Taking One For The Team

Baltimore Raven running back Willis McGahee underwent arthroscopic surgery on his left knee. So did I twice thirty years ago.

I had my first knee operation in 1976 to repair torn cartilage. My surgery was performed by the late Dr. Stan Lavine. Dr. Lavine was the Redskin Team Orthopedic Surgeon. The surgery was successful. Today I have two long scars on each side of my left knee as evidence of the surgery of over twenty five years ago. I would later have surgery in the spring of 1978 or 1979.

I remember that Edward Bennett Williams told me that I would be a great lawyer one day but now I was a great football player and I needed the surgery if I was to be ready for the next season. I had already paid cash for a full semester of legal education at George Washington University where I was attending at night. The post surgery rehab would make it impossible to attend class every night Monday through Friday as I would do over four and a half years in order to graduate attending as a part time/night student.

I had the surgery and dropped a whole semester of classes taking one for the burgundy and gold. And I was ready for that season. My operation was one of the first Arthroscopic surgeries in history. I am still walking today with no cartilage in my left knee which causes my left leg to be weaker than my right leg. I went skiing only one time in my life in the French Alps. My instructor noted my weak left knee and said I was in danger of skiing off the side of the mountain. But that is another story.

GOOD LUCK WILLIS McGAHAEE and every other NFL Player taking one for the team this season.

1972 is over 35 years ago calendar time but it is at least 100 years in NFL time. My, how things have changed.

In 1972 I was the last pick on the 13th round of the NFL draft selected by the World Champion Dallas Cowboys. I had just turned 20 years old and was about to graduate cum laude as an independent scholar from what we believed was the top small liberal arts college in the world, Amherst College. Few players make it from Division III, where we play eight games a season and no spring games, to the NFL. I wanted to be drafted by an NFL team.

I thought it was possible but settled on the notion that it was not probable as the draft approached. Former Amherst teammate Doug Swift was now a starter for the Miami Dolphins and now goes down in history as a starter on that famous 17-0 team; and they won their Super Bowl unlike this year’s Patriots.

Swifty said to me "Fugett you can make it in this league". Was he being kind, I wondered? Oh I would wonder often late into the night.
Maybe just maybe I would tell myself as I fell to sleep dreaming about scoring touchdowns in the National Football League.
More to Come…