Almost Heroes

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Judy, how did we become such big sports fans?

SPEAKER_00 0:03

I I don't know, but I can tell everybody. My brother is psychotic because I usually get photos like this when he's getting ready to go out on a date. Or when he's on a date, I'll get Joe Cap pictures. Uh-huh. It has been kind of funny because we have been sports fans our whole life, you know, and I'm going to say unusual for little kids to be as big a fan that we are. Keep the same teams as our favorite teams.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Well, that's been a lifelong thing. We watched uh the Super Bowl together when we were kids, Vikings Chiefs, Super Bowl four. And weirdly, you went with the red team. I went with the purple team, and that has stuck forever to this day. And to your point, we still go to games. You go to Super Bowls. We've been to multiple conference championship games. We go to football games every year. We're big, you know, fantasy football players. So it started back in 1969 watching football at mom and dad's house. It's continued until today. And again, just looking at your background, Judy, you've got your Chiefs' helmet there. I've got, you know, there it is, uh, my Viking helmet in the background. I just had a Viking helmet on. I had to take that off, by the way, because uh I was one head slap away from a concussion.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Which I know is a true story of things that happened to you. And I don't even know if it was a head slap that knocked you into concussion, though.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

No, it was not a head slap. It was a chin strap snap slap. Which, well, Judy, we'll get into that one. All right, all right, all right.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

I won't I won't let the cat out of the bag.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Let's talk about kind of how, again, you and I kind of got our start in sports. We watched Super Bowl IV, we became lifelong football fans, but we also started playing football. For me, it was going over to one of my friends' house and we would play every day after school. And that's where we were doing toe drag swag before that was a real thing back in the day. And then you and I in our front yard playing catch every single day, and we had a big evergreen tree. We've got a great picture of you as a kid catching, catching a ball. We would do just timing patterns in our front yard. We had that evergreen tree, so somebody would stand in the driveway, the other person would do kind of an out, you know, an up and out, and the out was on the other side of the tree. So that was kind of a defender. So you and I actually got pretty good at doing little 10-yard outs.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

I was gonna say pretty proud of us for back in the day, you know, and I'm glad that I was included in all of the at least the uh some of the sporting events.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

Well, we talked about in one of the previous podcasts. Sports kind of started for us actually playing sports at Perkett. And uh, we talked about fifth and sixth grade basketball, played for the Perkett Panthers, and mom and dad come into the games and mom cheering for the wrong team, and we got a big chuckle out of that. And I think she eventually figured out which team that Donnie played on and got the cheering thing figured out. But you and I also played a little flag football or touch football back at Perkett in sixth grade, where they were kind of trying to get a little league going or a little, you know, activity going. And I think you were the only girl on the team. It was just mainly guys that were playing touch football. I can't remember if it was flag or touch, but it seemed like it was touch. But I do remember, Judy, and you can jump in one particular play where we had the ball. You were on the defensive side of the ball, you were playing edge, edge rusher, outside linebacker, and uh, we were the shotgun formation, and whoever snapped the ball snapped it really high to the quarterback, and you rushed and blitzed and intercepted the snap and returned it 47 yards for a touchdown.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

I did. And it's funny because if I remember I wasn't supposed to be part of that team. I was watching you guys all get picked, and somebody's like, Oh, I'll take Dottie's little sister on our team. And I got drafted before a lot of the other players. So I listen, I thought I was pretty accomplished at the time.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Once they saw that play, they're like, Judy can play. And then whenever we played after that, you were a top five pick. Yeah, I was. So then we transitioned into baseball. I did play some baseball back in the day, was never really good at it. But you know, I always loved football and tennis, and we'll talk a little bit more about those sports coming up. But Judy, I played midget baseball.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

What?

SPEAKER_02 4:02

Wait, wait, what are the Yeah, no, we had midget baseball back in the before midget was a bad word. We play none of us, although we could have all been midgets. I guess we were. Well, it sounds like a really weird, sick movie. Midget baseball in theater Sprite.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Midget baseball after dark.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

