hit them with your face

My friend at work was off to see his son's JV football game and off handedly said I should adopt a son or mentor one in football. Then I got an email with some great highlight shots of him in the game. This was my email response.

Awesome pictures. Jack looks great and doesn’t look at all like a Freshman to me. I’ve always said TE is the best position to play. Your pictures have inspired a post on dumbdumbdaddyo.blogspot.com which is a blog about my dad who taught me a lot about football. Chris, when you said I should adopt a son or mentor one in football I totally get what you meant. I’ve been thinking deep about what I would pass on to my son from my dad about football and what keeps coming to me is one of his great dumddumbdaddyoisms, “Hit him with your face!” This advice on several occasions kept me safe and allowed me to walk away with a concussion instead of a broken neck. Never spear, never lead with helmet, never put your head down, keep your chin up, keep your head UP, HIT HIM WITH YOUR FACE, he said these things over and over again. Hitting someone with your face may seem counter intuitive, but in football it does something magical. You see your way all the way through the hit, you greatly reduce your tendency to flinch just before contact, you start hitting with the sweet spots of the shoulder pads, you recover a lot more fumbles, catch a lot more passes, you fumble less, you beat everyone who puts their head down, you can see when a stiff arm will be useful, and most magically you will find a reflex that at the last instant throws your forearm up in front of your face and delivers the most devastating tool in the art of knocking people down, “The Forearm Shiver.” My dad also taught me how to harness the three greatest forces in the universe on the grid. Momentum, leverage and love and you would have to dig pretty deep into dumbdumbdaddyo to read my post on that. Attached is a team picture and my dad  #44 is in the front row. He was a Senior in 1951 and The Maryland Terrapins went 10 – 0 and then beat #1 ranked Tennessee in the Sugar Bowl.

My daughters are kicking butt in their sports and I couldn’t be more proud of each of them.

Chris I hope you are feeling better, hurts don’t it? Don’t come back too soon ;-)

Chris has recently broken his collar bone on his second ride with his new Trek road bike. This first draft of just hit them with your face or never put your head down was written right after looking at those pictures of Jack. I would posts them but have hit some technical difficulties. (Ah, figured it out). A great shot of him pancake blocking a defender and a bunch of him ketching passes as a TE! Those pictures really brought it back...

My dad taught me to never put my head down. He knew I was listening challenged and his way was to say things to me in several different ways over and over again hopping I’d listen to him at least a few. Keep your chin up. Don’t look down. Keep your head up. And my personal favorite, “Hit him with your face!”

Back in the day it was called spearing. Now they call it leading with your helmet. If you’ve read much of this blog you’d know the year my dad had his perfect season and played on the best college football team in the nation was 1952. They played with hard helmets and no face masks and his advice to me was to hit him with your face. Hit 'em with your face or you will break your neck. I suffered many concussions in my career and believe on many occasions I could have broken my neck if, at the moment before impact, I’d didn’t hear him in my head say, “HIT EM WITH YOUR FACE!”

This always helped me finish the hit and a coach once complimented me on a tackle in films when he said you can’t coach a person to hit like that. To run through someone, hit with your head up, and destroy them. I said it was my dad who taught me how to hit with my face.

Locker room celebration after the 1952 Sugar Bowl victory over #1 Ranked Tennessee to complete a perfect undefeated season. My dad, Jeff Keith, is under coach Tatum's left hand. Perfection looks like a lotta fun!

Art Modell wrote my dad a letter.

"Is there anything we can do?"

I think my dad kept this letter because it was such a great example of good customer service. My dad traded his Brown's season tickets for Maryland Terrapin season tickets when we moved from Cleveland to Maryland. When I heard Art Modell died today it made me think of my dad and this letter.

Larry and Luberta

When I was kid my DDD made me a sharp-shooter. I was a dead-pan shot with the bb gun so it was up to me to kill the flying squirrels that would infest our attic in Ocean Pines every year. I would stand on a latter with my upper half in the attic in the dark during the day and when their heads would poke up silhouetted in the light in the steeple of the rafters I would take them out. That was in the seventies. Recently, I was tempted to tap my assassin of small animal skills once again, fortunately fate would intervene.

