Here’s to Typing One for the Team

I have blood on my sock. I am not asking for a day off. But I have blood on my sock. It has seeped into the top of my sock, and it has made a stain. The stain is not in the shape of Curt Schilling’s stain. Joe Buck identified Schilling’s stain as looking like Oklahoma. My stain is more like the Mexican border running south from El Paso, Texas.

A dog bit me. I wish I had a better story. I wish I had done something heroic. I wish I had thrown 94 miles per hour at the Yankees and torn a tendon sheath so that doctors needed to shoot me up and sew me up and I bled on national television into the shape of Oklahoma. Charlie Pierce, a Boston sportswriter, spoke of Schilling. He spoke of The Passion of Curt. Maybe Charlie saw something besides Oklahoma in the stain.

But a dog bite. How heroic is that? Red Smith said writing is easy. You open a vein and bleed. I’m here to tell you it’s not that easy. For one thing, opening a vein hurts, especially if you let a dog do it. I didn’t even see the dog. I’d walked past him, and he had growled. Not that I paid much attention. After writing all this stuff all these years I’m used to being growled at.

Occasionally, there has been more than a growl. A chocolate cream pie in the face. Horse manure in an envelope. Once it might have been a baseball bat upside the head except someone said, “Thurman Munson’s looking for you, and he’s got a bat.” I moved to New Zealand.

But no reader ever bit me. I believe that’s still true, though the dog’s owner, who happens to be my son, a former wide receiver, asks with some regularity why I never wrote about the lay-out catch he made on third and long back in the day.

Anyway, the dog ran and hit me behind the right knee. It felt like a chop block taught by Alex Gibbs and approved by Mike Shanahan. Speaking of the Broncos, has anyone heard from Clinton Portis lately?

So I’m bleeding. And I’m typing. I’m at the typing machine, and I’m thinking of Joe Paterno. JoePa is coaching, and he shouldn’t be. I’m thinking of Steve Spurrier. Coach Superior isn’t coaching, and he should be. They should trade jobs, JoePa to golf, Spurrier to Happy Valley. Perfect.

The doctor didn’t put any stitches in my leg. I asked for some. They worked for Schilling. It sounded Heroic with a capital H. Such moxie, such want-to, such guts. I wanted to give him the Medal of Honor right there. The doctor who shot him up and put a stitch through the skin, my goodness, I hope the Nobel people were watching.

I confess that at first I wondered what all the fuss was about. The big, tough pitcher has a boo-boo? On his ankle? The day Schilling pitched in the World Series, maybe 1,200 NFL players went to work, and 1,197 of them were dead men walking. Their bloodstains looked really scary, like Dick Cheney.

Difference is, they’re football players. They enjoy beating up each other, not to mention civilians who touch the limo. They chew nails. Baseball players chew sunflower seeds. This last summer Sammy Sosa sneezed, and his back went ker-blooey. Sad but true, 1980s Braves infielder Randy Johnson went on the disabled list because of a bad thumb. He hurt it tugging on his sanitary socks. He never played again.

I didn’t have to write this week. I could have asked to go on the D.L. We could have run Todd Jones in for some quality innings with Rawlings and Hille closing. But I am paid $15 million to write. I get a $2 million bonus if I spell 98 percent of the words correctly, even those said by Tommy Lasorda.

So I’m bleeding, and I’m typing, and I’m thinking now about Terrell Owens because I’m on the Eagle flier’s side. His latest oratory concerned Ray Lewis: “This is a guy, double-murder case, and he could have been in jail, but it seems like the entire league embraces a guy like that. I’m going out scoring touchdowns and having fun, and I’m the bad guy.”

Owens, like Schilling, is enamored of the majesty of his ownself. T.O. talks as if everyone cares what he thinks. Most Americans, 55 million anyway, aren’t thinking of Terrell Owens. They’re thinking of moving to New Zealand.

Still, T.O. has it right. The last time I saw Ray Lewis on a television commercial, he wore this I’m A Really Really Bad Guy glare. The look sells video games. The look sells football tickets. It even sells some sports magazines. But I know one thing to be true.

Let’s say I was charged with double murder. Let’s say I walked after copping a plea to obstruction of justice. Let’s say somebody kept paying me millions of dollars to hit people. In that case, I would stow the glare. I would wear a sunrise smile 24/7/365. I would deliver Meals on Wheels.

Excuse me now. I have to go change my Band-Aid.