The Killer Tomato

I can surely forgive myself for harboring the stereotypical fantasy of playing quarterback in the shadow of the Golden Dome. From the moment I found out that Notre Dame had full-contact, interhall football, long before I was accepted to the school, I began to imagine myself leading a championship game-winning drive (in the STADIUM, no less!). The drive, of course, culminated in an endzone corner fade completion with all its resultant glory and admiration. I was not Rudy-delusional enough to imagine this happening in an actual varsity game. I had never played quarterback before, but whenever I threw the ball around, people would compliment my crisp, hard spirals. That had to mean something, right?

I did not have the courage to put my hat in the QB ring as a Freshman at Grace Hall. The pre-tryout meeting scared that ambition away, especially when the captains said that interhall football was on the level of high-class Ohio or Pennsylvania high school ball. Having crawled my way into the starting lineup my senior year in the Philadelphia Catholic League, I now significantly lowered my expectations to just making the team. That characterization of the league’s strength (let’s be honest) was a stretch. I would say it was like a gaggle of pretty good non-scholarship kids having a full-pad pickup game. I was able to start at cornerback, another position I had never played. After a successful year on defense, I ginned up the nerve to try for quarterback my sophomore year. 

If you have ever watched the auditions on American Idol, you immediately sense the moment when the overmatched contestant realizes that not only is he not a “good” singer, but he may also actually be tone-deaf and missing a vocal cord. After doing reasonably well throwing against air, my fortunes nosedived when we lined up eleven-on-eleven. The first problem was my inability to hold on to a snap under center. No problem, we will run shotgun. Ten minutes later, I began to wonder if all those people who told me I had a good arm did so only because the look on my face told them I needed to hear that so very, very much.

This may be apocryphal, but it is said that former Notre Dame quarterback Phil Jurkovec transferred from Notre Dame, at least in part, because he could not make a throw in practice that did not end up in the path and/or hands of Kyle Hamilton. Hamilton is 6’4” and 220 lbs. My interhall version of him was a more modest 5’10” and 205 lbs with a mop of red hair. He was also my good friend, Jeff Abbot. It was Jeff who made sure that not a single pass of mine made it into the secondary. I never saw him in the passing routes, not one time, until the ball was leaving my hands and he was, of course, RIGHT THERE. It got to the point where every play ended in laughter, led by the person who would undoubtedly now be QB1 based solely on the fact that he at least looked to see where the best player on defense was before he called for the snap.

After practice, I walked back to Grace Hall more than a little mortified. I saw Jeff about 30 feet away and our diagonal paths led to a tandem finish just past the outdoor Stepan Courts. He had a slight smirk as he greeted me with “Garb.” I nodded and said, sotto voce, “I hate you.” His smirk expanded, as did mine. We both knew he had done me a favor. My humiliation was now over and took place in front of a limited audience. Had that happened with two full sidelines of spectators on a Sunday morning, it would have been much worse. The dream was dead, and I moved back to my comfort zone on defense.

I had a realization that day, not just that I was a terrible quarterback. I realized that Jeff was the type of player those captains described the year prior. He had played high level Ohio high school football and basketball. He came from a family of great athletes. His Irish twin, Eric, was a star linebacker at Ohio Wesleyan and his sister, Heather, eventually played basketball for Loyola-Maryland. Jeff told me that one of the best years for his family was when senior defensive end Eric and junior defensive tackle Jeff led Grandview Heights High School to the Ohio State Quarterfinals. Jeff grew up and (to his great discredit) continues to be a full-throated Buckeyes fan. He did not really consider Notre Dame until he was awarded a full scholarship from a local foundation. I think the Interhall League was, as it was for many of us, a chance to wring the last drops of glory out of his athletic journey.

