wouldn’t believe what’s happened to him, the horrible things. You know what I think. I think that’s why he looks the way he does. He’s stuffed everything inside, kept it there.” May 12, 1984—Boston Houston at Pittsburgh After dinner with friends of Michael’s (the poet Michael Daley), I found out a Mauler’s game was going to be on TV. They begged me to go off with them to record poetry. Bob said he would tape it and I could watch it when we got back. I could care poop about a tape. Ha! This was live. The announcer kept saying “Doubiago.” I think he liked saying the name. “With a name like Doubiago,” Nancy Littleriver said to me once at a high school game, “he’s bound for the pros.” Doubiago played great against Houston. Kept alternating between Offensive Tackle and Third Tight End. Lineman of the Week. He got a Walkman for it. May 20, 1984—Ohio, I-75S Michael picked me up in Toledo in a driveaway, a ‘66 Volvo. We stay at his great aunt’s in Swanson, Ohio, and after an evening of WW1 stories of the generations on his father’s side, the Irish, when I finally slept I had this nightmare: The team, lined up one behind the other, all the way back to the goalpost. Danny is about sixth back. Each player runs forward to me, then splits off to the side, one to the left, the next to the right. Then Danny moves up and out, to the right, sneering at me. The sneer deforming his face as he comes out from behind the guys. “The reason,” he says, pronouncing each word with hate, “I’ve not been as good as I should be is that I have the unfortunate luck of being from a ninth-generation hippy rpother.” May 21, 1984—Louisville, Kentucky, Kupie’s Bar Monday Night Football-Pitts- burgh at New Jersey The bartender had the game on both his big screen and on the TV at the other end of the bar. I kept looking from one to the other all night. On one screen he was so big he was in danger of disappearing like a forest for the trees. In the other he was so contracted, sobright, so small, he looked like a pawn in an important chess game, a stick of dynamite (a burning red star) before it goes off. A great shot of his ass. This side, that. The veins in his hand, his wrist, my wrists. “You want to see an offensive lineman as a tight end. Watch Doubiago.” Daniel Clarke Doubiago in slow motion making a great block all across the country. ESPN. Ain’t that America! It’s happy hour at the Seagull and at Dick’s in Mendocino, in Eugene where my parents are watching, in Manhattan Beach, a great lunge and tumble for his dad. I’ve never been so happy. I left a big tip. I was certain the bar “Last Monday this girl conies skipping across thefloor. I thought who's this idiot on my hands now. I thought, oh boy, she's on the drug."Still I can't help it. I'm jumping around, squealing again. tender thought we were rich, the parents of a pro. We drove about fifty miles, found a field to sleep in. June 11, 1984—Port Angeles, Washington San Antonio at Pittsburgh The Chinook Pancake House and Lounge is a dive: the damp air of the Straits, the logging/fishing atmosphere of the docks, this skid road of bars from the turn of the century. This could be the last game I ever see of my son. I have friends along from Port Townsend. “Have a good game, Babe.” John, last week’s asshole bartender, is handing me a beer, his face open and sweet. Then I hear him telling my motley crew—“Last Monday this girl comes skipping across the floor. I thought who’s this idiot on my hands now. Ithought, oh boy, she’s on the drug.” Still I can’t help it. I’m jumping around, squealing again. Danny! Right there! That funny way he runs, just like when he was ten months old. Amazing the rhythm week after week. The big game. As if the only one ever. To imagine ones whole life doing this, down on the line, down and block. All the time I was in Utah I wanted him to dress me in the uniform, the whole thing, so I could know the experience of that. A devastating close-up of him coming out of a play. The nastiest sneer imaginable, except in my dreams. Pat behind me moans, “Oh no, Sharon.” Dear Danny, so you finally found the way to become mean. Oh sweetheart. Don’t do it. I know you’re losing so bad, you’re humiliated, but the true athlete won’t lose heart, no matter what. “Number 72 of the offense: holding.” The referee, so self-righteous, pointing his finger at my child. “What’s worse, a ref or a cop?” There was always a sense of tolerance in my family, but behind that an inflexible ethic of right and wrong. I know I passed that shitty trait, the horror of it at least, onto my child. To point your finger at him, for the whole nation of TV to be watching—the humiliation. I hearthat sound I first heard at Three Rivers Stadium, that clang, then hizzzzzz of the maul hitting steel, the sound of the foundry on the street I grew up on, Industrial Avenue. The pissed fans. “This is the thirteenth loss for Pittsburgh.” Score: 21-3 San Antonio. “The great fear that athletes have," George Plimpton says, “is the fear of humiliation. They don’t think that much about being hurt, they don’t even think that much about winning. ” I drive us west out of town. The mountains of Canada are streaks of gold in the silver sky. I stop at the very end of Ediz Hook, the two mile sand spit that curls out into the Straits. The water laps all around us, the water in the rainbow colors of the setting sun. We are looking back on the small city, lighting up now as the sunlight leaves. Port Angeles, redneck maverick capital of the Northwest, whose founding history is of collectives, communes, utopian communities. A port for the angels. For us. The opening of the Straits. The Americas. I can hear them singing the national anthem. What happens to your American soul when, despite all your efforts, the laying of your body and soul on the line, you keep losing? Danny Doubiago played the 1985 season with the L.A. Express. With the USFL’s dissolution, he is dealing blackjack in a casino in Reno, Nevada, biding his time while hoping something breaks in the NFL. “One of the problems of being a football player—and they’re starting it now in the third and fourth grade—is that- you get somebody telling you what to do, when to do it, why to do it, where to do it, and that’s everyting. It’s all encompassing. It's classes, it’s school, it’s what you eat, it's what you do while you play. It’s everyting. You get a lifetime of that jammed down your throat and all of a sudden you find yourself 25 or 30 years old—how do you change? You don’t break those habits easily. It’s frightening. If you’re not taught how to think for yourself, it’s frightening to be faced with the prospect of having to do it." Alan Page—“Laying It On The Line,” by Barry Lopez in Runner’s World. ■ Writer-Poet Sharon Doubiago travels around the United States from her current homebase in Sherwood, Oregon. She has just completed a book-length poem, South America Mi Hija, about travelling with her teenage daughter Shawn in “direct quest of the problems of racism, sexism and war.” She is the author of the epic poem Hard Country and has won two recent Pushcart Prizes. Tell our advertisers you saw it in CSQ! 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