I Feel Like Going On

by Ray Lewis

  Biscuit, he had us running into each other, hurting each other. Kids today, you can’t coach them in this way, but this was how we went at it back then. We went at it hard. First to break, first to complain, first to cry—well, then we knew what he was made of. First to cause another kid to break, first to cause another kid to complain, to cry—well, we knew what that dude was made of, too.

  Game day was Saturday, and that was a whole other deal, but practices were every day after school. I’d race home, help out with my sisters and brother, take care of the house, get started on my homework. Maybe I’d have to braid my sister’s hair, sew a patch on a torn pair of jeans, do the dishes so we had clean plates for dinner, whatever it took. Then, a little before five o’clock, Biscuit would be outside with a car full of Lakeville Lumberjacks to ferry us to the field. Practice ran from five to seven. A lot of times, I’d have to make my way home with a couple other kids who lived in the same projects—we’d race each other back, before the street lights came on.

  The deal at home was if I kept my grades up I could keep playing, so I kept my grades up. I wasn’t about to let anyone take this away from me—no, sir.

  I’d get so excited after practice, I’d burst into the house and start running my mouth. I’d say, “Mom, I’m busting these boys up.”

  She’d look at me like she had no idea.

  “Mom, I ran over this dude. Just destroyed him.”

  She might not have known what I was talking about, but she could see I was pumped. She could see I was filled with a sense of pride and purpose, a sense of possibility—good things, all.

  A lot of the kids on my team lived in Washington Park, but some of the kids in the projects played on other rival Pop Warner teams in town—the Patriots, the Gators, the Volunteers. I didn’t pay much attention to rivalries or anything like that—wasn’t about that for me. No, the kid on the other side of the ball—he was my rival. Didn’t matter if it was my own teammate or some dude in another uniform—if you went up against me, you were going down. And after a while, it wasn’t enough for me to just beat you, knock you down. I had to put a hurt on you, too. That was my mind-set, and out of that mind-set I began to make a name for myself in town. How you played, that’s how you were known. If you wanted to be the best in Lakeland, you had to outrun somebody, beat ’em in a fight, beat ’em in wrestling, beat ’em to the ball. That’s the path we were on. All of us. That’s the path my father had been on, back when he was in high school—only, his path didn’t exactly take him up and out, more like around and around. But I was determined to have a different future than my dad, and I started to see that sports might just be the way to get there. I didn’t have any plan at this point. Just a vague notion.

  Football taught me that I hated to lose. Lakeland taught me that I needed to win—because, hey, in my neighborhood, you were known by the things you won. I wouldn’t trade growing up there for anyplace else. Wasn’t a place to stay, though. It was a place to leave, but it gave it to you straight. It showed you what life sometimes hides. Our days were filled with hundreds of tiny battles. You’d get in the dirt and go at it. Some of those battles you’d win. Some of them you’d lose. But you kept score, man. Everybody kept score. And after a while of this, day after day of going at it, you’d see where you stood. You’d look around and start to see what was possible, just by how you measured up to the folks who were doing it before you, with you, against you.

  On some level, I must’ve known these things going in, but it took all those drills for me to recognize how I was wired. It took being around the game, playing on a good team with good coaches, for all of this to register. Sprints—that was the be-all and end-all for me. Like I said, I wasn’t the fastest, but I would not let myself be beat. Coach would end his practices with sprints, and for him it was all about fitness, stamina. He was building us up so we could run our opponents into the ground. That’s all. But for me it was a race, plain and simple, and if I lost one time I would race you ten times more—just, you know, to run you into the ground. Sooner or later. Didn’t matter that you were my teammate. Didn’t matter that we were friends. It only mattered that you were lined up against me.

  • • •

  One of my closest friends early on was a dude named Willie Buford—Skeet, to everyone in town. He was way older than me, but he took a shine to me. And I looked up to him, carried myself like him, followed his lead. Skeet was one of the best athletes I’ve ever seen—nobody could deal with him on the field. He played high school ball for the Lakeland Dreadnaughts, and I used to watch all their games, all their practices. That team ended up winning the state championship—and to a little kid like me, where I grew up, how I grew up, that became the goal.

