9102150763
DETROIT FREE PRESS
911209
Monday, December 09, 1991
METRO FINAL
1C
Photo Color JULIAN H. GONZALEZ
:
After cramps in the third quarter, cornerback Ray Crockett
needs help from his teammates. He did return.
George Jamison pins one of the Lions' five sacks on Ken
O'Brien.
Nose tackle Jerry Ball cries cheap shot after a block by Jets
fullback Brad Baxter injures Ball's right knee. Ball's season
is probably over.
MITCH ALBOM
SEE ALSO METRO EDITION, Page 1C
Copyright (c) 1991, Detroit Free Press
BALL SCREAMS CHEAP SHOT, VOWS TO AVENGE HIS AGONY
Jerry Ball wanted somebody dead. He knew what had happened. He'd seen it
a thousand times. Only this time it had happened to him, this nasty football
trick: One guy holds you up, the other chops you low. And now it was his knee
that was throbbing and his turn to sit on the motorized cart that would drive
him off the field and into his street clothes, and, damn it, he wanted no part
of this. Better a crane should lift him through the roof than to ride off
like some wounded soldier in front of the enemy with their cheap trick
garbage. Helpless, he turned like a caged beast, maddened with this sudden
inability to run or to even kick somebody, and he banged a fist down on the
back of the cart and I swear you could hear it reverberate in the upper deck.
That was a call to arms, a declaration of war, and for the next three
hours, that's what it was out at the Silverdome on Sunday -- bloody mayhem.
You would have sworn the building was under siege: so much noise, so many
stretchers, so many injured and hobbling. There were cramped muscles and
twisted knees and the kind of vicious hits that, were this a musical, would be
underscored by cymbal crashes. Sacks. Fumbles. Players disconnected from the
ball and then their senses. In the end, when the bombs stopped falling, the
Lions would learn the meaning of character -- just as they would likely gain
entry to the promised land, the playoffs. But it cost them. They lost one of
their top two defensive players, most likely for the rest of the season.
And now Jerry Ball wanted revenge. Satisfaction. Somebody dead. Something.
The game was just about over, and he was doing something I have never seen
done before: planting himself on a folding chair in the tunnel where the
players exit. He was in a gray sports coat and black shirt, his new crutches
by his side, even as photographers and reporters raced back and forth. He
glared down the tunnel as the players began to trickle in.
"You waiting for (Brad) Baxter?" someone asked, referring to the fullback
who had chopped Ball at the knees in the first quarter.
"I ain't waiting for Baxter," he barked. "I want Coslet."
Bruce Coslet is the coach of the Jets.
"Damn chop block," he said. "Completely illegal. They know it."
The first Jets player to pass him was cornerback James Hasty.
"You all right, big fella?" Hasty said, from under his helmet.
Ball sneered. "Yeah, I'm . . . nah, I ain't all right."
He didn't even look at the guy.
Hasty moved on.
The final showdown
More players converged in the tunnel, their cleats clomping on the
concrete floor. Jets defensive tackle Bill Pickel spotted Ball, and came
over.
"Hey, you OK?"
Ball glared. Pickel moved on.
Now came Baxter, the guy whose helmet went right into Ball's knee on that
second-and-five play in the first quarter -- a play in which Ball was
completely engaged in a standing block with center Jim Sweeney. That's
supposed to be illegal, going for a guy's knees when he's engaged at the arms.
Nothing was called. Ball went down. He knew his season was done.
Baxter saw Ball and trotted right to him. Big mistake.
"Yo," Baxter mumbled, "I was just trying to block someone baby, you know
how it is, everybody got to block somebody, I was just doing my job . . . "
"Hey," Ball snarled, leaning into him. "That was a f--- up play. You know
it."
"I was just trying to block."
"That was f------ up."
"Let's go over here and talk, man."
"I can't walk!" Ball yelled.
Baxter slid away into the crowd of players.
"Where's Coslet at?" Ball said. By now the crowd was thick, players,
cheerleaders, referees, cart drivers. Ball spotted some green jackets, and
across the way he saw Coslet moving quickly. He couldn't get to him, so he
lifted a crutch in the air and yelled -- he yelled above the cleats and above
the engine noise and above the field music and there was no mistaking the
voice of Jerry Ball, a big man cut down.
"YO!" he screamed after Coslet. "IT WASN'T WORTH IT! 'CAUSE YOU STILL GOT
YOUR A-- KICKED!"
Coslet looked over his shoulder, then turned away and was swallowed by
crowd. And he was gone.
How many more can fall?
In the end, that will be all the retribution coming to Jerry Ball this
season -- that, and the fact that his team, which for so many years had lacked
a winning instinct, much less a killer instinct, now has managed to find
both. Listen up, Detroit football fans: You can circle Sunday on your
calendars, because this was the day the Lions learned just how tough they have
become:
This was George Jamison making a crushing sack on third- and-one, and Dan
Owens making a crushing sack on third-and- two, and Melvin Jenkins making a
crushing sack that separated Jets quarterback Ken O'Brien from the ball. This
was William White slamming so hard into running back Freeman McNeil you could
hear his bones rattle. This was Barry Sanders being treated like a dish rag,
thrown into the Jets' sideline whenever they got a chance, quite often late
-- no penalty flags again -- yet managing to burn them for 114 yards rushing.
This was injuries and more injuries: Ray Crockett being carried off the
field by four of his teammates; Bennie Blades being carted off; Tracy
Hayworth lying flat on the sideline, as doctors worked on him. There was even
a fan, trying to streak, who fell from the railing. He was taken off on a
stretcher.
"I haven't seen so many stretchers in any game I've ever played here," Kevin
Glover admitted, after the Lions held off the Jets, 34-20, in that furious,
desperate and brutal three- and-a-half hour war. "We had to suck it up and
win. And we did."
He looked around the room. Eric Sanders had his knee wrapped in ice and
crutches under his arm. Jamison was hobbling, Chris Speilman was hobbling.
Toby Caston pulled off his uniform and just stared out.
"What they did to Jerry was wrong," Caston said. "It was a cheap shot. And
we had to come together for him."
It seems this team is doing that every week, doesn't it? Coming together
for a fallen Rodney Peete, for a fallen Mike Cofer, for a fallen Mike Utley,
now for a fallen Jerry Ball. You wonder at what point the fallen exceeds the
material needed to come together.
Apparently not yet. The Lions are 10-4, they are going to the playoffs
almost certainly. And there they will need all the lessons they learned
Sunday, because in the playoffs, everyone plays like this, tooth-and-nail --
using their teeth and nails if they must.
So be it. Football is brutal. But it shouldn't be cheap. The Lions lost
their biggest defensive threat Sunday, on a play that shouldn't be allowed.
The referees went deaf and dumb. The Jets got away with murder. All Ball got
to do was yell as the enemy slipped away.
"I promise you this," Ball said afterward, pressing down on his crutches
and speaking loud enough for his teammates to hear. "If we ever play those
guys again, I'm gonna be haunting them in their dreams."
You can bang on that.
FOOTBALL; DLIONS;Lions