by Drew Magary
BECOME A TV ANALYST. Ever criticize someone without actually criticizing them? Then ESPN has a studio position open for you immediately. Shit, you don’t even have to know proper diction. Lou Holtz works as an analyst, and I remain convinced that man has a nonvisible cleft palate.
The beauty of being an analyst is that, as a former athlete, you are presumed to have a deep knowledge of your sport. And even if you don’t, even if you’re like Merril Hoge and possess only a partially functional temporal lobe, you have an automatic comeback to any naysayer. And that is this: “Hey, asshole, if you never played my sport, then you can’t possibly begin to understand what I’m talking about. And you certainly aren’t in a position to criticize anyone out on the field, because they’d knock you on your ass.” Check and mate. That is bulletproof logic that will keep you in the broadcasting chair for a very long time, no matter how asinine your commentary may be. Ask Tim McCarver.
BECOME A COACH. Are you fucking crazy? You saw how hard those guys work. Christ, some of them don’t even shower. Look at Bill Belichick. That guy won multiple Super Bowls. Does he look happy to you? Hell no. He looks like someone just pooped in his coffee. And you don’t want to fuck with those nanobots.
PLAY VIDEO GAMES. Video games are becoming more and more realistic with every new platform. Christ, I wish I had more time to play them. Instead, I have to do shit like work, or do chores, or host “get-togethers.” Fuck. But you, my friend, are retired. You don’t have to work, and you can afford a maid. So buy yourself a copy of Hitman 2 and go to town. Or pop in Madden 2036 years from now and play as your video-game self. After all, your avatar never ages. It’s like you’re still in the league, only you don’t have to work hard to achieve success. That’s a win-win in my book.
HIT THE LECTURE CIRCUIT. As a retired athlete, you can fetch upward of $10,000 for a single public speaking engagement, and sometimes more than that. Why? Because Fortune 500 companies all across the country are constantly holding off-sites. What’s an off-site, you ask? An off-site is when employees are torn from their families and shuttled out to a business park in some godforsaken exurb to sit in soul-crushing, team-building seminars for three days straight. It’s like training camp, only with a 50 percent suicide rate.
Companies need something, anything, to help boost worker morale in between boring off-site meetings all day and getting ass shitfaced at Ruby Tuesday later in the evening. That’s where you come in. You played a sport. You know how to motivate people, especially the payroll department of a local industrial grain supplier. Best of all, you don’t even have to be good at public speaking. You can be a lisping stutterer and it won’t matter. All that matters is that you are mildly famous, and that you’re giving those folks a new person to look at after being trapped all day long in a Residence Inn conference room with the same motherfuckers they see day in and day out. You’ll be greeted as a liberator.
PLAY GOLF. Golf is the refuge of countless ex-athletes, and it’s easy to see why. Golf is extremely time-consuming, and it lets you continue to indulge your borderline obsessive thirst for competition. Best of all, golf is the kind of game in which you can work tirelessly to improve, only to experience setback after setback. It doesn’t matter how many lessons you take, or what kind of driver you use. Oh, you may break ninety one day. But the next day you’re right back in the shitter, five-putting from ten feet away BECAUSE THE FUCKING GREENSKEEPER DIDN’T DO A FRESH CUT IN THE LATE MORNING! THAT FUCKING IRISH COCKSUCKER!
So you see, golf continues to present new, insurmountable challenges all the way through to your death. You’ll play out the rest of your life just as Sisyphus did. And that guy absolutely adored retirement.
RUN FOR OFFICE. Gerald Ford. Jack Kemp. Bill Bradley. Steve Largent. Heath Shuler. The list of famous athletes that went on to successful careers in politics is surprisingly robust. Former athletes make for great candidates because of one crucial trait: name recognition. Rookie candidates have to spend millions of dollars in campaign funds just to get their name out to the public. Ah, but you! People know who you are, my friend. They don’t know anything else about you, like your character, or your ethics, or whether you’d be the kind of congressman who would use Hurricane Katrina funds to build your mistress a luxury yurt in Wyoming. But hey, at least you aren’t some dipshit nobody.
