K 10/29 - public version

A Steve Gleason story.

So to understand the Steve Gleason story you must first, wincingly, call to mind hordes of drunken reprobates who scream mercilessly at large scale sporting events - you know the ones. 

Now, imagine that such a phenomenon of fury and excitement is not quarantined within the garages and watering holes of testosterone-fueled males. Peel back some of the drunkenness components and apply it, as though coated with adhesive, to everyone. Over the course of generations.

Families in this region surround their newborns with the colors of the local sports teams. Old people wave pom-poms in nursing homes. Priests use upcoming games as focal points for their sermons. Everyone.

So the biggest most influential team here is the New Orleans Saints, part of the National Football League (this is, of course, the uniquely American sport of bastardized rugby - not actual football). The Saints were very, very awful for many, many years, and it was not until about 200X that they started winning consistently.

Like everyone else, at least in Louisiana, I grew up learning everything football and unintentionally memorizing most things Saints. As I grew older, I increasingly dismissed the crashing, clashing gladiatorial element of the sport but at the same time started being curious about the strategy of it. American football, like any other sport, has a mental side that is very deep - especially for the defensive side of the game. I liked trying to figure out how the coaches formulated their strategies, adapting each week to a new team, and almost always adapting during the game also, trying to turn the tide.

New plays required new thinking. Differently skilled players required different schemes. People get injured. The weather matters. It’s a constantly evolving thing, guarding your home field against invaders. But it’s important, because everybody knows that good defense builds champions.

I bought a pro football video game in 2010, and given that it was the first such game I’d ever owned, the first thing I wanted to do was “create” my own player and make him a super badass defensive guy. And while “creating” the player, I had to pick a photo from an existing player to use as “mine”. Fortunately, I found one that looked almost exactly like me (with long ratty hair), and I applied it to “my” player, and I became a mediocre defensive player (it turned out that being a badass was much harder than expected).

Now hold that thought.

Flashback to August 2005 and the event known as Hurricane Katrina. I won’t go into it too deeply (that’s another mini-story); what matters is that the storm broke the levees holding back Lake Pontchartrain, and huge portions of the city (over 1,000,000 population, if you count the suburbs) were inundated. Lots of people died, lots of people were never found, lots of people were airlifted and rescued on boats, and lots of people endured an experience worse than the storm itself: waiting for rescue within the walls of the Superdome, the closed-roof stadium where the Saints play their home games.

Remember how everyone is sort of required to be a sports fan? Or at the very least they are expected to know what’s happening in the world of sports, because it’s a more common topic of conversation with strangers than the weather? In New Orleans, the heart of this concept is the Saints, and the pulse is palpable year-round.

And remember how the team had always been bad? Pitifully bad….?

Because of the sorry state of the Superdome after Katrina, the team wasn’t able to play there at all for the 2005 season, and while the city was recovering from the catastrophic effects of having been all but destroyed, people looked more and more desperately to their hometown team for hope during the 2006 season as they slowly rebuilt.

As usual, the team started off the 2006 season with little promise. Everything was hurting. Everything always hurts when you live with the Saints.

It had been announced that the team would host a game in the Superdome in September, the first major event to be held there since being used as a triage center for civilians, several of whom died in and around the building while waiting for rescue, leading to rumors of hauntings and curses. On top of that, the game was going to be nationally televised on Monday night. It was against the Atlanta Falcons - New Orleans’ most hated rivals.

The event was interesting to watch, because in addition to being sold-out, everyone who went dressed up like it was Mardi Gras. People were thrilled to be back with their team, and we could see it on TV. There was a sense of color and vibrancy that hadn’t been seen there since- well, ever. Since the team always sucked. There were smiles on people’s faces that hadn’t existed for a year or more.

It was an odd, edgy scene. Pregnant with anticipation.

Unsurprisingly, for a while the game did not go well. But then something happened, something that changed the lives of over a million people, and reverberated across the wider range of Louisiana.

