The Case of the Disappearing Quarterback
By Mike Boryla
()
About this ebook
I have twelve friends who are deader than doornails just like Marley in A Christmas Carol. But I digress let’s get to the story.
Mike Boryla
Mike Boryla began writing creatively in 2010 and eventually received a vision from the Lord, who told him that He was going to make him ten times more famous as a playwright than he was as a Stanford All American and Pro Bowl quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles. Today, he’s seventy-two years old, which is seventeen years over the average lifespan for NFL players of his generation.
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The Case of the Disappearing Quarterback - Mike Boryla
The Case of
THE DISAPPEARING
QUARTERBACK
MIKE BORYLA
Copyright © 2023 Mike Boryla.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by
any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system
without the written permission of the author except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
WestBow Press
A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.westbowpress.com
844-714-3454
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or
links contained in this book may have changed since publication and
may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher,
and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are
models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
ISBN: 978-1-6642-8359-6 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-8360-2 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-8358-9 (e)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022920929
WestBow Press rev. date: 01/10/2023
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 Knicks and Knees
Chapter 2 Keep Your Poise, Mike
Chapter 3 Annie and Bombshell
Chapter 4 Twist and Shout
Chapter 5 Have No Fear
Chapter 6 Lifting Weights
Chapter 7 Playboy
Chapter 8 Welcome to the NFL, Rook!
Chapter 9 Concussion
Chapter 10 It’s Showtime
Epilogue
About The Author
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my wife Annie, my faithful companion, without whom I wouldn’t have had the audacity to attempt to write this book, or the hope to actually finish it.
Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the
LORD has risen upon thee. For behold darkness will cover
the earth and deep darkness the people: But the LORD
will rise upon you, and his glory shall appear upon thee.
—Isaiah 60:1–2
1969
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my mother for being the biggest influence in my life. She was a small-town girl from Ogallala, Nebraska. When I was fourteen, she told me to marry a nurse and have boys. Without her protection, my F5 tornado father would have made me road kill and shredded my life, like he did to countless others.
Daniel Student, my artistic director at Plays and Players Theatre who accepted my football musical when I emailed it to him randomly. Thanks Daniel for having me convert it into a one-man play and making me a very good stage actor, like famous Spalding Gray—or so says the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Roger Rodd helped me turn my mediocre-at-best one man play The Disappearing Quarterback into a huge success. He and I are the only football players on the planet to write and perform their own one-man football plays. His one-man football play was called Footsteps. He nicknamed me Young Buck when we were nineteen years old at Stanford. To this day, he and my Stanford friends still call me Young Buck even though I am an old goat.
Before I met Annie I was a loner, misfit kind of guy. When we got engaged, I told her that if I hadn’t met her I would have ended up living in a cave in a box canyon outside of Ouray, Colorado. I would have books and supplies air-dropped to me and automatic calibrated machine guns set to go off if anybody happened to wander up the path to my cave. Without her I would have become a modern-day Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, as solitary as an oyster. Bah Humbug.
Last but not least my son with Down Syndrome, Ryan. He has shown me that I don’t have to be so moody. He is always in a good mood. He is nice to everyone and incredibly consistent. He is a great mime actor. A lot of my acting expressions came from Ryan’s daily comic routines.
Introduction
As I drove out of San Francisco headed for Philadelphia and this new professional football career, it was one of the neatest feelings I ever had. Young, dumb, and headed for Philly—it didn’t get any better than that. Little did I know that to the womanizing alcoholic compulsive gambler owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, I was fresh meat from the California coast, seasoned well and ready to be seared on the gridiron of Veterans Stadium. I had no idea that my youth was over. Now I had to learn how to handle and play football with dangerous narcissists.
This book is mostly the story of my favorite year: the wonderful, iconic year of 1969 when I was a senior quarterback at the Jesuit Regis High School in Denver, Colorado. Here in the post-pandemic reality, the world has been turned upside down. It will never be the same again and there’s not as much laughter anymore. But my senior year at Regis has never changed. It’s still as wonderful as it was back in 1969. Whenever I think about the fun I had playing football with the Regis Raiders, I smile. I’ll never forget it.
In regards to my NFL career, I just want to give you a little heads up. Being the starting quarterback in the NFL on a pathetic team isn’t quite the picnic they make it seem. Sometimes I felt like a convicted vampire being tied up and led to the sacred rock of execution overlooking the falls in Gabon by pygmy witch doctors in my favorite French book Beyond the Mist. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and judgment day is going to come. I survived, but twelve of my football friends are deader than doornails.
Chapter One
KNICKS AND
KNEES
A blue-collar red-neck crowd fills the Philadelphia Arena in 1957. It is a sold-out basketball game against their hated rivals, the New York Knicks. The fans behind the bench have been