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NOTES FROM A KEEPER
 The Urlacher Ups and DeBerg Downs of Life as a Keeper Leaguer
by Michael E Lawrence
5/12/2007
The locker room is complete madness. There is champagne, singing, dancing, even tears, and the party will go on through the night.
The Holybourne Prophets, in the final week of the regular season, have made the playoffs.
A champagne cork whizzes past me, actually grazing skin from my cheek, and for a moment, the whole place falls still, looking to see what I’ll do.
Anyone would think Welker had ordered a Babycham.
In fact, I laugh. I laugh like a drain. And the whole place erupts once more into action and raucousness.
A reporter asks Romo did you ever doubt you’d make it this far? and Romo, catching my eye as he answers, says sans stutter and with grin:
No, never.
***
It has been four long years coming, this post-season berth. An expansion franchise in 2003, the Holybourne Prophets were for too long underachievers, plump with promise but thin, emaciated frankly, on results. In 2005 and 2006 alike, the Prophets were cruelly kept from the playoffs by dreaded head to head tie breakers.
In the early days, we trotted out a horrendous mish mash of players Matt Hasselbeck would spend 2003, our inaugural season, handing off to the likes of Stephen Davis and Mike Cloud while Peter Warrick and our first ever draft pick, Andre Johnson, ran the wrong routes downfield. It wasn’t pretty, but it was all we could scrape together from the available free agents and rookies on offer.
Hasselbeck, for one, was always more concerned about his receding hairline than our record.
Do you think I’m going bald Coach? he asked me anguished one day, fingering the few Homer Simpson hairs he had left on top.
Matt, I said, peeved, I don’t think you’re going bald, no. I think you already went bald, a considerable amount of time ago.
They were tense times and our working relationship was never quite the same after that.
But through the years, things turned around. Hasselbeck, Warrick and Davis were upgraded through trades; we found Steve Smith and Romo on the waiver wire; draft picks like Kevin Jones and Ronnie Brown arrived; and the roster gradually, undeniably improved.
And now, in 2007, with a hard fought 56-45 win over the Yorkies on Sunday, we will host a team we have already beaten, All The President’s Men, in Holybourne this weekend, with a chance to advance to the semi finals the week after.
Win that, and we’d be in the Championship game, I think to myself, swigging the Sainsbury’s cava that penny-pinching kicker Nick Folk snuck in in a carrier bag.
***
After Romo it’s Clark, a draft pick this year, who has really stepped it up at crunch time.
His two touchdown catches against Jacksonville on Sunday were the difference against the vanquished Yorkies, but too rarely, as a workmanlike tight end, does he get the credit he deserves.
Clark is different from the others on the team. He is pensive and cultured, visually reminiscent of Terry Thomas when he twizzles his handle bar moustache while pondering an issue.
Amidst the celebrations, he is true to form: pipe in one hand, brandy in the other, thoughts elsewhere.
How you doing Dallas? says I, approaching a man with a name and a soul the size of a city.
He is nudged from his dream.
Oh, wonderful Coach, wonderful, he says. It all has rather a Bacchanalian quality.
I have no idea what he means.
Must be the time of year, I say hopefully. Clark puffs on the pipe.
I have some news for him, after the stellar 2007 he’s had (nine touchdown catches and counting), and I can’t wait to tell him.
Dallas, (he puffs again in acknowledgement), I’d like you to know that you will be one of our protected eight players after the season is done. We’d like you to stay here in Holybourne.
Clark, I can tell, is stunned. He looks at me for a long time, hand fixed to pipe, pipe fixed to mouth, and I see his eyes begin to well up, as he nods his thanks almost imperceptibly. He has been dropped many times before in this league, has grown accustomed to turning in playbooks and packing up suitcases. But this time, he’s going nowhere.
Across the way, Romo is still fending off reporters.
Tony can you beat All The President’s men in the playoffs? demands one such hack.
W-we could beat the President’s Men in heels, says Romo, possibly a little squiffy, to the delight of the reporters, and to the horror of yours truly. Three hours ago we didn’t even know if we’d be playing another game, and now we’re talking trash? Trans-gender trash?
How quickly, opines Clark behind me, despair can metamorphose into impetuosity. He hands me an empty glass. Brandy skipper?
Yes, yes please, says I, plonking myself down beside him, chewing my nails hard.
And not, I’m sure of it, for the last time.
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Notes From A Keeper November 27th The Final Push
Notes From A Keeper November 15th Darth Fader, Goliath, The Haters!
Notes From A Keeper November 6th Fireworks Night
Notes From A Keeper October 22nd A New Hope
Notes From A Keeper October 15th The Smurfs
Notes From A Keeper October 10th Potential
Notes From A Keeper September 30th Prophets vs Jets
Notes From A Keeper September 10th Season Opener
Notes From A Keeper September 1st QB or Not To QB
Notes From A Keeper August 10th Draft Day
Notes From A Keeper July 13th Draft Strategy
Notes From A Keeper June 17th Cutdown
Notes From A Keeper May 20th Off Season
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