Word: maddened
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Growing up in Daly City, near San Francisco, Madden heeded his father's advice to resist formal work as long as possible. (In fact, forever.) Earl Madden, an auto mechanic, knew from experience, "Once you take a job, that's it." In constant cahoots with his best pal at Our Lady of Perpetual Help grade school, the present Los Angeles Rams coach John Robinson, young Madden tried the pool halls and bowling alleys before settling on the caddie house as his preferred den of iniquity. There he learned about shuffling cards, pitching nickels and living life. He recalls, "I shagged...
...Madden required no further illustration of how fragile the pro player truly is, but in 1978, his final season, he absorbed a terrible one. In an exhibition game at Oakland, Safety Jack Tatum, the Raiders' most notorious hitter, collided with New England Receiver Darryl Stingley, leaving Stingley permanently paralyzed. Madden donned a surgical smock to stay with Stingley in the hospital that night and opened his home to the injured man's family. But, with a shrug, Madden minimizes the accident's part in his decision to quit coaching. He prefers to repeat a wistful anecdote about how he thought...
...truthful, he sympathized almost equally with Tatum, who was renowned and then reviled for his aggressiveness. Madden is able to wince at football now and then, but he is unable to blame the sport significantly: he loves it too well. Though he had planned to loaf for at least a year after stepping down as the Raiders' coach, he succumbed to CBS's blandishments when the 1979 season came near. "Every year from the age of ten, I had a season. Through high school, college and the pros, over 30 of them. With CBS, I still had a season...
...Madden is able to let the audience know it too. His commentary is a whir of windmilling arms and an exuberant bark of POW!, WHAM! and ZAP! as the linemen collide. The fans have come to recognize the All-Madden players by their grimier shirts and more human qualities. They know Madden favors real grass over artificial turf and mud over dirt. From last Thanksgiving's broadcast: "That's kind of the way the game should be played. I mean -- Thanksgiving Day, the fireplace, the turkey, football players out there playing in the snow. Wet, mud, stuff like that...
...booth, Madden has a fresh eye and a sense of mischief, but in between all the sound effects, he tells you something you didn't know. "When Reagan got shot, they had this doctor on TV, and he explained the surgical procedure with a diagram. This thing goes in here, that thing goes in there. The blood . . . boom, bam. I thought, 'Yeah, I get it. I understand.' You can't simplify complicated things, but you can make them understandable...