Friends, Sullys, fellow Murphys—please raise me your beers.
I come not to bury Jerry but the team he loved so dear.
I’ve already written his obituary, and there shall be many more hymns sung for the late great philanthropist and even greater football man: Jerry Strong. However, I am but a mere sportsman. And so, please allow me to do what I do.
Tell you why the sky is falling.
At the start of the season I tried to warn you.
“The Super Bowl…” people whispered, feigning humility before the football gods. In their hearts they wanted to yawp to the sky. “We got da best quawtahback in da whole league! Undahfeated season comin’ ah way!”
“We have the weakest offensive line and a cap stretched further than Thanksgiving Day pants,” I whispered back. Not out of humility, but because my voice was sore from trying to convince people for years that the Tommys have been moving in the wrong direction. We keep thinking we’re one player away from being one play away from being one win away.
That Super Bowl was a decade ago, folks, when we were still lucky enough to have Jerry and Johnny was young.
“He’s losing arm strength,” I whisper. Now we’ve lost our owner midseason, and his replacement? Jerry’s crown slipped through six of his ex-wives’ well-manicured fingers to fall on the head of his twenty-nine-year-old New York–based financial-whiz daughter.
Not the team upgrade we were looking for.
“But maybe she can use some of that financial brilliance for our team,” you say.
“Maybe,” I reply.
But here’s the thing. Not once have I seen her in the owner’s box on game day. Not once have I seen her around. I’m not going to speak about her and Jerry’s relationship. I know more about game ties than family ties. But this I do know: Football was in Jerry’s blood. When he looked at the Tomcats, he saw his team.
If his daughter only cares about financial statements, what will she see?
I know what I see, and I know more about spread offenses than spreadsheets.
An asset so distressed, it’s a liability…
Four
Decker
It felt like a game night. The cheerleaders were going through their routines. The stadium lights glowed in dusk, and the sound system blared. The scoreboard was lit up, and my entire team and all the coaches were out on the field.
Of course—this wasn’t a game night. This was Jerry Strong’s funeral. Yes, the cheerleaders wore their uniforms and danced, but tracks of mascara trailed down their cheeks from crying through their routine. I suppose that could have seemed cruel, but no one was required to be here. They were all asked or simply wanted to be here for the man who they knew could no longer be here.
The scoreboard also didn’t have the Tomcats versus another team. It was Reaper: 1 Strong: 0. Let it be said that Jerry passed with his sense of humor intact. Outside the stadium, I could hear the sounds of thousands of people tailgating. The team had opened up the parking lot to season-ticket holders and even provided free hot dogs and burgers. It was all per Jerry’s wishes. I knew this because he had told me about it.
Johnny, it’s going to be grand. You’re going to think I won the big one instead of kicking the big one, he told me in his office one day. I think it was last season. Maybe the one before. Can’t say I gave it much thought at the time. We talked about a lot of other things that day, and we were in the middle of our push to get to the playoffs. But now, experiencing the funeral he had planned, it dawned on me that he knew. He must have seen it coming.
Also out of place for a pro game was the Essex High School marching band, Jerry’s alma mater, ready to play Jerry off one last time. And a Tomcats!!! banner that lay on the ground, ready to be erected at the very end of the ceremony. His request was for the other pallbearers and me to ram Jerry’s casket through the banner, tearing it open—harkening back to the days when he was a scrawny lineman for the Essex Bears.
In fact, the only thing here that was not in the spirit of a Friday or Sunday football game were my teammates. Every single man was here, along with the coaching staff. We all wore black suits and sat in chairs in the middle of the field.
We were all stuck. We wanted to celebrate him. With the tailgating and band and cheerleaders and the banner, he had clearly wanted a celebration. Everyone here wanted to give him that, of course. But we also wanted to grieve for him. A quarterback I admired was once asked what his favorite championship was out of the multiple that he won. “The next one,” he would always reply. I agreed with that. You know what my favorite day with Jerry would have been? Tomorrow.
Fall Out Boy’s “The Phoenix” blasted over the sound system as Jerry’s casket was wheeled out. He loved that song. He would clench his old fists and punch at the air and say, “Let’s get the people going!” I didn’t think the song choice was a comment on how he was going to rise from the casket Undertaker-style, reborn during his own funeral. But I was sure he enjoyed planting that idea into everyone’s head. I turned to follow the casket’s journey and could no longer ignore the pretty blonde who sat eight seats down from me, separated by six ex-wives and Nancy the ornery secretary. The fact that all of his exes were here to pay their respects was a testament to the fact that while Jerry was clearly terrible at being married, he was terrific at both getting married and getting divorced.
Hannah Strong. Jerry’s daughter. Not a new secretary. The new owner. At first I was mad that she had lied to me. But then I realized I had just assumed she was the beautiful new secretary. I mean, she looked nothing like Jerry. Thank goodness for that.
She sat between Alice, Jerry’s fourth wife, and Rue, Jerry’s third. Not only had the ex-wives come but they’d also very helpfully sat in chronological order. Rue had red hair, but it looked like a dye job. I bet she was a blonde when she was younger. And there were a lot of similar features between her and Hannah. Including that porcelain skin.
If I remembered correctly—and I may not have because there was a lot to keep track of when it came to Jerry’s wives—I think he and Rue were married the longest. Made sense that they would have had a kid. What didn’t make sense was that this was the first I was hearing about her. I’d worked my brain ever since I saw her photo on the news, trying to remember Jerry mentioning that he had a kid.
And I came up empty.
It made even less sense considering everyone was here to pay their respects to a man who was undyingly generous to people and their children. Mo was with his wife and four kids, and I knew for a fact every single kid here had a fond memory of Jerry giving him or her a present or snack or the type of experiences that childhood memories are built on. My parents were on the other side of me, and he couldn’t have been more gracious with arranging travel and tickets and letting them sit in the owner’s box whenever they wanted. My brother wasn’t here, but that was his fault or mine. Certainly not Jerry’s.
So where had Hannah been?
And why couldn’t I stop staring at her?
Thank God for sunglasses. It did feel mildly blasphemous to be checking out the deceased’s daughter while his casket was on stage. It would really have been more proper to check out her ass again when she left after the ceremony was over. But Jerry also shouldered some blame here. He was the one hiding a smokeshow daughter all these years.