When I say Jeff was a great football player, it is not a sentimental overstatement. He played both ways for Grace, offensive guard and middle linebacker. When he blocked you, you stayed blocked. When he tackled you, you got up slowly. I truly believe he was the only person on the team that could have started at all 22 positions (yes, even quarterback). A sure source of the sophomore moxie that pushed me to try to throw the football came from a surprisingly (to me) successful initial year on defense. I was proud of the number of tackles I made and passes I broke up. That led to my next, sad realization: these players were running into me so frequently because they were running away from Jeff and the passes were easy to defend because he was either deflecting them or hitting the quarterback mid-motion. I watched him play over four years and I say with the highest confidence that not only was he the best player on our team, but he was also the best player in the league.

More importantly, Jeff is one of the best human beings I have ever encountered. A reliable litmus test for whether I will like a person could be their opinion of Jeff Abbot. If they cannot get along with him, in my opinion, something is truly wrong with them. About ten of us routinely gather annually for a golf trip and not only did he inaugurate this yearly gathering, his presence is guaranteed. One of the things that made me admire his playing intensity was how different he was off the field. As I mentioned, he is under six-feet-tall, but definitely has the presence of a gentle giant. Similar to one of his tackles, when he befriends you, you feel it for a long time. 

In typical Notre Dame fashion, collections of friends start to intersect, as do their interests. As my daughter bitingly told me on her initial visit to campus, Grace Hall is the “worst looking building at Notre Dame, and it’s not even close.” I told her that was incorrect and the contest for ugliest building was a tie (Flanner). That being said, Grace undoubtedly lacks the visual grace (sorry) and beauty of the other dorms. At the time, however, it had two advantages over the rest of campus: air conditioning and Grace TV. The former worked intermittently; the latter worked when placed in the hands of the proper talent.

We noticed that there were cameras and students with microphones at our Interhall games freshman year. I did not think much of it until changing the channels in my room and seeing a replay of the game accompanied by the driest announcing you had ever heard. My roommate, Mike DuBay, noticed this as well. I could see the hamster running on the wheel in his head. I knew that he would be the announcer the next year. He teamed up with our other close friend, Steve Connolly, and the replays became ex-post-facto must-see-television once they took over.

The two of them took biased announcing to another level. About 25% of the broadcast was play-by-play and the rest was insults. They loved nicknames: our fleet receiver Jeff Burns was “The Burner”, I was undeservedly “The Golden Boy”, and Jeff was dubbed “The Killer Tomato”, as the aforementioned carrot top was too good to ignore. Mike would interview me after the game and focus mainly on my questionable hygiene habits and lack of a girlfriend, rather than any particular play. While their slights of their friends on the Grace squad were always on point, their observations about the other teams (“We are now hearing that the Morrisey quarterback has a colostomy bag.”) were unfair and glorious. 

“That’s a big loss for Keenan, Mike, as I’m told he is the only player on the team with pubic hair.”

“Look at the Grace sideline: an intermix of world class athletes and a bevy of campus beauties. Over on the Dillon side, I see a pathetic gaggle of pure sausage.”

We would gather on Sunday evenings to watch the first replay of the game. It was fun to see Mike and Steve eye each other when they knew a line they were particularly proud of was on its way. They were also pretty awful to each other on the broadcast, a repartee that continues on our annual golf trip lo these 30 years later. Steve was a good athlete in his own right, and tried out one year, starting at defensive end before a game one season-ending wrist injury. Mike would ask Steve to draw on his extensive playing experience for his analysis before dryly questioning “How would you grade your football career, Steve?” Steve would compare himself to “Moonlight” Graham, the doctor in Field of Dreams that came so close, but just short of, career glory. Between watching Jeff play (something I could not directly do when I, too, was playing) and listening to my dear friends lay verbal waste to anyone in their purview, I look back at the Sunday replays as one of the many things that drew us together. It is clearly not the only thing, or the biggest thing, that gave us cohesion. However, our intertwined football experience provided some fibers in the tapestry of our life-long friendship. 

The seeds of those relationships have blossomed and continue to pay dividends in numerous ways. When my father passed, I went to look at his announcement on the funeral home website. There was a section where people could offer online condolences. At that point, there were about twenty of them. The very first was beautifully written by my wonderful friend, Jeff. Honestly, how do you hate a guy like that?