As an athlete, you’re also well versed in dodging questions, and giving long-winded responses that have nothing to do with the question asked, and that’s important to political handlers all across the nation. Athletes are also considered by voters to be far more down-to-earth than their weaker, nonathletic opponents. Look at Hillary Clinton. I bet that frigid bitch never picked up a field hockey stick in her life.
ACT. Pro sports serve as a direct pipeline into Hollywood. Howie Long, Brian Bosworth, Jim Brown, Alex Karras, Lawrence Taylor, OJ Simpson: they all went into acting after hanging it up, and so can you. You’ll be playing the part of yourself. And it doesn’t matter if you’re not a great athlete anymore. They can just CGI that shit. You’ll look fucking good. Best of all, you’ll spend the rest of your life just like all other Angelenos: casually disenchanted with everything, constantly text-messaging other people when you have company over, and flaking out on friends and family so that you can hang out at the Chateau Marmont while staring at the inside of your own rectum.
HIT THE MEMORABILIA CIRCUIT. Remember the autograph hounds in chapter 5? Well, how would you like to hang out with them all day long? In exotic locales such as Albany, Grand Rapids, and Spokane? With fellow autograph whores such as Pete Rose? Sound like fun? Then go for it! You’re probably the kind of person who doesn’t care whether you live or die anyway!
NURSE YOUR CHRONIC PAIN. If you played in the NFL or participated in any other sort of physically taxing sport, chances are you’re not going to be able to do much of anything once you retire. You’ll probably need a knee replaced. And a hip. And a shoulder. And a larynx. You may need five or more prosthetics. You may need a cane. You may need those arm brace crutch thingys that one chick on ER wore that make you look like you’re dying of polio.
Regardless, you’re probably going to play out the rest of your life tending to your chronic ailments. During the few hours a day you don’t spend in a doctor’s waiting room, you’re going to need enough painkillers to kill Judy Garland all over again. But let me tell you something about living the rest of your life in a drug-induced stupor, with only your memories to comfort you: those drugs are awesome. And legal. They make you feel like you’re lying on a warm down comforter. Throw in a vodka tonic for good measure and you are living the high life, my friend. Even shitty movies are good when you’re on Percocet.
Like I said, you already won the game of life, baby. That Demerol pumping through you? That is just icing on the cake.
Deeply Penetrating the Numbers
54.2
The life span of the average professional athlete is 54.2 years. Bored with your retirement? Don’t worry. It’s not gonna last very long.
Death, and how it will affect your career.
Welcome to the end. This is it. You’re dead. But, as an athlete, you’re not quite as dead as all the other regular schmucks out there. You see, great athletes often transcend death. Their names live on long after they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil. They have books written about them. They get tunnels and bridges named after them. They live on in memories passed down from one generation of fans to the next. Athletes like Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Ben Hogan: these men still live on in spirit. In fact, they thrive. Many of them are far better known today than they were when they were alive.
And that’s the best part about being a professional athlete: even when you’re dead, you’re still kind of famous.
We Americans all fear death. Because we’re the kind of society that forgets shit five minutes after it’s happened, there’s a terrible collective anxiety that our lives will get a similar kind of treatment once they have ended. I know this firsthand. I’m fucking terrif
ied of dying. I don’t believe in heaven or any of that shit. I think it all just goes to black. Forever. And man, that makes me want to wrap myself naked in a shower curtain and scream for my mommy’s warm embrace. Because once I’m forgotten, then all that’s left of me is gone. There’s nothing there. Not a trace. It’s as if I never existed. I never counted. I never meant anything.
But you! You, my friend, led the National League in RBIs in 1974. Yes, you, Willie Stargell! It says so right in this sports almanac. And, as long as they keep publishing almanacs, your name remains there in perpetuity. Your accomplishment is final. It is set in stone. And thus, so are you. Great athletes don’t die. Like the characters on Keats’s Grecian urn, they are forever frozen in time at the exact moment when they are at their very best. Who cares if the rest of your life is forgettable? You conquered death! You faced the Grim Reaper, and you deked the shit outta him. You live on, baby! Why rest in peace when you can still make some fuckin’ noise right here on terra firma? Huh?
