Recent stories about Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota and running mate of Kamala Harris, have highlighted his days as a football coach, reminding me of my years as a football player. and lacrosse and also wrestles in the 158-pound weight class all under the supervision of a handful of high school coaches. I remember the name of the football coach, Alfonso Donofrio, a short, stocky guy, who chose me to be co-captain of the team and who emphasized his desire to win. Me too. More than anything else in high school, I wanted to win the football games we played on Saturdays against teams from Babylon, Riverhead, Port Jefferson and our archrival, Amityville. I applied the political lessons I learned from my leftist father and turned the team members into a “united front.”

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We beat Amityville, 21-14 my senior year when Newsday selected me to the Suffolk County all-star team, which did wonders for my ego and convinced Columbia College to accept me was a freshman in the fall of 1959, even though I was not well prepared for my studies. High school football stunted my academic growth. I didn’t play college football; the competition was intense and the locker rooms and football fields required a long bus ride from campus at 116th Street & Broadway to Baker Stadium near the northern tip of Manhattan Island.

I played rugby for two years in college. Rugby is not Columbia’s official team, but rather a club that attracts athletes attending medical school and law school who have played Ivy League football for Princeton and Yale. We use the school’s changing rooms and rugby fields for practice and matches. We’ve had winning seasons, season after season. I played Saturday after Saturday, and after our victories, I went with my big, muscular teammates, like Paul Zimmerman, to bars, where we sang songs. sing dirty songs and drink beer and a drink called shandy, a mixture of beer and 7-up that I like. Once, Pat Moran, from Ireland, fought a black South African.