I don't think they call it that anymore. I gotta tell you real quick about one of our practices, because again, I kind of alluded to the fact that, you know, I wasn't that good. And we would practice over at Perkett, and I was usually in the outfield, usually the right fielder. You know, occasionally maybe I'd play a different position. But this one day, our coach, we're having tryouts, I guess, for catcher, or he's looking to see if we can find a different catcher. And he says, Who wants to catch? And I'm like, you know, Donnie's raising his hand out in right field. He says, Come on in. So I get in, I come in behind home plate, I put on the catcher's gear, I catch a couple of balls, and you know, they're coming in. And when somebody swings and you're trying to catch the ball, you got to keep your eyes open. You don't want to blink. And one of the plays, I drop the ball or I have a little pass ball situation where it goes behind me by a couple feet. Judy, meanwhile, I see somebody going from second to third. I'm like, somebody's stealing. I got to throw this guy out. So anyway, they got a head start. I've got the ball behind me. And then normally when you get the ball, you know, you kind of step up and then you throw it over to third. The ball had kind of dribbled behind me a couple of feet. So I just grabbed that ball. I saw the guy running. I turned and I throw the ball as hard as I could to third. But standing in the way was the coach. And Judy, I drilled him on the side of the head. And he dropped. He dropped down to one knee, stunned him. And I thought, oh my God, I just killed coach. And, you know, this is a bullet on the side of the head from point blank range. And he's down on one knee, and then all of a sudden he's like, I'm okay, I'm okay. And he gets up, and then the next thing out of his mouth is, Who else wants to try out the catcher? Who come on? Who else? And that was the one and only time that I ever played behind the plate.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

It's a tough position, and you have to be pretty good at throwing. I don't know if you remember, but before we had the pool in the backyard, you and I were playing in the backyard and you hit a line drive. I was pitching to you. Must have been when you were playing midget baseball, and you drilled me on the side of the head from the pitch, and I went down. We didn't have any safety gear or anything like that. So, but anyway, I must have shook it off.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Nowadays you'd be like going to the hospital and be like, we'd have to get you cleared to play again. But I believe in that situation, that day, it was like a minute later, all right, let's go, let's keep going. And Judy's over there, you know, wobbling. Yeah, that's true. So anyway, then made the transition from Perkett to junior high. And junior high is where you get exposed to football for real. You know, we did a little bit of the touch football at sixth grade, but seventh grade, they have flag football at Jim Hill, eighth grade, they have tackle football. In seventh grade, I tried out for wide receiver, and I think back then they called it flanker and you know, played that the whole year for seventh grade. There was a guy on our team who played wide receiver that was the starter, and he's standing in the end zone wide open in our first game, flag football. And he dropped the ball, easy touchdown. And I don't know if you remember, Judy, back in the day, especially back at sixth grade, and it started with dodgeball because if you caught the ball, the other person that was throwing it was eliminated. Well, I was great at catching the ball, so I thought that would translate to being a flanker in seventh grade. Well, I thought it did, but you know, I never really played that much, so it kind of ended up being a little bit of a bummer, and I just sat on the bench a lot or just played a B games. And guess what? In seventh grade, uh that's not a big passing game.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Right. Well, and there's not a lot of uh programs to play for B for B team players.

SPEAKER_02 7:49

Yeah, no, I mean we had the junior highs, so we would play Ramps Dead and we would play Memorial, which was at the Air Force Base. That was it. And then I think we played the other B teams. Eighth grade is when football started for real. You got the pads, you got to try out. And what was funny about that, Judy, is the first day of tryouts, padded football in eighth grade, 130 kits. Everybody's trying out for football. Everybody wants to play football. Well, by the end of the first week, after you take a couple of hits and you play a little bit of football, those 130 down to 80. 50 people had quit because they couldn't, you know, take the hit or take the punishment or the grind or the practice. And the practices back then, it's like training camp. They would put you through these grueling practices. And in the middle of the summer, you know, when we just started school in September, it'd be 90 degrees outside, and we'd be doing, you know, kind of two days before school starts. But that's when I played quarterback and made the transition. I'm not gonna be flanker anymore, Judy. I'm gonna be the quarterback. I started off as the seventh string quarterback. And you you probably have to wonder, are there that many strings? Well, yeah, and for quarterback, there were other six guys ahead of me. Judy, within a couple of weeks, I went from seventh string to second string. You know how I did that?

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Well, I'm gonna guess not arm talent.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

No, I was not known for the arm. Memorizing the playbook. I had the whole playbook memorized. And the coaches were impressed by that because the other quarterbacks, the five that were ahead of me or the six that were ahead of me, I think one of them had done his homework and uh knew the plays. I could actually go out there and the coach could say, Hey, do this play, and then I could call it in the huddle, or I could even call a play or two on my own in the huddle. I got really good at that. So I went from seventh to second string. And I did have some stats that year, Judy. And my stats are extremely, extremely interesting. Three out of eighteen passing, eighteen attempts. I completed three, but six interceptions. Judy, I completed twice as many as many passes to the other team than I did to my team. Oh my god. I don't think we had the quarterback rating back then, but if they did, mine would have been negative.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

I I was wondering if you were going to talk about your friend Todd uh that would wander down the street in his Vikings uniform that he had before you even started playing sports in seventh and eighth grade in football, and your friend he was wearing a Vikings uniform, and he'd be we'd playing on the side of the house and he didn't get dirty enough that he's rubbing dirt all over himself.

