Post by zzoshop on Sept 17, 2012 10:16:04 GMT
lack of passion for football at Hall of Fame
Curtis Martin gestures during his induction speech Saturday. (AP)At a time when football, and the google jerseys in particular, have come under criticism for concussions and suicides believed to be related to head trauma, Martin gave anyone who had the honor of listening to his stirring Hall of Fame induction speech plenty reason to embrace the game. The former New England Patriots and New York Jets running back, an everyman-type who worked his way to be one of the game's leading rushers, spent 27 minutes baring his soul and telling the audience about how football saved him.
Even though he never had much passion for it.For Martin, football was an escape from a home life that was tragic. Martin, who spoke without notes but with a clear understanding of what he was trying to say, recounted the violence of his young life. He talked about how his father used to "torture" his mother by burning her hair with a lighter or her skin with lit cigarettes.
He recounted again how his grandmother was found beaten to death in his family's apartment when he was nine. He remembered being 15 and having a gun pointed at his head as the gunman pulled the trigger seven times without the bullet firing. Finally, when the gunman pointed the gun away from Martin, the gun discharged.Martin talked about learning to excel in a game that he barely enjoyed just cause like cheap nike jerseys . When he was drafted by the Patriots in 1995, he got off the phone with then-coach Bill Parcells, turned to his family and said he didn't want to play professional football.
That's when his pastor, Leroy Joseph, said: " 'Curtis, look at it this way ¡ maybe football is just something that God is giving you to do all those wonderful things that you say you want to do for other people.' I tell you, it was like a light bulb came on in my head."Helping other people included what he calls his greatest accomplishment ¨C getting his mother to forgive his father. Martin grew up watching his mother deal with the beatings from his father.
"You'd get punched in the face and go to work with a black eye with makeup on just to support us," Martin said as he looked at his mother Rochella Dixon. He recounted that after his grandmother was killed when someone took a knife to her chest, he asked his mother if she was going crazy. His mother said no, but then asked why he wanted to know more about jerseys from www.googlejerseysgoogle.com ."Because if you go crazy, nobody's going to be here to take care of me," Martin said, taking the collective breath from the audience.
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