Larry and Luberta were love birds. Pigeons actually, they were cruising our street looking for a love nest early this spring. They choose our attic or garage more specifically. I had left the access panel open in the ceiling of our garage and they set up house there just above our back door driving my children and dogs crazy. My kids were afraid, Tyler was livid, my wife put out a contract on them and Emma (our Golden Doodle) didn’t seem to have an opinion.

After a week of cooing and purring and pooping and Tyler (our Golden) barking his head off I had to take action. I put up the latter and as Suzy and the girls were pulling out on the driveway in the car I climbed up after the birds. I remember thinking, “What am I going to do when I get up there, grab them with my bare hands?” I also remember thinking that while I am holding on to the latter and reach eye level with the little beggars they could peck my eyes out. When I got face to face with the big one he did a little dance in a circle and puffed up his chest huge and I had the feeling he was about to attack so I reached out and grabbed him with my bare hands.

Zero panic. He got real calm and started to purr and then he started to bite me. His bites were ineffectual and the sense I got was that he was afraid of nothing. I took a step or two down the latter and threw him towards the open garage door. He flew out and then right back in and was coming after me. I climbed up and grabbed the littler one and threw her toward the door and she flew away, but Larry, he’s a fighter. He didn’t seem to like the idea of me closing the attic hatch, but I completed my mission and retreated into the house. Tyler was barking like a mad man.

For the next several weeks Larry and Luberta lived on the upper shelves of our garage and Larry kept getting more and more aggressive. Once he was coming right at me and I batted him with a removable doggie door. I wacked him pretty good and he crashed to the ground. He shook it off, danced his little jig, puffed up his chest, and came right back at me. I was stunned by his courage. He flew right at my face, but instead of hitting him again I thought I would let him take his best shot, he deserved it. Instead he landed right on my head and did his dance cooing and purring. He then he jumped down on my shoulder and purred right in my ear and literally gave me the chills. Larry and Luberta continued to live with us into the summer. They would perch on our window sills and watch us through the windows. They became a part of our little family and in the end only Tyler never fell to their charm.

One day Larry came up missing. Luberta looked so lonely without him. About a week went by and he shows up with two mangled feet. They were bloody and he could stand on one of them, but the other was definitely missing a few toes (if that’s what you call them). He couldn’t hold on to the window sills anymore so he hung out on the ground outside our front door. The girls fed him and petted him and gave him love. He healed up in a week or so. Then Luberta left him and he became really sad. He turned all his affections on me and my girls. We all love Larry.

He’s been missing a week or so. We checked and pigeons don’t migrate so we’re getting pretty worried about him. I’m sure he’ll be fine. He’s a fighter.

so close

Just finished my second to last class this week and I must admit I almost enjoyed it, almost. I am one class away from an MBA with a concentration in technology management from the University of Phoenix. I remember just before I graduated from Miami University I started to think a lot about Walt Whitman H. S. and was overcome with gratitude and was humbled by the education I had recieved in preparation for where I was. As I am close to the end of my U o P experience I am once again struck by how much Miami has done for me and how easily we can take our educations for granted. Miami, Pitney Bowes, Skico, The Jerome, Sysco, US Foods, Pfizer, and my wife and kids have prepared me for where I am right now. Once again I am humlbed and grateful. Suzy, thank you for all of your support. Without you there is no me.

always fall forward

My dad taught me how to pitch. We played a lot of ketch when I was a kid. J and I played a ton of ketch. J made me a really good pitcher. J's best friend Robert made me great. He was a strater on the high school team. Once he pitched a fast ball with a baketball and I swung at it and my bat bounce off the basketball and knocked me out. Later he taught me how to throw a wicked curve ball. My dad taught me how be a pitcher. Back in little league he taught me that if you keep on pitching you control the rythm of the game.

If you keep on pitching you will always fall forward.

Victory is compounded from defeat.

Defeat is not permanent.

Just throw strikes.

my youngest is telepathic

She starts with the Jedi mind trick. She knows the Vulkin mind meld. She understands English but speaks Chubaka. Here she is saying dad you work too hard. Come walk with me.

