BBC running down the QB

My brother is a player. No, no, not a “playa” like that, I mean, he likes to play. To hear my mom tell, that’s all he did growing up. Play, play, play. Given the generation, it makes sense. He’s one of the kids who played outside from dawn ’til dusk with the neighborhood kids. They went from yard to yard, playing Tackle or Touch Football, Capture the Flag, Manhunt, War, and whatever other games that 10 or 12 ten-year old boys play when they have lots of open space, no rules, and nothing to worry about except getting home by the time the streetlights come on.

Fast forward about 30 years and we still find BBC playing. Aside from being on various other teams, whose names I can’t remember, he currently is playing defense on the Baltimore Brigade, which is part of the Maryland Flag Football Association. Blaze made the Spring 2008 Championship this year and BBC had a hand in that success bringing home 3.5 sacks for the season and 5.5 sacks for the playoffs thus far.

I will admit that when he first started playing football, way back at G.L., I could have cared less. I was what? 8, 9, 10 years old? I do remember the 8×10 photo of him that kept turning up around the house. There he was on one bended knee, in full uniform (maybe #44? Our dad says 42, BBC says 44), helmet resting on his bent leg, and that teenage gaze, full of entitlement that said, “I’m meant to do it.”

The last couple of years that he’s been playing, I’ll admit, I wasn’t all that excited either after seeing a couple of games. They kind of blended into one another after a while. One game on one team from several seasons ago had BBC on offense, playing QB no less. He was stiff-arming, cutting quick, airing the ball out, doing all of those things I’d make my players do when I played Tecmo Bowl on the Nintendo. As the game progressed and he advanced his team downfield, I realized, for a QB, he was doing quite a bit of running towards the goal line. Sure, he would pass, zinging the ball to it’s intended receiver, the pigskin nothing but a swirly spiral of brown and white. But every third play or so, he took the ball down field himself. And then it hit me. Sure he had good receivers, but if BBC could find a way to throw the ball to himself and score, you can bet your a-double that he’d do it. And of course I told him as much.

He wasn’t offended. He laughed — ’cause it’s true.

Anyway, BBC goes out week-end after week-end to play, to ref, to just do his thing on the field, sending back photos, video clips and highlights of his successes. He single handedly is keeping Under Armour in the black, I’m convinced. I keep telling him to make sure he’s well stocked in Ben Gay and Tiger Balm, but he just gives me the equivalent of an over the phone middle finger before lacing up his cleats.

This is how you win games, son!

#30 doesn’t know it, but his life is about to flash before his eyes

P.S. (according to BBC himself) “There was this one time, when you were about 3 years running with joyful abandon, down the slope of our backyard in Easton. You were running towards me, and a split second later, I tackled you, just taking out your legs. You went up in the air, doing your impression of an Olympic diver and then went face first into the ground trying to see if you could get into the center of the earth. Needless to say, your nose was spraying like a fire hydrant on 125th Street the dead of July. I don’t know how in the hell I got out of that with mom and dad. “