J. Ryan Stradal is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Kitchens of the Great Midwest and the forthcoming The Lager Queen of Minnesota. His shorter writing has appeared in Hobart, the Wall Street Journal, Granta, the Guardian, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other places.
Like an all-night rager in the apartment upstairs or a crying infant on a red-eye, the Super Bowl is one of those ineluctable public occurrences that’s seemingly impossible to stop and difficult to ignore.
I’m writing about three players who have all quit America’s most popular and visible sport mid-season. Their reasons for quitting are as different as their trajectories, but in each of them, there are shards of a much larger and tragic American story.
That day, Jonathan was the last one, and this time, the ritual made the young second-year player snap. He threw his cafeteria tray to the ground, left team facilities, and has never returned..
No one knew it was a torn ACL, which means that Reggie’s incredible 189-game streak is over, his season is over, and perhaps even, at his age, his thirteen-year career is over.