  We had our role models out there on that field. Those high school players, Skeet and them, they were our ideal. They were like rock stars to us little kids. The Dreadnaughts had this one dude playing for them, Earl Motherseal—I just fell in love with his game. He wore number 42, and he moved just like Eric Dickerson. He had Dickerson down, all the way to the Jheri curls and the goggles. He was slick, slippery, smooth. I wanted to be just like him, too.

  Friday night was game night at Bryant Stadium, and the whole town came out to watch the high school team play. Talk about Friday Night Lights—this was what mattered, where I grew up. It’s like the rest of the world was silenced on Friday nights. In Lakeland, you lived and died with your team, so we weren’t about to miss those games. Trouble was, we couldn’t pay our way in, so we jumped the gate after our Friday night practice and slinked in by the side bleachers and hoped no one would notice us and throw us out. I couldn’t stay for the whole game, though. My mother was expecting me home after practice, so I’d watch the first quarter, maybe the first half if I was feeling it. In those moments I was transported, lifted by those high school players. I began to see what was possible. And it’s not like I watched those dudes and started thinking I could maybe play ball at their level, maybe even at college. Wasn’t about college, just then. No, the game was a way to prove myself. That’s all. A way to test myself.

  Eventually, it became a way up and out for me, but at the same time I could see how it didn’t always work out for everyone. That was a hard lesson, man. Earl Motherseal, Skeet, and plenty others had the talent, but it didn’t shake out to the good for them. They caught some bad breaks, got knocked to the ground by life. But that didn’t stop us from rooting for them, seeing ourselves in them, growing our games to look like theirs.

  Probably my biggest role model back then was my older cousin, Tony Stancil—T-Boy. He was much older than me, but he had my back, too. I didn’t want to be like anybody else but my cousin Tony. We lived in the same house for a while, so we were super close. I stayed for a couple years during middle school at his house in Mulberry, and he took care of me.

  How I got to Mulberry was simple. My mother couldn’t afford to feed all of us kids. Once that first guy left, we were up against it. Money was tight—we hit a bunch of rough spots. And me, I had a big old appetite. The way I used to eat, folks really meant it when they used to say, “That Baby Ray, he’ll eat you out of house and home.” So when I got old enough, seventh grade, when my appetite got big enough, when my twin sisters were able to pitch in a little bit more with the younger two, my mama got it in her head to send me to live with her family. It was a way to keep ahead of our bills. That’s all—and it wasn’t meant to be permanent. It was just for a while.

  Mulberry was where my mother’s people were. It was in a whole other part of the state, a long way from home, so I had to make a new name for myself, start fresh. That could have been tough, but Tony never let anybody mess with me, never really let me talk to girls, kept me out of trouble. Those days, when you were a new kid in a new city, you needed someone to stand up for you, and Tony did that for me. Lakeland and Mulberry, they were like different worlds. You came from one, you could never be a part of the other, so it was a good thing, him looking after me like that.

  No
body messed with T-Boy, and I got to ride his coattails. His reputation became mine. He was the cornerback for his high school team, so he could play, and because he could play, folks just assumed that I could play, too. But in my mind, Tony was playing at a whole other level—an impossible level. There was one particular game, Mulberry facing off against the Bartow Yellow Jackets, their archrivals. It was a big, big game, the season on the line, and my cousin showed me what it meant to show up, to put in a full effort. This one play, it was like a life changer for me—a game changer, anyway. What happened was this dude on the Yellow Jackets broke out, had the field to himself. Really, he was gone, but T-Boy, he saw this kid break and he took off after him. Like a lot of high school football players, Tony played both sides of the ball, so here he was on D, trying to keep his team in the game. This Bartow dude must’ve been on his own 40-yard line, and my cousin was back around the Bartow 20, but he gave chase, never thinking for a minute he wouldn’t catch up to him. Didn’t have a whole lot of field to work with, had to close those twenty yards before his opponent ran sixty, but he tore after him just the same.

