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MAN OF MACHISMO c.Jntinued ,

try not to.You won't see me running out moves I'd never imagined. In football Nothing rolled. I was the 13th pick
of bounds to avoid a little physical con- you had to play both ways in those days, of the Washington Redskins, but they
tact with a linebacker, and you won't see and I started at quarterback on the fresh- never contacted me, and I wound up sign-
me ducking out the window when some- man footba11 team. The coaches didn't ing with the Calgary Stampeders in the
body wants to tangle. So I've been known know where to play me on defense, so I Canadian Football League. The ink was
to get in an occasional tete-a-tete. played corner. Against UCLA's frosh hardly dry on the contract before I got
Maybe this goes back to my Chicano team I had to cover a pass catcher who into the battle that produced these scars
childhood, and machismo. Machismo was a star hurdler. I played him about on my face. I've never told the whole
means manliness, a willingness to act 18 yards deep and still he caught three story before because I didn't see what
like a man, and if a kid didn't have ma- touchdown passes over my head and purpose could be served by it, but now
chismo in the polyglot neighborhoods of UCLA beat us 32-0. I was never so hu- I'm telling it to nip off some of the sil-
the San Fernando and Salinas valleys miliated in my life. We didn't get a sin- lier versions that have been circulating.
in California, where I grew up, he had gle point on offense and I let them have It was a hot, humid night during the
it tough. When I was little 1 saw guys three touchdowns over my head! I was training season, and most of the Stam-
lying in their own blood at the corner ready to quit football, but the coach peders were sitting around drinking beer.
of Mission Boulevard and Hollister talked me out of it. He Jet me play out- We'd had the annual rookie show ear-
Street in San Fernando. Sometimes the side linebacker in the last game against lier and nobody felt like going to bed,
Mexicans would fight the Anglos; some- Stanford, and my Jack of talent didn't and around 1 a.m. I walked into a room
times it would be the Mexicans and the show up so conspicuously there. where the guys were talking. Without
blacks from Pacoima. They had gang Cal was going through some tough warning, a big linebacker broke a quart
fights going all the time and even an oc- times back in those days. The Golden bottle of beer across my jaw and raked
casional shoot-out or knifing. Bears hadn't won a Pacific Coast Con- it across my throat. We started to tan-
When we moved to Salinas in the Cal- ference title in years. In my sophomore gle, but there was so much blood spurt-
ifornia lettuce belt, we Jived in a hous- · year we won three football games, and ing around the room that the other guys
ing project with pickers, Okies, Arkies, in my junior year we won two less than jumped in and broke it up. A couple of
blacks and whites and browns and pur- that. By the time my senior year came players took me to the trainer's room,
ples. In the fifth grade a bigger kid called around we were classed as hurnpties, and and when the trainer answered the door
me ''a dirty Mexican," and at first I we opened the season by losing to Col- all sleepy and red-eyed he took one look
didn't challenge him. But when I got lege of the Pacific, with Dick Bass, and at me and fainted. At the hospital they
home I brooded on what he had said. then to Michigan State. Halfback Jack gave me 100 stitches, and the doctors
My sense of justice was outraged. My Hart and I were co-captains and we sat said that the broken glass li.ad missed
mother, Florence Garcia Kapp, is Mex- down for a little talk after that second
ican-American, but my father is of straight loss. "This is it, man," Jack
German descent; therefore, at worst, I said. "We're either gonna turn it all
BEAMING BUCKAROO is Joe Kapp, age 4, in
could only be half of what that kid had around right now or we're gonna have his cowboy suit on a photographer's pony in
called me. So I went back and found another year like the last two·." wildest Burbank. But young Kapp had no time
him and really whaled him. I didn't win "We've got to do something wild," I
the fight, but I got in some licks. That said. "We've got to shake the guys up
was machismo, not backing dow1i, act- somehow."
ing like a man. I think I violated the We had a team meeting and Jack and
code of machismo only once: in the sev- I told everybody that time had run out
enth grade, when two guys took my bas- on the Cal team-either we start im-
ketball and roHed it down the hill. I proving right away or we forget it. The
should have whaled them, too, but one next day in practice Jack spotted a line-
of them was :Bob Sartwell, the best ath- man who wasn't putting out and he
lete in Salinas, six feet tall and 180 grabbed that big guy by the back of the
pounds, and I chickened out. I've never neck and the seat of the pants and ran
backed down since. On that dry, dusty him halfway across the field into a con-
basketball court in Salinas, I would look crete abutment. "Goddamn it!" Jack
around me and say to myself, "Well, if shouted. "If you don't want to play,
I'm gonna win this game I'm gonna have get out of here!" Sometimes you need a
to kick somebody's butt!" That was little dramatic thing like that to shake a
valu:1ble training for NFL football. team up. We only lost one more game
I went to the University of California that year, and we won the Pacific Coast
on an athletic scholarship, mostly for championship and went to the Rose
my basketball, but if you have never Bowl. Iowa beat us 38-12. I led the Pa-
heard of me in that connection, you may cific Coast Conference quarterbacks in
be excused. I arrived at Cal under the rushing and was named to the Look All-
mistaken impression that I was the hot- America team, and so, of course, all I
test athlete in town, but I was quickly had to do was sit back and wait (or the
disabused. Those big-city athletes had pro offers to roll in.

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