in the late 1950s. His support was the rare example of a quarterback helping out a premier pass rusher.

  Every button was pushed, every box checked . . . except one. And on July 31, 2006, the Chiefs gave their rookie defensive end a pass on practice, allowing Tamba to leave in the middle of two-a-days (now illegal summer training camp sessions that featured two padded practices a day) so he could fly from River Falls, Wisconsin, to Teaneck and be sworn in as a citizen of the United States.

  With his status as a newly minted American and proof of a steady job (his first contract with the Chiefs would pay him more than ten million dollars over his first five years in the league), not to mention the diploma he’d received as a graduate from Penn State University, everything was in place. Tamba Hali now could afford and was legally able to bring his mother into the country. She was, after all, immediate family.

  Rachel Keita arrived three weeks into her son’s first season in the NFL. The first time she ever saw him play football, he picked up his first NFL sack.

  “I do sit down and reflect at times, and I think things could have gone a whole different way,” Tamba said. “What are the chances? The majority of kids I was around are dead. If my dad wasn’t in the US, I was in Africa. Period. By the grace of God, I am still here. It is a blessing to me to be in the position I am in. Not just to have come to the US, but to play this sport.”

  EPILOGUE

  HOME AGAIN

  In the spring of 2016, Tamba Hali went home.

  It had been almost twenty-two years since Tamba, Big Tamba, Saah, and Kumba boarded a flight that would carry them away to a new land and a new life. Much had changed over the decades, for both Liberia and Tamba.

  Liberia, for thirteen years, had been living in peace. Charles Taylor was in prison, serving a fifty-year sentence for his role in war crimes committed against Liberia and Sierra Leone. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was ten years into her historic presidency; the people of Liberia made her the first woman to win a democratic election and serve as the head of state for an African country. She took office on January 16, 2006—less than two weeks after Tamba Hali played his final college football game, a 26–23 three-overtime win over Florida State in the Orange Bowl.

  The population had surged to more than four million people, making it the fastest-growing country in the world. Poverty remained a widespread problem, and public health crises, such as the 2014 Ebola epidemic, posed significant challenges to a country piecing its infrastructure and government services back together. Still, Liberia was coming back to life.

  There was much Tamba would not recognize in Liberia after all these years, starting with the paved roads that led him back to Gbarnga. And Liberia wouldn’t recognize Tamba at all. He had changed in ways unimaginable and immeasurable since the last time he was inside his home country.

  For starters, he was now a six-foot, three-inch, 275-pound, thirty-two-year-old man. He had put in ten years as a professional football player, and had been paid richly for them. (Tamba earned roughly sixty-five million dollars in salary between 2006 and 2015.) A month or so before his trip to Africa, he signed a new three-year contract worth twenty-one million dollars that could enable him to finish his career with the Kansas City Chiefs, the only NFL home he had ever known.

  The time was right for a reunion.

  Tamba’s oldest brother, Big Tamba, had been back already. He visited in 2012 and decided that the next time he returned, he would have his brother with him.

  Tamba’s other older brother, Saah, had been back, too. Many times, in fact. His visits are not trips down memory lane but rather work-related missions. He goes back to work with the children, to help with schools that have opened in recent years. He wants their childhoods to be better than his was. He brings them brand-new soccer balls.

  But this was Tamba’s first trip, and he had to be shocked to find that his family’s house in Gbarnga was still standing. So many homes had been destroyed during the war. Others were looted, stripped of every possession left behind. Anything that could be salvaged had been taken. Years later, families would return to find a skeleton that had been picked clean by vultures.

  Tamba’s house, though, was standing. You can hear the amazement in his voice when you watch the videos he shot on his phone and posted to his Instagram account. He tours the one-story cinder-block structure with the corrugated tin roof and memories flood through him.

  He remembers the river they used to fish in. He remembers chasing and catching groundhogs by the banana bush. He remembers where he used to bathe, where the side entrance used to be, where his mother used to plant her garden.

  And he remembers where he stood the first day the planes darkened the skies, their bullets peppering the ground, fatally wounding the innocence of all the children in the village.

  On this visit, Tamba is surrounded by extended family, cousins mostly, who have returned to live in and around Gbarnga. They have heard stories about their long-lost cousin who had become a football player, but they might not have believed them until they saw him for themselves. The Chiefs T-shirt he wore, white with red lettering, completed the picture. He stood before them a strong, smiling symbol of the American Dream.