  I’ve always been a fan of a good footrace, and this was crazy. Tony had no shot, but he kept closing the gap and closing it, until he ran out of field. Really, it was one of the greatest efforts I’ve ever seen. Another ten yards, he would’ve had him, easy, but the takeaway for me was to never give up. All my years in the game, at the highest levels of the game, I never saw anybody hustle like that. Never. My cousin was just relentless, determined, and out of that one play, I found my game. I told myself, no matter what, if the guy on the other side of the ball breaks out like that, no matter where he is on the field, no matter where I am on the field, I will take off after him. Hard. Relentless. Determined. I will chase him down. I will run through my own end zone if I have to. Just like my cousin Tony. And I won’t stop until I touch him, and when I touch him, if the ball’s still in play, I will punish him. I will make him remember me.

  Tony lit a fire in me that night, under the lights in Mulberry, in front of the whole town. Taught me what it was to play the game all out, all the time—no matter what. And it spilled over into how I played. Right away. Left me thinking, Can’t nobody beat me to the ball. Left me thinking, Ain’t nothing I can’t do. And it wasn’t enough just to edge the other guy out. No, I had to run him into the ground, punish him. At ten, eleven, twelve years old, this was how I learned to play the game.

  Out of all that, there was this hard truth: there is only one way to win, one way to play. All out, all the time. And I owned that hard truth, man. I did. My thing was to hit the other guy so hard, I’d make him think about quitting. He’d have no choice in the matter. That’s one of the things about today’s game that frustrates me, the way they’ve changed the rules to take the edge from the defender. Telling a defender he can’t hit, or he can’t hit a certain way—it’s like telling a quarterback he can’t throw the ball deep. It takes away a key weapon, and for me that key weapon was putting a hurt on my opponent, making him think twice about coming across my field.

  In football, the only way you’re remembered is by what you did to somebody. I took that in, early on. It’s not how many yards you gain. It’s not how many passes you complete. It’s how you hit, how you hurt. In my town, that’s the way you earned respect. It got to where I’d look for my moments. In a game, there’d be just a couple opportunities. Two or three hits—that’s all you needed to change the game, make your mark. Let them know you’re there.

  End of the day, it was just like those “Pick ’em Up, Bust ’em” games we used to play as kids. No rules. No boundaries. No set plays.

  End of the day, you had to deal with me.

  THREE

  Respect Me Like You Sweat Me

  Growing up, the only real connection I had with my father was through my grandmother, Minnie. She was my heart, my everything. Oh my goodness, she was one of the greatest angels to ever walk this earth. She never raised her voice, never swore, never judged. Her two boys, my father and his brother, Curtis, they struggled, gave their mama a lot of heartache. But she had a way of taking their troubles and setting them aside, moving on.

  As I got older, on into high school, I used to go over to Grandma Minnie’s house more and more. She got along real well with my mother, so that was never an issue. And she was used to folks being disappointed by her son, so that wasn’t an issue, either. Anyway, I was Minnie’s first grandchild, so she always said she had a special place in her heart for me, and one of the reasons I was drawn to her was to help me understand who I was, where I’d come from. She had pictures all over the place—pictures of me, my sisters, my father, my uncle. That was her big thing, all these pictures. Those pictures of my father, they could get her going. She’d pick up a frame and stare into it and start to talking. Every picture came with a story.

  My daddy had been such a good-looking young man, with his big old Afro, his big old swagger—it killed my grandmother what his life had become. Tore her up inside. I think she was ashamed by his behavior, the choices he made. She never said as much, but I could see how it weighed on her. And the thing of it is, a small place like Lakeland, his bad choices were right there, on display. Everybody knew everybody’s business. Everybody knew my father was caught in the swirl. He made some bad choices, every which way. He was what we used to call “a good for nothing,” but this was where Grandma Minnie drew the line. It was okay for her to speak the truth about my father’s behavior, but she didn’t like it when other people talked. She might have used the phrase herself, but coming from someone else she would have argued that “good for nothing” tag into the ground. There was goodness there, she kept telling me. There was hope. Somewhere, down deep, my father was a decent man.

