Palmer Is Playing Hardball

Kareem Kelly noticed something.

On this first day of spring football practice for USC, his quarterback, the man speedy wide receiver Kelly hopes will fill the fall air with passes that hurt his hands when he catches them, this man, Carson Palmer, ran onto the practice field. Palmer didn’t just run, he sprinted. Palmer didn’t just sprint, he burned rubber.

“You could tell right away,” Kelly said, “how bad Carson wanted to come back because usually Carson would just be walking to practice.”

For the first time since Sept. 25, Carson Palmer, the USC golden boy, the quarterback with the strength, the arm, the quickness, the knowledge, the look, the name, Carson Palmer, poised and powerful as a true freshman, fearless and fearsome as a sophomore, a leader and a man when he stood at the line of scrimmage, stood at the line of scrimmage again on Thursday.

“I felt like a rookie,” Palmer said afterward. “I felt clumsy. I felt goofy. I haven’t felt like this in a long time.”

Maybe so. But Kelly sure felt good. “It was awesome to have Carson back,” Kelly said. “His passes were hard as ever. Look, I’m wearing gloves so I don’t hurt my hands.”

In an awful moment on Sept. 25, as Palmer tried to bulldoze for a three-yard gain against Oregon in Game 3 of the 1999 season, the Laguna Niguel sophomore fell awkwardly. He heard a crunch. He felt pain. Palmer’s right collarbone was broken and so was Palmer’s heart.

“I didn’t want to believe what happened,” Palmer says now. “I couldn’t believe what had happened. Believe that my season was over? No way. Believe that I wasn’t going to play against UCLA? No way.”

Way.

Palmer had broken a foot his senior year at Santa Margarita High and missed a month. That was difficult for Palmer, but all during that month he knew he would be back and finish the season.

Not this time. Nobody told Palmer he would be back. Palmer told himself that. Told himself that all during the long nights when he could only sleep on his back because his right arm had to be immobile and held straight at his side. But it’s hard to sleep on your back and Palmer would roll over in his sleep and then bolt awake, his arm aching, his mind racing. “I’d think about the UCLA game and about how I’d want to get back,” Palmer says. “It was unrealistic and it would have been stupid to try, but I had to keep thinking that.”

Danna Palmer, Carson’s mom, stood on the sideline Thursday watching her son. This day, Danna is saying, took forever to come. Her son, her strapping 6-foot-5, 220-pound boy, the one who walked through life with confidence, with ease, with a certain sense of entitlement that elite athletes carry because they expect to be winners and be healthy and be able to do whatever it is they do without any interference, spent a miserable four months.

“First, he was in a lot of physical pain,” Danna says. Her head snaps back, just a little, whenever Carson snaps off a crisp pass with that right arm and shoulder and collarbone. “Then he was in mental pain. It hurt Carson to watch his teammates play without him and it hurt even more when they lost.”

And they did lose.

After becoming only the second true freshman to start at quarterback for the Trojans (Rob Johnson, the El Toro star, was the first, so Orange County can be proud), Palmer, having taken over from Mike Van Raaphorst in Game 9 of the 1998 season, led USC to victories over Hawaii and San Diego State last season before his injury. After Palmer left, his team lost in triple overtime to Oregon. Including that loss, USC lost six of seven games after Palmer’s injury.

“To watch my team lose, that was the hardest thing,” Palmer says. He is sweating even though it is cold enough outside now, after the sun has set, to see your breath. It feels good to sweat, Palmer says. It wasn’t until about Feb. 1 that Palmer could throw a football. “Twelve-yard passes,” he says. “I threw nine of them and I was exhausted.

“I lost 15 or 20 pounds. I watched my right shoulder atrophy. I saw the muscle disappear. I couldn’t do anything and I wasn’t hungry and that first day I threw the ball, I felt so weak.”

But while his muscle was melting away, inside himself Palmer was building a new kind of strength.

As a special kind of physical specimen, as a gifted athlete with a loving family and a good life, Palmer says that maybe he had become a little spoiled.

“I was taking things for granted,” he says. “I’d complain about doing certain drills at practice. I wouldn’t always look forward to doing the hard work. I maybe wouldn’t go at top speed because I just assumed I’d do it in the game. I was taking football for granted.

“By sitting out all that time, when I had football taken away from me, I learned something. I learned that football means everything to me. I learned that I missed every practice, every drill. I missed hurting from working my hardest.

“I know I’m going to ache tomorrow. I’m going to feel muscles hurt and that’s going to feel so good. It’s an ache I want to be able to feel. I am never going to complain again about practice or work or anything. I think I’ve grown up a lot.”

In the middle of this first 2 1/2-hour practice, Palmer had thrown a 15-yard pass to Kelly. The timing had been off just a bit, the pass had dropped in front of Kelly. “Hey, dude,” Kelly had said, “remember, I can run a little. I’ve got some speed.”

Kelly didn’t say this too loud. Maybe Palmer heard, maybe not. But you could hear Palmer’s next pass to Kelly. The ball made noise moving through the air. That’s how hard it was thrown. Kelly caught the ball and there was more noise. That’s how hard the ball hit Kelly’s hands. Kelly smiled. Palmer smiled.

And USC football seems suddenly sunny.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com