So Long and Goodbye: My January Cancer Peep
Unlike past Cancer Calendars which mostly focused on famous people and poking fun at celebrities, the 2012 Cancer Calendar will be composed of Cancer People who impacted my life in some way, with personal anecdotes and their stories of triumph, or tragedy.
Dan Turk
Saturday, January 15, 2000
My friends and I played tackle football in Zeke’s yard, because PepperoniNip and I would have been incapable of just sitting around. The Washington Redskins’ NFC semifinals game was later that afternoon, following a six-year playoff drought. My excitement could not be bucked. We finished playing by 4:00 p.m., enough time for me to scamper through the woods back home and watch the Redskins play the Buccaneers for a spot in the NFC Championship.
At age sixteen, my heart could handle my weekly Redskins viewings; if I had been sixty then perhaps not. They were usually filled with shrieks of joy, or jumping on my couch and screaming at players or referees, or scolding my viewing partner—my dad—for proclaiming a field goal “good” when it is clearly heading wide right.
The Redskins blew a 13-point lead in the third quarter, but managed a 52-yard field goal attempt with 1:17 left in the game. The snap from Dan Turk was low, and couldn’t be handled by the quarterback, Brad Johnson, who failed trying to convert a pass on the botch. The Redskins lost 14-13.
If the snap was clean then maybe the Redskins would’ve won. The following week, the Bucs lost to the Rams in the NFC Championship, 11-6. Maybe the Redskins would’ve won. The Rams beat the Titans in the Super Bowl, 23-16. Maybe the Redskins would have won. If not for Dan Turk.
I blamed Turk for the loss and felt rage towards him. All he has to do is snap the ball. How hard is that?
The following season the Redskins and Bucs clashed again, on October 1, 2000. I had just finished my first round of chemotherapy to treat the bone cancer that had infested my left hip, leaving me unable to play tackle football ever again. Unable to eat, concentrate, or see the end of that horrifying treatment road ahead of me, I felt depressed. I watched the Redskins game with PepperoniNip, embracing a three-hour reprieve from cancer with one of my best friends. Dan Turk was no longer on the team.
The Redskins blew a lead again, this time ten points. The game went to overtime. Deion Sanders returned a punt 57 yards; the Redskins kicked a field goal, and won, 20-17. PepperoniNip and I went buck wild, my appetite and concentration returned swiftly, depression vanished, and bone cancer eventually vanquished. As I’ve stated before, sometimes sports have value beyond simple athletic competitions.
PepperoniNip and I joked that they’d have lost if Dan Turk was the long snapper. But like me, Turk was competing against not a Buccaneer, but disease—he had been diagnosed with testicular cancer months before. He kept his disease quiet and received treatment at the University of Indiana medical center. "In the big picture, it's not something people want to hear about,” he had said.
Turk passed away less than three months later, soon after I finished my fifth cycle of chemo. In the big picture, Turk made a single mistake at a bad time. He did not deserve the wrath of me and my fellow Redskins fans. I will never forget that picture he painted for us…or that long-forgiven botched snap.