THE BIG HURT

All hail warrior Mark Schlereth, man of steel, the kind found in braces and bedpans.

Strung together like rusty cans on the back of a wedding car, Schlereth clanks on to the field here Sunday as arguably the toughest man in Super Bowl history.

Since high school, the Denver Bronco guard has undergone 20 surgeries.

Doctors have cut on his left knee, his right knee, his left elbow, his right elbow, his back and his groin.

Yet Schlereth remains standing and starting for Sunday’s battle against the Green Bay Packers, a testament to the spirit of man and the miracles of medicine.

“Back in ‘95, one doctor told me I would never play again because of one of my knees, said it was impossible,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Check out the films . . . loser.’ ”

Crippling Career

All hail warrior Tom Glassic, a guard in Denver’s first Super Bowl, after the 1977 season.

Playing despite seven surgeries, he was a hero in a community starving for them. Because of the courage shown by him and others, the town would never be the same.

Neither would he.

“Today I can’t even stand up when I’m going to the bathroom,” he said.

Tom Glassic is permanently disabled.

By doing what he was taught--blocking with a perfect stance--the disks in his back have since deteriorated.

Some of the strongest knees in the game have been reduced to scar tissue.

He can barely walk. He cooks dinner from a chair and waits for the worker’s compensation check that will pay for another operation.

At 42, the warrior is wasted.

“I am physically a mess,” he said. “I am one step out of a wheelchair.”

Tough Guy Lives

All hail Mark Schlereth, the toughest of the tough.

He not only will step willingly into the trenches on his 32nd birthday against massive Green Bay Packer defensive linemen Gilbert Brown and Santana Dotson.

He also plays in the face of statistical evidence that when his career is finished, he will be crippled.

A 1997 Newsday survey of 1,423 former players concluded that 63% are afflicted with a permanent injury.

And there’s a good chance none of the respondents underwent 20 operations.

‘I can’t believe Schlereth,” veteran teammate Harry Swayne said. “If I was him, I would have stopped the surgeries at, what, maybe 10?”

While there is no research indicating whether more players are getting hurt than in past years, many say today’s injuries can be more devastating because of the abundance of artificial turf.

Medical techniques are better, increasing a player’s chance of retiring safely from those injuries.

But, in a cruel irony, those advancements also increase his chance of returning to the field sooner.

Schlereth has always chosen the latter option.

Just this season he returned from “season-ending” back surgery in six weeks.

“I get physically ill watching my team play without me,” he said. “After back surgery, we were playing on a Monday night, and I had to tell my wife and kids to leave the room, I locked the door, I was physically ill.”

Painful Reminders

All hail warrior Scott Curtis, who played linebacker in Denver’s most recent Super Bowl appearance, after the 1989 season.

He walked onto the field before the game as captain of the special teams. He later came off the bench to make 12 tackles. His team was outmanned, but he was unafraid.

Until about six months ago, when his surgically repaired back began hurting, his legs grew numb, and there was shooting pain.

His infant son Jack screamed for Curtis to pick him up, and he couldn’t.

While making his daily rounds as a surgical supply salesman, his back hurt so much he was forced to get out of the car.

“I’m not sure you want me to talk to Mark Schlereth,” he said.

Sure, Curtis said, it’s great to be a former Super Bowl player in the town where you played. People know you, customers respect you. Then you excuse yourself during a business meeting because your back just did a somersault, and everybody stares.

“When you are playing, and your team says have surgery, you say, ‘Yeah, fine, whatever it takes,’ ” Curtis said. “You think you are indestructible. You don’t think of the consequences.”

Laughing and Hurting

All hail Mark Schlereth, the baddest of the bad.

“You put my body on a normal person, they would be running to the hospital,” he said. “There are times I wonder, what am I doing to myself? Why am I doing this?”

Ah, but the stories he can tell.

There was the time after one of his operations in college, at the University of Idaho, when he fell while walking through a snowy campus on crutches.

