Broadway Jose is the author's biographical story of an American senior citizen who attends a tackle football game in Buenos Aires' American football League. Captivated by the experience, he goes through a six week training camp and gets drafted into the league. During the course of this tale, Belacone comes off his couch to experience all of the things that most of us have only been a witness to as spectators of professional football. HIGHLIGHTS BELOW
One of the unforeseen benefits of playing for and running the team was that I was gaining firsthand validation of nearly half a century's worth of commentary I'd heard from NFL broadcasters, coaches, players, and owners. For the prior forty-five years, it had been just that: commentary. Now, that verbiage was taking on a deeper significance and coming to life in handy ways. I believed I instinctively knew what to do with the ball in almost every situation. I knew what to remind the other players of in the huddle. My helmet wasn't wired for sound; yet it was as if Chris Collingsworth and Phil Simms were in it giving me their advice.
The guy loved my stories, especially the one about a certain team's tight end coming to a game intoxicated. The player had been used to shuttle in the plays. Drunk, he was still better than the next guy, so they played him. As the second half began, the coach was screaming for him to come over to get the next play to bring in. He stayed seated on his helmet and laughingly proclaimed, "Your FedEx man is on strike." Despite everyone's crazed encouragements, he continued to sit on his helmet as if trying to hatch it. He looked up toward the sky smiling and drinking what all hoped was only Gatorade.
Once we take the field, I couldn't wait to get hit to snap me into the aggressive mode I was struggling to find. On the first play from scrimmage, Santiago blitzes from middle linebacker and obliges me as if he had been privy to my thoughts. If he had been, he must have lost something in the translation, as I didn't mean that hard or behind the line of scrimmage!
"See that ambulance over there, old man? You are leaving in it." I audible and run the 2-point conversion in. As I lay on the ground in the end zone, I feigned the voice of an old man and wailed, "Help me, I've fallen and I can't get up." That rendition of the famous Life Alert commercial was lost on them. So when I did get up, I hiked my stretch pants up to my chest, leaned forward as far as I could, and, on unsteady knees, mimed holding myself up with a rickety cane. Not the touchdown dance I would have choreographed beforehand, but I felt the need to pander to my audience.
That's-My-Boy blasts the final 10 yards up the middle for his first touchdown. He then, for reasons a soccer fan would better understand, starts running the other way down the field while trying to remove his jersey. Five yards, delay of game.
The president was my roommate. We chatted a little bit, and then he fell asleep around midnight. Good for him, bad for me; his snoring was threatening to vibrate a cardboard pastoral scene off the wall and onto my head. Not being privy to what constitutes a justifiable homicide in Paraguay, I instead began suffocating only myself with the pillow in a losing effort to muffle his noise. At 3:00 A.M. I gave up, got in a cab, and went to a casino.
