9102130071
DETROIT FREE PRESS
911118
Monday, November 18, 1991
METRO EDITION
1C
MITCH ALBOM
SEE ALSO METRO FINAL CHASER EDITION, Page 1C
Copyright (c) 1991, Detroit Free Press
THIS GAME CAN BE MAGIC AND TRAGIC
The crazy thing about football is that it can take you to places you never
dreamed of, the highest and the lowest. One minute you're dancing in the end
zone; the next, you're surrounded by doctors who are asking whether you have
any feeling in your legs.
There were two touchdowns scored within five minutes of Sunday's game at
the Silverdome. Both were pass plays. Both were worth six points to the
Lions. But involved guys named Mike.
The similarity ends there. For Mike Farr, it was a play he'd been waiting
for his whole life, the beginning, he hopes, of great things to come.
Mike Utley can only hope it's not the end.
Let us begin with the happier moment. Farr had been dreaming of an NFL
touchdown since the days when his father, Mel, was scoring them for this same
Detroit franchise back in the '60s. Being the son of a famous running back is
not the easiest of childhoods. Everyone says the same stupid things. "I hope
you're as good a player as your father." "Maybe one day you'll score
touchdowns, too?"
Young Farr had hoped so, but his prospects looked thin. He had played
receiver for UCLA, but was overlooked in the NFL draft. Nobody wanted him. Not
big, not particularly fast, his only professional opportunity came in a
free-agent tryout with his father's old team, the Lions. You do strange things
when it's your only shot. By sheer toughness and desire, Farr made the squad.
That was last year.
"Ever since, I've wondered about catching a touchdown pass," he would say
after the Lions' 21-10 victory Sunday over the Los Angeles Rams. "I guess once
you make the team, you worry that you'll leave the game without ever getting
one."
He had gone a year and half with such bad fortune, until the fourth quarter
Sunday, when the Rams came after quarterback Erik Kramer with a blitz and
Kramer, having called an out-and- up pattern, knew that if he could get the
ball there, Farr should be open. Man, was he open! Nobody within 10 yards. All
Farr had to do was gather the ball, make like an antelope and gallop across
the goal line.
Touchdown. Finally.
"I was so excited I lost track of the ball," Farr said later. "Then when I
was coming off the field, I realized I wanted to give it to my mother. Every
week she's been saying, 'This is the week you get one, this week, this week .
. .' So I ran to one of the equipment guys and said, 'I got to have that
ball.' "
He smiled. He beamed. "Everything happened so quick. It was like, Wow! And
it's over . . ."
He still thinks of the team
"Everything happened so quick, and then, whoa, he was down," mumbled Roman
Fortin, the offensive lineman. His voice was quiet. His tone was somber. He
was 30 feet from Farr in the locker room but he was talking about a whole
different world. His best friend on the team, Mike Utley, the massive
offensive guard, the guy who rode the motorcycles, the guy who loved heavy
metal music, the guy who went out with Fortin's family to Pizza Hut and,
afterwards, grabbed his friend and said, "Thanks" and Fortin said "Why?" and
Utley said, "For proving to me that I'm not ready for kids yet." That guy, his
buddy, had gone down in that same fourth quarter, someone had snapped his
head back and he was flat on the field, not moving, a slab of flesh.
"I ran out there when I saw him. I tried to tell him everything was OK. But
I saw all the doctors around him. He wasn't able to move his legs. And they
said spinal injury. . . ."
No one is quite sure how it happened. Utley, as usual, had been pounding
his body against the defensive linemen, trying to open holes and protect his
quarterback. Feisty and wild -- one of his teammates calls him "a raw guy" --
Utley had already had a few swinging sessions with defensive end Alvin Wright.
The referees had separated them. It was a good hard afternoon of football.
Then, on the first play of the final period, Kramer found Robert Clark in the
end zone for a touchdown and the Lions leaped in celebration. All except
Utley, who couldn't move. Soon the doctors were taping him to a stretcher and
rolling him away.
"When they carried him off on that stretcher," said center Kevin Glover, "I
saw him move his hand. He gave me the thumbs up sign, like he wanted us to
win. Can you imagine thinking about the team at a moment like that? I'm not
sure I could . . ."
The ups and downs
The idea that football and war are nearly the same is really not
far-fetched. Not at all. When you're victorious in war, you cannot get any
higher, your heart pounds, your blood rushes. And when you go down in war, it
happens swiftly and without warning. You never see the bullet. Isn't that
what they say?
So it was that Farr was surrounded by reporters long after the Lions
victory Sunday, smiling and telling stories. And he was still talking as
Fortin tied his shoes and asked which hospital his friend was at. "It's
probably Henry Ford, right? One of those Henry Fords?"
His teammates shrugged. No one knew.
You hear a lot about football, and sometimes you figure everyone is
feeling the same thing, happy with the victories, sad with the losses. But for
all the team talk, this sport, like life, is still made up of individual
people. One man's glorious afternoon can be another's tragic moment. It's a
hell of a scary game that way, it really is.