“I stepped off a curb, slipped, and there I was, on the ground, snow falling, me crying and waving my crutch around and shouting, ‘Get away from me!’ ” Schlereth said.

People laugh when he tells that story.

Or this one:

“My parents are concerned, they think sometimes I shouldn’t play, so I say, ‘When you pay me what they’re paying me, I’ll stay home.’ So they say, ‘Well, I think you should play.’ ”

But Schlereth says it is not about money.

Which is too bad, because it would make more sense if it were.

“It’s a wonderful time, my teammates, the challenges,” he said. “The bottom line is, I want to line up on Sunday and play. That’s who I am.”

Forgotten Heroes

All hail Bruce Klostermann, who underwent six operations to be a backup linebacker on Denver’s two most recent Super Bowl teams.

He was recently trying to plant a flower bed at his Iowa home when he was struck with an interesting thought.

“All these years of getting yourself pounded in football, and here it was painful just trying to do some yard work,” he said.

It hurt to bend. It hurt to twist.

He lives in an area with wonderful changes in seasons, yet his knees hurt every morning the weather turns. If he tries to run, he can feel them falling apart.

“My general practitioner said he has never been around people who have destroyed their joints like that, except those who have been in car accidents,” Klostermann said.

His back and knees will be sore from the flight, but Klostermann is flying to this weekend’s game. And like any battered alumnus from any NFL team, the Broncos will greet him with . . . nothing.

No tickets. No hotel room. No recognition that he was once one of them, doing exactly what they are doing.

This time around, he will call up some buddies and track down a ticket broker and hope to get lucky.

“It’s not the Broncos, it’s the way of the entire NFL,” he said. “You better know what you are. You are a replaceable part.”

Proud Warrior

All hail Mark Schlereth, the meanest of the mean.

He is proud that when he was a free agent in the spring of 1995, he flunked physical exams given by three teams before the Broncos would take him.

He is proud of telling the story of earlier this season, how he spent an entire Sunday trying to pass a painful kidney stone with a Monday night game looming.

“Doctors finally came in Sunday night and said, ‘If you want to play tomorrow night, we have to get that out now,’ ” he recalled. “So I got in the operating room and they put my legs in stirrups and . . .”

He played that next night, for the first half against the Oakland Raiders, before retiring to the locker room.

Still filled with drugs from the surgery, he spent much of the second half vomiting.

Schlereth is proud to be an example.

“Players tell me their hamstrings are sore, they don’t think they can practice, then they walk in and see me getting ready for practice,” he said. “They say, ‘If you can do it, I can do it.’ ”

Very Few Regrets

All hail every warrior who will take the field Sunday, and in past and future Sundays.

They play a game in which the average career span is less than four years . . . yet the repercussions can last a lifetime.

They are either too hungry or too dumb to worry about it.

Tom Glassic, what would you say to Schlereth?

“I’d say I’d do it all over again, even if I knew what would happen,” he said. “We had a Super Bowl reunion last year, and I still got chills.”

Scott Curtis, what would you say?

“Hey, I’d play again if I could. I’d go out there and play right now. Unless you’ve felt it, you don’t understand.”

Bruce Klostermann?

“I’d say suck it up. That’s the way it is. It’s still worth it.”

And what does Mark Schlereth, who already can’t get on the floor to play with his children, say to Mark Schlereth?

What do you think?

“I’m not concerned at all, medicine may be able to someday replace some of the things that are wrong with me,” he said. “I can’t worry about what will happen 10 years from now.”

Nor would one even care to imagine.

*

1 BONE SPUR: Jan. ’92

1 HERNIATED DISK: Nov. ’97

5 OPERATIONS: From Sept. ’86 to Dec. ’96

1 DISLOCATED LEFT ELBOW: Nov. ’86

11 OPERATIONS: From Dec. ’83 to Jan. ’97