Let an NFL veteran tell you where the real heroes are Sports writers often act as though the professional athlete begs to have his whole life written about. This is one NFL veteran who must put you straight. Playing eight years in the NFL taught me one thing. I also learned important things while undergoing 70-plus surgeries on my right leg. When I started playing professional football in 1973, I and all my Buffalo teammates were just fulfilling a childhood dream to be drafted and play in the NFL. But we learned one thing very quickly. We were under a microscope and everything we said or did was possibly going to be printed or talked about the next day. We also found out very quickly that we had no private life. I'm not complaining, that's just the way it was. Everyone you talked to wanted to speak about football, not about politics or wars or new surgeries or even the weather. Jeff Winans played offensive line for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1977. He started his NFL career with Buffalo as a defensive lineman and played there from 1973 to 1976. He was traded in the '76 preseason to Oakland and played there until being traded to New Orleans for the final game of 1976. After his '77 season with the Bucs, he sat out the '78 and '79 seasons with a back injury. He finished his career with Oakland in 1980 as a defensive tackle. Winans and his wife Brandi own and operate Trim N Tone, a fitness salon on St. Petersburg Beach. Winans wrote this column in response to a recent Hubert Mizell column that discussed the role of athletics in society. I didn't have any sports heroes. You see, I never looked up to anybody. But it wasn't because I considered myself too good. It's just that I was from a small farm town in California, and we couldn't afford to go see sports in the major cities, so we played sports, but that's all. Then I grew and developed this massive God-given body and did the most with it. As a clumsy eighth- and ninth-grader, kids made fun of me tripping over my size 14-shoes and they never wanted to pick me for their teams. Then as a 10th-grader, it was a different story. Those same kids wouldn't even look at me. I was 6 feet 5, 245 pounds and very fast. So I spent a lot of my days catching up and loving it. Then in 1984 after a good, but very injury-prone career in the NFL, I found out what heroes were all about and who mine were. I was living in Turlock, Calif., and owned a video recording business. A gun I had - a .357 Magnum derringer - went off accidentally when it fell from an armload of household belongings I was carrying. The bullet, capable of piercing armor, found my leg and I found out what pain was all about. First, I wasn't supposed to live (3 1/2 weeks in ICU). Then they said I wasn't going to keep the leg. I was hit just below the knee and all the bone, muscle and arteries were damaged. My first hero was my microsurgeon, Dr. John Andrews at the hospital in Turlock. I could see in his eyes, the hurt he felt for me. I was in the hospital most of the next three years. I met my second hero on Dec. 25, 1984. The doctors didn't know if I was going to live and thought they would send me home in a hospital bed for my last Christmas with my family. The second day home I soured and they had to rush me back. My room and most all of the hospital was full. The only bed available was in pediatrics. I regained consciousness the next day and looked over in the next bed and saw a mother and father crying over their dying 3-year-old child (my second hero). With tears in my eyes, I called the nurse in and told her to move me right now! I couldn't tell her why, I just said: “I don't care if it's in the hallway! Just move me!” I didn't know how to handle it. All of my problems seemed so minute. When improved to where I could get around in a wheelchair, I did all I could to see all the kids I could to help cheer them up, or comfort a parent watching a very ill child get sicker and asking God why. My third and final hero I'll tell you about was also in the hospital. I met him while I was being treated in San Francisco. I was asked to go see this young man on the spinal injury floor, so I had my nurse wheel me there. I introduced myself to his family and I guess I really didn't look at him closely because I was shaking hands and saying hello to people nearby. I was talking with him and starting to loosen him up with my dry wit, when I looked him in the eyes. He was wearing a halo traction unit and the top of his head was missing. This time I caught my composure and grabbed his hand. His mother grabbed my other hand. He later died, and I think to this day part of me died with him. These are my heroes - the kids who never get the chance to live before tragedy occurs; the doctors who work so diligently to save them, and the police, fire fighters, paramedics, etc., who risk their lives to save someone, then go home and cry and hug their own children and count their blessings. Every time I think of this, I remember the poem that starts “I cried because I have no shoes and then I met a man with no feet “ So when you get to feeling sorry for yourself because of your problems, go to a “spinal injury ward,” or if you think you are really tough, go to a paramedic ward. I know I'm living on borrowed time, but a lot of my little friends will never get the chance to. Life is way too short for these little heroes. Jeff Winans, The St.Petersburg Times 1989