Steel Balls

This was an older article on mine…

I never want to make light of someone’s death, but the recent suicide of NFL great Junior Seau got me thinking…and therefore writing. His status among the elite brought more press than most, but he became the 8th member of the San Diego Chargers who would die an early death…and they all played for that one magical season in 1994 when they went to the teams ONLY Superbowl. When the 5th member passed away, statisticians said the odds of this happening to one team was less than 1%…now they don’t even bother to calculate it. I have put my own ideas to explain the unexplainable. I hope not to offend.

You may have noticed I am a Steelers fan. All you have to do is crack open my basement door to be hit by a tsunami of Black and Gold. Players passing before their time is nothing new to those who follow the Steelers. With Seau’s suicide, many have searched for a cause…and head trauma seems to be the consensus. This can explain some, but not all. The Steelers did have their own suicide, Terry Long, in 2005. Another, Justin Strzelczyk, in 2004, led NYS police on a high-speed chase the wrong way on the thruway. He eventually ended up losing a head on battle with a tractor-trailer. It was later deemed both these men suffered from head trauma. But what of the others? David Little in 2005, breaking rule number one of weight lifting, did not have a spotter. He lost the grip of his barbell and it rolled on his neck and it suffocated him. Another, however, the one that touched me the most was Steve Courson…happening a day after my birthday in 2005. At age 50, he was on his land cutting down a huge tree. It did not cooperate and the tree began to fall a different direction. In that direction was his dog, a black lab. He rushed to protect his dog like he had rushed to protect his quarterback many years before. The dog was safe, his master was not. These players may have died around the same time, but they never all played for the team at the same time. The story of the 1994 San Diego Chargers is a bit different, they shared a magical season…but at what price?

It was January 1995…playoff time for the 1994 season and the Steelers were the team to beat in the AFC. I had just arrived back from Pittsburgh after attending the Steelers’ first playoff match and frostbite still filled my fingers. You see, the game was frigid, it WAS winter in Pittsburgh. Game time temps hovered in the teens, but the wind chill drove it too low for zero. During the game, I was warmed by the booze in my “bar”noculars and the beating the Burgh boys put on the Browns. It was cold, very cold…It was Steelers weather! Wearily resting from my trip, the phone rang…luckily this coincided with feeling coming back to my fingers. It was a friend from Steeler Nation calling with an extra ticket to the next game. He asked if I was up for another arctic adventure back to the Burgh. Duh…let me get my “bar”noculars! I had hardly settled back in NY before I was off again. This time as we arrived something was different. I thought the car was overheating…I was sweating. It was warm…too warm. This was a time before weather.com…the Internet, smart phones…possibly even the weather channel. We just assumed a week deeper into winter Pittsburgh would be a freeze-age wasteland. I believe we even sang those words to the Who song somewhere near Harrisburg. The Steelers’ home field advantage was the weather, but this warm weather, playing a warm weather team, the San Diego Chargers…put a pit in my stomach.

It was now Sunday, game day. The Steelers were a HUGE favorite to be victorious and venture back to the Superbowl. Gone were my gloves, my jacket, my ski mask…and my “bar”noculars. I wore a recently purchased T-shirt, since there was never any thought of packing such light attire. We arrived early at the stadium, and the local media spotted my eagerness to be interviewed. A guy with the worst hairpiece since Jim Carr approached. Son, what do you think of the game today? My response eerily haunts me to this day…”Well, I got a bad feeling about today. Seems the Chargers brought their warm weather with them…wonder whose soul they had to sell for 60 degree temps during a Pittsburgh winter.” He huffed at me, having given him more words than he wished and sought out a less sober fan. I guess all he wanted was the 2 words Steelers and Superbowl. The San Diego Chargers won that day; on plays that probably would not have prevailed had the weather been worse. This would be the last victory for these 45 men.

David Griggs would be the first. Only 5 months after defeating the Steelers, he died when his car slid off an expressway ramp and slammed into a large sign pole. 7 others would perish in their own unique way…the latest being Junior Seau. Rodney Culver would die in a plane crash…Shawn Lee a heart attack…Chris Mims, obesity. It was as if they were cast in the movie Seven…or Final Destination. While all these deaths could be shrugged off…it was the story of Doug Miller that brought me to write this. While camping on the Colorado River he was killed by lightning…surviving an initial strike, then being hit by a second. You talk about the odds. The 1994 San Diego Charger team was a close, overachieving team…beating those same kind of odds. They snuck into the playoffs, they snuck into Pittsburgh and they snuck out with a trip to the Superbowl. It would seem these odds are catching up with them.

In the course of ones life we find ourselves looking up…or down…for answers, for prayer, for deals. “I would give it all”…if you could only give me this. That year did the Devil come down to San Diego looking for a soul to steal? Did these men offer something…everything, so they could have that one moment an athlete dreams of? It is hard to brush this off as coincidence…especially when these men had little in common except that magical season in 1994. The San Diego Chargers have not made the Superbowl since.

Perhaps the Devil stole all the souls he needed…

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