Can't Knock the Hustle

Over the past nearly-27 years, I’ve sustained my fair share of injuries while playing sports. Some of these injuries were unavoidable and would have befallen anyone in my position. Others, however, were the direct result of a self-created desire to be the “hustle guy.” The hustle guy is the player that does the little stuff necessary to help his team win – in baseball, his uniform is always dirty from diving all over the place; in basketball, his body is bruised from playing hard-nosed defense; in hockey, he’s the guy without any teeth. Some examples of hustle guys I grew up emulating were Mets second baseman Wally Backman and Knicks forward Charles Oakley. And though he’s before my time, the prototypical example, of course, is Pete Rose, whose gritty play earned him the well-deserved moniker “Charlie Hustle.”

A little note on the psychology of the hustle guy: they do not hustle because they want to, they hustle because they have to. That is to say, hustle guys tend to be people that were not given the gift of natural athleticism. Instead, they must manufacture faux-athleticism with some concoction of sweat, gritty determination, and quite often an utter disregard for the safety of their own bodies. If hustle guys had a natural grace about them – think of the way Ken Griffey, Jr used to lope after balls in center field, the effortlessness of Will Clark’s swing, or the way Clyde “the Glide” Drexler would soar through the air – someone somewhere along the pipeline would have told these kids to stop putting their bodies in harm’s way. But the hustle guys were never handled with kid gloves like that. Instead, their psyches were hardened by being kept so dangerously close to the fire of failure. As a hustle guy will tell you, leave grace for those other guys, because there’s nothing graceful about picking grass out of your teeth, or, better yet, just leaving it there.

To take an example from my own life, when I was in 6th grade, my middle school threw together a boys basketball team. My friends convinced me to play, even though I had hardly ever played basketball. Due in part to my inexperience, I could not dribble the ball and my jumpshot reflected only the vaguest apprehension of the purpose of the game, namely to direct the ball into, or at least in the generally direction of, the hoop. Still, because I was willing to work my butt off on defense, I, quite remarkably really, earned a starting spot as a four-guard. You likely have never heard of the position. That’s because my coach created the position, tailored it to my unique skill set (or lack thereof), and instructed me to “on defense, find the opposing team’s best ball handler and stop him, and on offense, stay the heck out of the way.” This arrangement was just fine with me. Defense was a largely thankless endeavor which comported quite nicely with my notion of the hustle guy. I stuck to the other teams point guard like white on rice. I was playing defense on him wherever he was on the court – half-court, three-quarters court, full-court, wherever. Heck, I was playing defense on him even when MY TEAM had the ball! I’m sure opposing point guards had never seen anything like it.

Indeed, there’s a certain rituality that comes along with being a hustle guy. Over the ensuing 15 years since middle school, I’ve developed some respectable offensive skills which allow me to participate, even contribute, on the offensive end, but I still play defense like I did in 6th grade. If you’ve ever seen me play, this will explain to you why I seem to run a one-man-full-court- press all the time, regardless of the circumstances, even if no one is back there helping me trap the ball handler. I’m sure people must have wondered what I was doing. I doubt that any how-to manual will suggest that you expend 95% of your energy on defense, but it’s how I was taught to play. It’s become a ritual, one that persists irrespective of my skill level. And that is part and parcel of being a hustle guy. The circumstances are irrelevant. If you’re going to play, you’re going to go all out. This means running out every ground ball, diving after every loose ball, playing hard defensively even if you’re getting blown out, and going all out, even at practice. Joe DiMaggio, who was too talented to be called a hustle guy, once remarked about his hard play, “There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first or last time, I owe him my best.” I suppose that the same should hold true, even when no one is watching.

Still, hustle guys inevitably realize that hustling all those years takes its toll on one’s body, and that all the bumps and bruises, nicks and cuts, even the small ones, have a cumulative effect. After playing through countless ankle sprains, I finally went to see a physical therapist a couple of years ago. After examining my swollen left ankle, he said, “This thing is a mess. Let’s see the good one.” But after he saw my right ankle he said, “Holy crap! This one’s worse!” Apparently, “playing through” makes soup of the tendons in one’s ankle. Who knew. Still, that episode pales in comparison to the time I broke my wrist playing pickup basketball. Sure, it hurt, but that was no reason to stop playing. And you might say, and rightfully so, why would you keep playing if it was just a pickup game – nothing was really on the line? Fair enough. But I would reply, where I come from, if you can walk, you can play, and if it hurts, rub some dirt on it. And besides, I’d remind you that it was the wrist of my non-shooting hand. And we’d both have a point. Eventually, I’d go to the hospital and have my arm set in a cast for 6 weeks, but not before I finished the game I started. Pete Rose would be proud.

Still, I can’t help but feel as though this Charlie Hustle may have met his demise this weekend. I recently joined a church league softball team, which has been holding practice the past 3 Saturdays. Of course, I went to practice, and, of course, I busted my tail like it was Game 7 of the World Series. I was diving after balls in the gap, running out groundballs, and trying to take an extra base at every opportunity. In my last at bat, I got on top of a ball and bounced sharply to the shortstop. Most people would go through the motions and jog to first. Not me. I had it in my mind that I was going to beat out the throw to first. So at the end of a long day of practice under the Carolina sun, and after playing basketball for two and a half hours the night before and neither stretching after basketball nor before softball, I bust it out of the box. I’m digging down the line, really have my wings on, trying to make it a close play at first. Then, just as I’m making my lunge for the bag, I feel, in the back of my left leg, a sudden pop. As I’m lying next to the bag, the girl that was playing first base, comes over and asks, “Are you OK?” And briefly forgetting that I am not prone to profanity and momentarily losing sight of the fact that this is indeed a church league, and to no one in particular and not necessarily in response to her question, I drop the F-Bomb, which pretty well summarized how I felt at that moment.

As I’m lying there for the next minute, I have myself convinced first that I’ve torn my hamstring to smithereens, then that I’m not hurt at all, and finally, that I can keep playing. This is actually the natural thought progression in these situations. Unfortunately, my theory that it was just a cramp doesn’t last much past my realization that I can’t walk off the field. And in the unlikely event that someone ever stabbed me in the back of the leg with a knife as I ran to first base, I imagine that it would feel exactly like this, which in turn signals to me that I cannot, in fact, keep playing. But the sad part is not that I got hurt - it’s what occurred after I got hurt. First, an old guy comes up to me and says, apparently speaking from experience, “Oh boy, once your hamstring starts going, you know you’re getting old.” Second, I have the realization that I’ve managed to injure myself playing the non-contact sport of softball, the rules of which were specifically designed so that even old people would not hurt themselves. Third, when my coach comes over to check on me, I confess, “Well, maybe it serves me right, trying to beat out an infield hit at softball practice.” And that’s when I realized, here amongst all these old guys with pads on this and that, braces on every joint, and slow and purposeful gaits, that softball fields are where Charlie Hustles go to grow old and die.

I’ve been limping around town for the past 4 days and I’m not quite sure how long it will be until I can run again. Two weeks? A month? Whatever the case, I know it will be sooner if I resign myself to playing the game like an old person, which I guess I’ll have to do sooner rather than later, if I haven’t already made the transition in my mind. I suppose it’s too late in life to cultivate a Clyde Drexler-esque grace. Does old age befall a person that quickly? Somehow I always imagined it would take longer than the three or four seconds it takes to run the 60 feet between home and first. But that’s how quickly it happened. Still, even after admitting to myself that maybe I’m too old for this, even as Charlie Hustle is hanging up his spikes for the last time, I can’t shake that faint, raspy, defiant voice inside me…

Just rub some dirt on it.