It was a hot summer day in L.A., and I was playing shortstop on the same team as Frank Samuels. We were thirteen. The other team’s batter swung and hit a looping fly ball into short center field. I started for the ball with my back to the plate. Samuels—big, fast, powerful—was charging in from center field. I ran with my arms outstretched, my head tilted back, calling, “I got it! I got it!” Samuels thought he had it. We collided.
I writhed on the ground, trying to catch my breath. My coach and teammates crowded around me. Pretty soon my breathing was back to normal. My white T-shirt clung to my hot, sweaty body. I sat up and looked at Samuels. He was smiling. That meant only one thing to my thirteen-year-old mind: he’d run into me on purpose. I was enraged. As soon as our coach helped me to my feet, I started for Samuels, not caring how big and strong he was or whether he was my teammate. But before I could take one step, my right knee buckled under me, and I saw the thick green grass rush up to my face.
A ligament in my right knee was torn. I had to wear a heavy plaster cast from the top of my thigh down to my ankle for six weeks.
There were two more incidents involving Samuels and me. The first came when I entered Fairfax High School and pledged for a club called the Paragons. On initiation night, Samuels, who was half a year ahead of me, sat in a chair and made me sit on the floor in front of him. He kept hitting my head with his knuckles. Hard. Maybe thirty times. With each hit, my loathing for him grew stronger.
After becoming a Paragon, I swore to myself that I would never treat pledges the way Samuels had treated me. Instead, I would protect them from such sadists.
The second incident took place when we were seniors on the Fairfax High School football team. We were playing Hollywood High, our crosstown rival.
There was only a minute left in the game. The score was tied, 12–12. We had possession of the ball near the 50-yard line. I was the quarterback and rolled to my right. I spotted our wide receiver Eddie Lingo way downfield. On the run, I threw the most perfect pass of my life—a 50-yard spiral that Eddie caught on the 3-yard line, where he was immediately tackled.
We were out of timeouts. The clock was running, and we quickly formed a huddle. “All right, you guys,” I said, elated with the pass I’d just thrown, “I brought us down here—I’m taking it in.”
Those were probably the worst choice of words any quarterback in the history of football ever said in a huddle. It was selfish, arrogant, and disrespectful of me to say it. How could I have committed such an inane act? I was all revved up. I knew we were going to score, and I wanted to be the hero.
I called the play in the huddle—“Sixteen fake dive.” We broke from the huddle and lined up. “Ready…Go!” I shouted, and the ball was snapped into my hands. I took two quick steps to my right and faked a handoff to our 6-foot-4, 240-pound running back, Bill “Bulldozer” Peters, crashing into the line. I kept the ball and tried to follow him into the end zone. A Hollywood lineman was smack-dab in my path, and POW, he nailed me good and hard in my already sore right thigh. I got up very slowly and barely made it back to the huddle.
On the next play, just before the gun sounded, I handed the ball to Bulldozer, who plowed into the end zone for the winning touchdown.
After the game, as we were filing onto the school bus in our dirty, sweaty uniforms, Frank Samuels approached me. He grabbed my jersey and pushed me backward, saying, “Why’d you say that in the huddle?” He was speaking up for the whole team. I could respect that. He knew, though, that I literally had only one leg to stand on. “It takes a whole team to win a game, Sutton.”
Lucky for me, a few of our teammates came between us.
I wasn’t able to play in the last regular season game because of my badly injured thigh. All we had to do was beat Hamilton High, the worst team in the Western League that year, and we’d get into the L.A. City Playoffs. We lost.
I lost—because of an inflated ego.
Thirty years later, in 1988, I spilled the beans to Bulldozer at our class reunion. “I said the wrong thing in the huddle against Hollywood High our senior year.” He asked what I had said and I told him. Bulldozer looked at me and said, “Don’t worry about it, Joe. We all make mistakes.”
His words were like God absolving me of all guilt.
Frank Samuels was at the reunion. I don’t know why, but I didn’t hate him the way I thought I would. I just didn’t talk to him.