You are now officially an immortal. Because you, good sir, were a man with balls. Great, big hairy balls that made everyone sit up and take notice. I’m proud to be able to call myself your life coach. And I’m equally proud to call myself your death coach. In many ways, you’ll always be like a son to me. An abstract, nebulous son I can’t quite picture in my head, who hopefully helped earn me a shitload in royalties. I’ll never forget ya, kid. You had the balls of a champion. Stuart Scott said they tasted sublime. I want you to be proud of those balls. They served you well.
And lest you think your journey is at an end, guess again. I’ve got a very special someone here to let you in on a little secret.
HEAR IT FROM A DEAD ATHLETE!
Even in heaven, my fucking leg still hurts
by Johnny Unitas
Hoo boy. I gotta tell you, heaven is gorgeous. When I passed on from the tangible plane of existence, I expected lots of clouds and cherubs playing harps and whatnot. But it wasn’t like that at all. There was this beautiful, winding, golden road in front of me, surrounded by rolling fields of glowing, amber wheat. And the sun sat hovering above the horizon, in a perpetual state of clear dawn. Never saw anything so pretty. At the end of the road was a gate. But it wasn’t the ostentatious, pearly gate that you always read about. It was an old-style, carved wooden door, around ten feet high. Next to it was a rather unassuming little man who stared me down and offered me a wide smile. His nose crinkled and little crow’s-feet formed around his eyes as he shouted across the way to me, “Welcome, John!”
St. Peter. Man, he wasn’t anything like I expected. Yet when I saw him, everything about him felt appropriate. Felt like a brother, or someone I knew well and was finally getting to see again. Everything about this place felt warm, welcoming, like home. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t daunted. I was just comfortable. So, without hesitation, I started walking along the road toward Peter.
And then, my fucking sciatica flared up again.
I tell you, even in heaven, my fucking leg still hurts. I thought I had gotten rid of this back when I died. Forty years I lived with this shit. It was like someone took a knife and tore down my leg from ass to ankle. Hell, even lying down didn’t do anything. So I figured dying would probably take care of all that. I figured nerves don’t feel pain when you’re dead and all, and that your soul doesn’t carry any of the physical deterioration you experienced during life on Earth.
But shit, was I wrong.
You can’t find a decent orthopedist here. Heaven contains pretty much every person on Earth who died. Ever. You realize how many people that is? Trillions! You’d think a fair number went to hell, but you’d be wrong. Most everyone gets into heaven. They’re very lenient about it. Hell only has about five people, and that’s including Frank Zappa. Just finding my mother was a huge pain in the ass, let alone some doctor.
There’s also the fact that most of the doctors here are from the past. Hell, one of them thought I was a warlock. What an idiot. And I thought the NFLPA had shitty medical coverage. At least they had a prescription plan down there. I’d gladly trade one night at the sumptuous buffet in exchange for a little Celebrex. One of the quacks here said chewing on milkweed would help the pain. Are you shitting me?
Most people are enjoying themselves here. I’ve noticed it’s only former athletes who have had their pain transcend celestial worlds. Bronko Nagurski still has a knee that flaps around like a windsock. Lyle Alzado forgets every goddamn thing you tell him. And Wilt Chamberlain still has the lesions. I have a theory on this. Otto Graham thinks the wear and tear we experienced on the field was so brutal that we carried it with us to this place. But I think that’s horseshit. I see war vets walking around with nary a limp.
Me, I think we traded some of our immortality in this place for a little piece of it back on Earth. I think we gave a little bit of our souls to the game in exchange for its rewards. Which I think is unfair, since I had to spend most of my playing days in Baltimore. You ever been to Baltimore? Baltimore is an elephant’s asscrack.
Hang on a second. I’ve got to stretch my hammies. It’s the only thing that soothes the pain. Ooooh! Still feels like I’m shitting lightning bolts. Guhhhhhh.
Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, selling our souls. Okay, it wasn’t quite like that. I don’t think we made a deal with the devil. But I do think we pay a price up here for all the fun we had down there. Is that fair? Probably not. I was just doing what came naturally. I liked football and was good at it. So I played it, and damn if I didn’t play it better than any son of a bitch ever played it. I didn’t know that was gonna happen. Didn’t ask for it. It just happened that way.
So why can’t a man get some fucking Advil around here?