I took a long walk today

seems my dog had some things he had to say

He said

everythings going to be OK

today

Come walk with me

and see

So I took a long walk today

and I realy must say

everything's going our way

today

come walk with me and

 see

Come walk with me and see

Lyrics by Sammy D

as inclination leads

I was inclined to go back to school for my MBA. I have been tasked with so much reading that most of it has done me little good. What I have been tasked with the most and what appears to have done me great good is the task of writing. My online program is 13 six week courses and in each of these weeks a bare minimum is a 1,000 word paper and about a 1,000 words of online participation four out of seven days. That's 78 weeks, so we're talking over 156,000 words I was not otherwise inclined to write. This aspect of an online education I originally didn't comprehend. If I had done these calculations before I started I would have never thought it possible for me to to do what I am doing right now, writing myself a Masters degree.  My dad always used to tell me that the more you do something the easier it gets. Writing for me has never been easy, but it has sure gotten easier!

I am inclined to read Dean Koontz's latest Odd book, the Bible, this book Flourish that is on my bed side table as we speak, maybe a little Max Brand and anything else that I am NOT required to read. I look forward to having the time to read just as inclination leads and to write about those things for which I am inclined.

Wood Box Wisdom on the Common Law of Life

Among the many things my dad would say that I really didn't get was when he point at someone and say, "He's good timber!" I would look and think that he meant that guy was strong or tall or hard as wood or whatever a punk, spoiled, rich kid thinks when he's not really listening anyway.

Now I get it. He meant a certain kind of strong. A strength that only comes through experience, hard experience more specifically and I realize now it was one of his greatest compliments. "Good timber does not grow in ease. The farther the sky, the greater length; The more the storm, the more the strength."

My dad was good timber.

In weight lifting and in life there is a familiar mantra, "No pain no gain" I get it, but prefer my own philosophy of no pain no pain. I've always figured if it hurts you are doing it wrong and now I suffer from chronic pain and now realize that pain, struggle and storms are the things that help us grow. We learn to deal with the pain. We learn to struggle forward. We learn how to come in from the rain!

happy happy

The Happy Happy was the name of our boat.

Reading my last post made  me realize how much pain I've suffered over the years. It amazing how God let's us forget things for our own good. My dad said once if something is really bothering you, you need to address it and forget it. The sooner you forget the sooner no regret. If you forgive you forget. Pain comes in all shapes and sizes. No matter how much something hurts physically and emotionally you must first learn to cope then learn to forget. Try to remember the good times and the happy times for they will be many. They are the cure for the things that ail your soul but are forgotten in the sea of despair and believe me or not, but unhappiness is a choice. My dad was always there to help me make the right choice. He made it easy to choose happiness. To this day I choose to be happy happy.

It's gonna hurt a little bit.

As a kid I got hurt a lot. I started walking way before I was one. My mom would always say, "way before you were one you stood up and ran after your brother and you never stopped running." I remember getting stitches in the back of my head after cracking it on the fireplace mantel after getting thrown from my horse. The horse was my big sister Carol! I got stitched when I was hit by a car and my brake handle stabbed into my knee. I ember getting stitches in the top of my head from a rock my brother J had thrown at me from way up on a hill. I had my face stitched up after being bit by a dog, twice. I have to stop but there are more. I had at least a thousand bloody raspberries, scraps and abrasions. My dad was the go-to guy whenever I got hurt, but it was never easy because he was a merthiolate guy. It's the red stuff and my day wouldn't use the plastic little applicator  he'd use q-tips to fully soak the wound with the pailful topical antiseptic. Man it burned, but he would blow on it until the extreme pain would ease. My dad would always say, "this is gonna hurt a little bit." That was his way of saying get ready this is going to hurt a lot. But he always knew how to make it better. He say something like, "it's OK to cry like a little girl, I won't tell any one or if you'd cry a little bit you'll forget how much it hurts." Or he'd say about pain, "if you ignore it it'll go away or don't answer the door and let it in."

My dad once broke his back stepping out of a golf cart. When he would explain how he got the huge scars from surgery on his lower back he'd say in the old days golf cart wheels stuck out in the back and I was stepping out of the cart while it was still moving and it ran up the back of my leg and yanked me so hard to the ground while running over me it broke my back. They had to go in a fuse a butch of discs so I could get feeling back in my leg. This was before I was born but I have a lifetime of memories of him laying flat on his back in  almost every room in the house whenever the back pain would be too much. I remember many times coming into a room and wondering if he was still alive. I would do a belly flop on hip and he yell, "DO NOT HOP ON POP!" I do this with my girls and my back hurts too. Or I should say they do it to me and it makes me think of him and I smile.