Atlanta was deep in their own territory, setting up to punt. They hiked the ball, and out of nowhere came this scrawny little defensive guy with long hair, laying out full-stretch and blocking the ball just as it was kicked. The ball rolled loose, and another Saints player picked it up and fell into the endzone for a score.

The Superdome erupted.

And it kept erupting.

Shockingly, the TV people didn’t even blather over the mayhem of euphoria. They were so stunned by the reaction of the crowd that they just let the pictures show it all - people dancing, crying, waving their Mardi Gras umbrellas, hugging complete strangers…. The commentators later said they realized “something” had just happened, something important.

That moment was later christened “The Rebirth”, and it eventually generated a life-size bronze statue outside the Superdome. The team won the game, and the event ended up serving as the catalyst that led the Saints to greatness for the next 15 years, including a championship following the 2010 season - a feat which prompted me to indulge my curiosity and seek out a pro football video game….

Now, as I sat on the mattress in a cold Illinois apartment somewhere in January 2011, playing as this shaggy-haired white defensive guy, something occurred to me. I didn’t recognize him, and as “my” player was showing signs of life, I figured I should look up this guy who resembled me: Who am I playing as?

It turned out the name of the player whose likeness I had adopted was Steve Gleason, a second-rate defensive guy with very few statistics and very little playing time. But the name itself sounded familiar.

“Oh, right! He was that guy who blocked the punt!” I shouted enthusiastically to the snow and the Captain Morgan and the faerie lights. How cool was it that I had picked the one man who had, five years prior, symbolized all of New Orleans’ will to persevere as a city, as a community, as a collective, in one dramatic moment?

Excitement swept over me. “I” was Steve Gleason!

But wait. There’s more.

That. Exact. Month. (I don’t know the exact day), Gleason revealed that he had been diagnosed with ALS, and that his body had already started to decay. Wholly incurable, eventually it would consume all his physical movement and he would die. And his wife was literal-pregnant.

Everyone in New Orleans wept that even their hero should fall victim to a perfect New Orleans-style tragedy, after meaning so much to so many. How predictably sad that this foul-mouthed roughneck from Spokane, Washington would go from rarely even getting to play in a game to representing a statewide rebirth to crippled vegetable in just a few short years. Well, that’s just typical cruelty for a city, a people, who just can’t catch a break in-

But wait! There’s…. more?

You'd better believe there is. While we were busy feeling sorry for ourselves, Steve was making the announcement for a reason. By paying attention to the offense of the encroaching invader, he had calculated a strategy to interrupt the flow of the game and, in a flash of inspiration, he made a bold move to intercept them and turn the tide. He committed and laid out, full-stretch.

Mr. Gleason announced that he intended to live the rest of his life as a symbol for people to not give up, and not quit fighting for the things they want in life. While he could still move, he was putting together a charity called No White Flags, and he was going to be filming his ALS-encroaching life as a gift for his unborn child, and just because there was this “thing” he had to “live with”, it didn’t mean any of his dreams had to be sacrificed. He was going to prove, particularly to his children, that you can accomplish what you set out to do - period. No matter the circumstances, no matter the limitations, no matter what.

We don’t know if his character had always been like this, or if the roughneck himself had been as altered as the rest of us by that important "something" that happened on a Monday night in September 2006, but what matters most is this: he was going to use every remaining breath to live the truth that while any single moment could be your last, it could also be your greatest.

As of right now, Steve Gleason is still alive, still doing charity, and still achieving way more than most of us will ever know. Long since having lost the use of everything but his mind and his eyes, he interacts with the world using special technologies, and through their benefit and that of his ever-present wife and children, he gives speeches, climbs mountains, creates artwork, travels the world, and inspires many millions more people than just those who live in Louisiana. He even won a Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award a civilian can get.

His defense made his team champions.

His defense makes him a champion.

And while there is a documentary (Gleason), I’ve never seen or heard about a good book that tells the story this way. It certainly makes me feel like I know what it takes to be a champion, even if I'm a scrawny second-rate writer now who's never seen playing time. And that makes me wonder….

What if I dreamed….? Dreamed of being the one to write it….?

(Could there be…. even more….??)