It’s not as if I haven’t paid a price for it already. When my playing days were over, I had pain. Agonizing, unrelenting pain. Sometimes the pain was so intense I couldn’t think of anything else. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t hold my grandkids. I couldn’t just sit and be. Seems like God got plenty even with me for all that I enjoyed. But apparently not. Because it still feels like someone took a Garden Weasel to my hip. I’m 98 percent gristle at this point.
Sometimes, when I’m playing cribbage up here with the boys, one of them will ask me if it was all worth it. Was it worth a lifetime of pain, in my life and now beyond, worth people hectoring me all the time, worth all the boring interviews with dipshit reporters, worth all the stupid bullshit that seems to get piled on top of sports year after year after year?
Well, let me tell you something. When I handed the ball off to Alan Ameche back in that ’58 title game and we beat the Giants, the feeling I got was . . . well, it wasn’t of this world, or even of heaven. I’m supposed to say getting married and having kids is the best feeling ever, but that’s a lie. This was far better. That day, we were better men than any other men. Fuck all men being equal. That’s for pussies. The purpose of sports is to prove which men are better than others. And, that day, we were better than everyone. And everyone in the stadium, and watching on TV, knew it. In that moment, I felt better than any man could ever feel at any time about anything on Earth. And forevermore, I can always go back in my mind and reenact that moment, step by step. I can refeel it. I can once again become the baddest motherfucker to ever walk the planet. And there are very few people in history that ever get to do that.
So was it all worth it?
You bet your sweet ass it was.
Ouch!
Did I just feel a twinge in my shoulder?
You gotta be fucking kidding me.
Acknowledgments
This book would not exist without the support of the following people. In other words, it is entirely their fault.
• Mrs. Drew and the Girl, the two funniest people I know • My mom and dad • My brother and sister and their families, all of whom are uncommonly awesome human beings • My wife’s family, who took me in as one of their own. If you read this book cover to cover, you know what an incredibly charitabl
e act that is. • Editor Junie Dahn, who gave me the idea to write a book before it even occurred to me (I tend to avoid books altogether) • Everyone at Little, Brown, who made this process far easier than it had any right to be • The outstanding Kate Lee of ICM, who helped me develop a stupid book idea into an even bigger stupid book idea • Matt Smith, Bruce Gifford, and everyone at SmithGifford, the finest ad agency in the universe • Will Leitch, to whom I owe a great deal. Not financially, but on a much more spiritual level. And that’s good, because I don’t like sharing money. • Noted combat vet Matt Ufford of withleather.com, for helping to start KSK, and for sharing the expensive scotch • Brilliant artists Christopher Brand, Kevin Richards, Dan Vail, Greg Kice at kicemetal.com, and Matt Johnson at twoeightnine.com, all of whom made enormous contributions to this book despite being paid only in prestige • The Spector family • Jesse Johnston • Multipurpose Jew Jack Kogod • Stefan Fatsis • The incredibly gifted Michael Tunison, whose brilliance more than makes up for the fact that he owns a cat • Reluctant Southerner Monday Morning Punter • Spencer Hall at edsbs.com • Peggy Freudenthal and Shannon Langone • Joy O’Meara, Dylan Hoke, and dix! Digital Prepress, Inc. • Fine Kentuckian Reed Ennis • Dan Shanoff at danshanoff.com • DJ Gallo at sportspickle.com • AJ Daulerio, for introducing me to the phrase “bologna hammer” • Jarret Myer and Brian Brater of uproxx.com • Wright Thompson • Christopher Nolan • Google, for providing imbeciles such as myself with a free, easy-to-use tool for self-publishing. All they ask in return is to scan every word I’ve ever written in order to create a comprehensive digital profile of me to sell to anonymous hucksters and the Chinese defense department without my permission. Not a bad tradeoff. • Jamie Mottram and Dan Steinberg • JE Skeets at thebasketballjones.net • The Nation of Islam Sports Blog • Chris Mottram • Sarah Schorno • Michael Rand at randball.com • The Mighty MJD • Finally, a very big thank-you to everyone in the KSK community and everyone in the Deadspin community: readers, commenters, fellow bloggers, etc. You folks are the real men with balls. I salute you. And your balls.