  Over the few days he was in Liberia, Tamba made a few more stops. He visited the beach in Monrovia. He dropped by Hott FM 107.9, the most popular radio station among Liberia’s young listeners. He even had a personal audience with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. It was the trip of a lifetime, a first chance to reconnect with
the place he came from.

  Soon, though, Tamba would return to America, where his immediate family has been living for years. He would get back to Kansas City and start preparing with his teammates for the upcoming season. He would return to his jujitsu training with the Gracie Academy gurus, putting in the necessary hard work to recover from off-season knee surgery and be ready to win the battles that define every play in every NFL game.

  And on Sunday, September 11, he would strap on his cherry-red helmet and run out onto the field at Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the Chiefs, to begin his eleventh season. Here, in front of the cheering fans, sweating and stretching and striving with his teammates, Tamba Hali was back where he belonged.

  Liberia was where he came from. It shaped the life he would lead. But here, lining up as the right outside linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs, with his hand on the ground, ready to go after another quarterback, Tamba Hali was home.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Gathering stories and experiences from Tamba Hali’s unique and fascinating childhood and football career would not have been possible without his willing participation in this project. I am grateful to Tamba for his generosity with his time, his candor, and his cooperation. I also want to thank Tamba’s family, who shared their time and memories with me—specifically, his brothers, Big Tamba and Saah. Much appreciation is due to two of the major influences in Tamba’s life who were willing to talk and share stories: his devoted reading instructor, Gail Dunn, and his varsity football coach at Teaneck High School, Dennis Heck. And, of course, I thank Jim Ivler of Sportstars, Tamba’s agent who facilitated the conversation in the first place, and Pat Kirwan, who introduced the idea to Jim.

  Also, I would like to thank my brothers-in-law, Matt Hochbrueckner and Eduardo Garcia-Rolland. Back in 2003—a dozen years before this project was born—they were living in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and provided an eye-opening tour of the rebuilding of that country after its own recent civil war. One day, we visited a refugee camp in Kenema, where thousands of Liberians had fled to escape the fighting across the border. That unforgettable visit helped inspire the desire to tell Tamba’s story.

  Finally, many thanks go out to Rick Richter at Aevitas Creative Management and to Fiona Simpson and Mara Anastas and their talented team at Simon & Schuster for their belief in and support for the Real Sports series from the start.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photograph by Jill Rhodes

  David Seigerman’s love of sports was kindled on the ball fields of his Long Island childhood, then fanned while rooting for the Mets, Jets, and Rangers through some historically bad seasons in the 1970s and 1980s. Upon realizing that his best path to the big leagues would be not with a bat but with a pen, he graduated from Ithaca College a million years ago and began a career as a sports journalist. He has been thrilled by the privilege of covering games and telling stories about athletes across all levels of all sports—including the Super Bowl, World Series, Stanley Cup finals, Final Four, Women’s World Cup, Triple Crown races—for pretty much every storytelling medium there is: newspapers, magazines, television, radio, digital, documentaries, and books. Prior to the Real Sports series, David coauthored several books, including Take Your Eye Off the Ball: How to Watch Football by Knowing Where to Look, and Go Deeper: Quarterback: The Toughest Job in Pro Sports (both with Pat Kirwan), and Under Pressure: How Playing Football Almost Cost Me Everything and Why I’d Do It All Again (with Ray Lucas). Aside from a goal scored in a beginner’s men’s ice-hockey league (February 7, 2013) and an honest-to-goodness hole in one (June 5, 2015—with witnesses), his most treasured sports moments have come from coaching and watching his daughter and son on the ball fields and skating rinks of their own Westchester County childhoods.

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  First Aladdin paperback edition November 2017

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Seigerman, David, author. Title: Tamba Hali / By David Seigerman.

  Description: New York : Aladdin, 2017. | Series: Real Sports Content Network Presents | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Audience: Age 8-12. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017002976 (print) | LCCN 2017012276 (eBook) |

  ISBN 9781481482219 (eBook) | ISBN 9781481482202 (hc) | ISBN 9781481482196 (pbk)

  Subjects: LCSH: Hali, Tamba, 1983—Juvenile literature. | Football players—United States—Biography—Juvenile literature. | Liberian Americans—Biography—Juvenile literature. | Liberia—Biography—Juvenile literature. | BISAC: JUVENILE NONFICTION / Biography & Autobiography / Sports & Recreation. | JUVENILE NONFICTION / Sports & Recreation /

  Football. | JUVENILE NONFICTION / People & Places / United States / African American.

  Classification: LCC GV939.H275 (eBook) | LCC GV939.H275 S45 2017 (print) |

  DDC 796.332092 [B]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017002976