Bass\u2019s time with the Express began when the writer was doing a story about the team and the so-called shadow world of minor league football for Texas Monthly. The more he watched the athletes on the field, the more he began to think, Hey, I could do this. He had played for a year as a walk-on at Utah State, after all, and the Express always seemed to need players. \u201cAnd the skill positions, they just weren\u2019t that big,\u201d he says. \u201cThey were fast, but they weren\u2019t that darn big. I thought, Heck, this reminds me of the game I knew 40 years ago. I wonder what it would be like to be out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s glue was Coach Barnes, who labored as a garbage truck driver, dogcatcher, and city water inspector when he wasn\u2019t exhorting his players to come to practice, goddamn it. Coach saw them through good times (the rare win, say) and bad (one player went to the pen after shooting a bullet through the wall of his ex-girlfriend\u2019s apartment; another did time for cattle theft). He also excelled at oratory. During one particularly moving team prayer, Coach extolled the virtues of the wolverine, supposedly the meanest animal in North America. You men need to be wolverines, he told his players, then spied a line of ants marching along the ground. And ants, he told them. You need to be like those ants. \u201cThere was a lot of free association going on in his speeches and prayers and pep talks,\u201d Bass says. \u201cIt was an amazing and singular thing to witness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bass did not leave the Express unscathed. In one game, a helmet-to-helmet hit left him mixing up words for nearly two years. Molasses became morasses; residents became representative. Y\u2019s turned into T\u2019s. \u201cIt was really concerning to somebody who works with words so completely and extensively,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I got better, so that was a relief.\u201d<\/p>\n
That particular scene comes in a 41-page-long chapter about a single game, a bloodbath of a loss against a vastly superior team that resulted in broken ribs, torn neck muscles, and two concussions for the writer. Bass named the chapter \u201cAss-Whipping.\u201d (It\u2019s also the basis for his Alta Folio: Of Ice Packs and Men<\/a>.) Bass is a masterful writer, generous with character description and evocative scene setting, but his chapter titles tend toward the terse: \u201cLast Year.\u201d \u201cCourt.\u201d \u201cWinter Practice.\u201d And yes, \u201cAss-Whipping.\u201d \u201cI mean, that was the essence of that experience,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was an ass-whipping.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond the cracked ribs and temporarily addled brain, Bass says, \u201cI got to push my body beyond where it would have been pushed had I stayed at home, sitting at my desk. That was a gift. I got a lot of memories. I got to inhabit life a little bit beyond the normal borders and boundaries.\u201d<\/p>\n But when asked if he learned anything new about himself\u2014his capacities for enduring pain, say, or his strength of will\u2014he balks. \u201cYou get to be in your 60s, and there just aren\u2019t a lot of surprises about yourself anymore,\u201d he says. \u201cNot to say a person knows everything, but with regard to oneself, there just aren\u2019t a lot of surprises left.\u201d\u2022<\/p>\n WRECKING BALL: RACE, FRIENDSHIP, GOD, AND FOOTBALL, BY RICK BASS<\/p>\n
![\"<i>WRECKING](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758817017-rick-bass-wrecking-ball-1024x1024-68d56a9683c96.png\" "\\"<i>WRECKING")
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