  She used to say, “You’ll see, Baby Ray. One day, he’ll come round, you’ll come to know him.”

  I’d say, “When, Grandma? When will that day come?”

  And she’d say, “Your daddy, he’s off doing his thing. He ain’t ready to deal with you, not just yet.”

  Somewhere in there, I got word that my father was back in town. I was thirteen, maybe fourteen. I was back living in Lakeland, after spending two years in Mulberry. By this time, my mother had moved in with another man, who had a little more money, and we were living in a little bit nicer part of town, in a development called the Pines. It was a proper house—only, there weren’t enough bedrooms to go around, so I had to sleep in the garage. Wasn’t as bad as it sounds in the retelling. We fixed it up nice, private, but I was off by myself a lot, had a lot of time alone with my thoughts. So that’s where I was living, how I was living when I heard my father was in Lakeland. It was around Christmas time, and he sent for me—anyway, he sent word. My mother told me he’d be by to collect me, take me for a visit, so I packed a couple things and went outside to wait for him by the curb. I took a toothbrush, a clean shirt, a pair of socks, bunched it all up in a brown paper bag and sat myself down. I remember that it was cold that night—winter, coming full on.

  I was excited. Didn’t have the first idea what I would say to this man. Didn’t know if I was pissed, or ready to make some kind of room for him in my life. I was of two minds, guess you could say. But I did want to see him and I did want to know him. I kept hearing Grandma Minnie talking about the good he had to offer. There was plenty of good in my life, but there was always room for more. I wanted some of that from him. And, so, I waited. The whole damn night, I waited. Past dinner. Past bedtime. Past when the cold didn’t bother me. Finally, my mother came out and tapped me on the shoulder—said, “Don’t think he’s coming, Baby Ray. Not tonight.”

  I went back into the house and cried. At thirteen, fourteen, however old I was, I just cried and cried, like a big old baby. Don’t know why I was so tore up over him not showing, because I was used to him not being around, I was schooled in being disappointed by this man, but there it was, and when I got through crying I jumped back on my push-ups, my sit-ups—started flipping through th
at deck of cards like crazy.

  I got tired of waiting for my father to come round. Got tired of hearing people make excuses for him. Got tired of people telling me I looked like him, walked like him, played ball like him. Got tired of hearing his name.

  Things went back to how they were after that long night waiting by the curb, but now I was angry—not just a simmering kind of anger that attaches to you over time, but more of a boiling anger. A fury. His pictures, his name, his legacy. It got to where I wanted no part of my father. And it worked out that this fury was coming on right about the time I started high school. I’d been away for a while, but now I was back, living in the garage, doing my push-ups and sit-ups, trying to make myself strong, to make my own way.

  Playing ball, that was my release. I’d play whatever was in season, but I didn’t last too long on the basketball court, which is how I eventually ended up wrestling. In ninth grade, I was playing on the freshman basketball team, and at one practice I was up against one of my teammates. We were running full court, and he was driving for a layup. He had me beat. Only way to stop him was to foul him. I didn’t have position to go up and try to block the ball, couldn’t make a clean play, so I defended the only way I could. The only way I knew. Hard. It wasn’t a dirty play, but it was aggressive, I’ll admit. On a football field, it wouldn’t have even drawn a flag, raised an eyebrow. On a football field, this kind of play was second nature to me. But here in the gym, a stupid little scrimmage, the kid went into a little tantrum. The coach seemed to take his side. Words were exchanged. For ten minutes, we were all standing in the middle of the court, yelling, giving each other what for. Finally, I just threw up my hands and stormed off—said, “This game is too soft for me, man.”