Thank You, LT
So it happened today to LaDainian Tomlinson. It happens all the time in today’s NFL: A team looks at the cold-blooded reality of the current NFL salary structure and is forced to tell a beloved player, “Thanks for everything, but you are too old and too expensive and we don’t want you any more.”
It’s sad. Yeah, I’m sad. Sports are silly and inconsequential, but let me tell you what was really silly: It was SILLY how good LT was. And it was so FUN to have him around.
The memories…My friends and I saying things like “LT should sign with the Lakers when football season ends,” or, “We should just send LT to sort out everything in Iraq.”…The “Over The Top” dance move we’d do when LT would simply jump over all the other players on the field at the goal line…The chant: 70,000 people in the stadium calling out the play, “LT, LT, LT,” and yet the defense still powerless to stop it….Times in my life.
Hot…DAMN…LT was the BOMB. Some NFL runners are considered “slashers”; I called LT a “teleporter.” When he chose to change directions he would basically teleport instantaneously to some other location on the field several yards away from where the move began.
Lots of NFL runners can jump; LT could fly. He defied gravity as casually as you or I walk to the bathroom to take a piss. There used to be a huge framed photograph in the Chargers ticket office of LT literally jumping over the other 21 players on the field for a touchdown. He did it all the time, but I looked at the photo, the majestic beauty of him flying over that pile of humanity, and I said, “Jesus.” As in, he looked like Jesus.
And part of the reason my friends had so much fun with the whole category of jokes about “Jobs LT Could Do Better Than Whoever Is Currently Doing Them” was because he’s the best running back in history at throwing the ball, which is supposed to be the quarterback’s job, don’t you know.
But since his run began when the Chargers were the NFL’s worst team and at the margins of the NFL consciousness, his greatness was like a big inside joke for all of San Diego. But we badly wanted to let everyone else in.
Planet NFL finally caught on in LT’s sixth year, 2006, when he broke the NFL record for touchdowns in a single season. I watched the record-breaking game at Hollywood Billiards in the upstairs section, and when the record fell I leaned over the railing and repeatedly bellowed “Greatest of All Time!!” to the hundreds of NFL fans on the ground floor.
That assertion can certainly be argued but I stand by the statement today.
And as far as LT the man…he is a GREAT man. The charitable work, giving back to the community, blah blah blah, all that United Way shit, he did all that. He is a devoted husband to his wife LaTorsha (yes, it’s LaDainian and LaTorsha, how tight is that) and there’s no Tiger Woodsing going on in that marriage, I will guaran-fuckin-tee you. He got a Chargers lightning bolt tattooed on his leg the day after he was drafted…immediate devotion. He knew he was coming to the worst team in the league, but he was ready to be the turning point and he didn’t mind working for it.
Of course, he was not a perfect man. He got a little surly toward the end of his Chargers run, various reports saying he was either a little bitter or a LOT bitter about his diminished role in the Chargers’ offense. He couldn’t see the decline in his skills that was so apparent to everyone else. But as I remind anyone who complains about the ego of a great athlete or musician or writer or whatever: Sometimes it comes with the territory. You have to believe in yourself in order to be great.
But it’s over now. LT is a Legend…and I can clearly remember the start of his career. When did I get old enough that I could have those clear memories—well, mostly clear memories I guess…we were celebrating this greatness as it went along, after all—but mostly clear adult memories of the entire span of a legendary player’s era? It happened relatively recently, I think. Oh, that’s right: It happened today.
That’s what we’re really feeling when we get sad about something as ultimately inconsequential as the end of the Age of LT. Days pass. A career begins: The Chargers beat the Redskins in LT’s debut, two days before 9/11. A decade passes. A career ends. How many beginnings and endings were there in our own lives in those years?
Times in our lives…lots of fun times for us Southern Californians. Thank you, LT.
Sincerely,
Travis and DREAMERS