SPEAKER_02 10:15

We used to watch those Viking games back in the day when they played outside and their uniforms would be all muddy and full of snow and dirty. And of course, we got clean unis. I remember I got mine over at Arrowhead Shopping Center, I think in Tempo, in my jersey. I don't even know why they were doing those jerseys back in the day, but my jersey was a Gary Larson number 77 Viking jersey, which what the heck? You know, why didn't I have Tarkenden or somebody cool? But you're right, Todd, before we would play, he would find a mud puddle or you know, a pile of dirt and would go over there and put his hands in it and then start rubbing it all over his uniform. And we hadn't even started playing yet, and it looked like he had played three hours in a mud bowl game. Judy, one other sport that I played a little bit, you and I both played was tennis. And we had one of our neighbors that actually taught us tennis, Lyle from down the street. He took us over to Oak Park. We didn't have tennis rackets, but he had a couple of rackets. He took us over to Oak Park, taught us how to play tennis. And what's kind of funny about this story is that he wasn't very athletic within No, he played chess for Pete's sake. He did. He did. I think he's gonna be a big thing. You don't correlate a chess player with uh yeah, a tennis player, but yeah, he ended up excelling at chess and he got really kind of bummed out because he taught us how to play tennis, and the first day that we were learning it, we were beating him. We were drilling this guy on the first day. And guess what? He never took us out again. That was the only time we ever played tennis. Then our folks bought us tennis rackets and we got into tennis and started playing. And you know, if I wouldn't have been into football, I think I could have played tennis, was actually decent at it, played in the 1979 North Dakota Open tennis tournament. I took sixth place. What happened was I got put into the consolation round because my first match on a Saturday morning Judy was at eight o'clock. Well, Donnie showing up somewhere at eight o'clock on a Saturday morning in high school is not conducive to anything good happening or me showing up. Well, that's what happened. I didn't show up, missed my match, forfeited my match, and got put into the consolation round. Well, I won every match in the consolation round until I made it to the consolation championship. And then I got beat by a guy that played at Minote Ryan, who in 1981 won the state championship. So I got beat in the consolation championship by a guy that actually won the North Dakota State High School Class A tennis championship. Had I focused on that, you know, I think I could have been halfway decent at it. But Judy, I also had a little bit of John McEnroe in me where some rackets got broken. You know, the temper thing, how that goes. And you know, all of a sudden you wrap your racket around a pole. And back then it was wooden rackets. It wasn't these grab fight rackets. Wooden rackets.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

All right, just for we're gonna do a quick fast forward for folks on on his uh John McEnroe thing, because he also had thought the John McEnroe thing carried over to the golf course because he was out golfing with our dad. My dad's like, oh my god, he's cussing up a storm like crazy. And my dad's like, God, he's not even on the T-box yet. What is he swearing?

SPEAKER_02 13:10

Uh Judy, I was trying to get my hoodie off and I got my arms tangled up and it turned into like this straitjacket thing, and I'm like trying to all of a sudden my dad's like, what the heck's going on?

SPEAKER_01 13:20

He turns around and here I am almost falling over, trying to get the hoodie off.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

I have to say one other thing too, because we were we weren't the most athletic kids, but we did like to try out everything, and we would get very inspired by what we saw on TV, whether it was football or whatever, thinking we could do all these things. Olympics were on, right? And then all of a sudden we were going to the summer Olympics every Tuesday night. We thought we were Olympians. There was a whole bunch of stuff that we we would try everything. And at some point, you know, there's always a crossroads that you come to where you recognize you're either going to be good or you're not gonna be so good, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:57

That's exactly right. And Judy, I found out a long time ago that, you know, not good at certain sports, and then found out that actually if I work at it and and focus on it and train and do all the right things that still not good. Maybe get a little bit better. And then you kind of find out, okay, what else in life can I do? I'm not gonna be a pro athlete. But back to the Summer Olympics thing, you and I would go to those Summer Olympics. I think it was like on Tuesday nights or something up at the magician track and field area up there by Magic City campus. You and I would go there on Tuesday nights and we would come home with a plethora of ribbons that we had won because we were, again, watching Olympics on TV, 1976 Olympics, and then all of a sudden after that, we're showing up and you know, kind of doing our own thing. And then it was later in high school where we found out that, oh, okay, when we're showing up on a Tuesday night with, you know, a sparse field of competitors that we're okay. But if you show up, you know, in high school or junior high and try out for the track team, that okay, yeah, that's right. I'm not good.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Yeah, yeah. And you don't make the team if you're not good, right? I mean, that's that was a time when you didn't make the team if you weren't good enough.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

So anyway, I want to transition to high school football, playing for Mine at High. And I didn't play. There's I played my sophomore year, did not play my junior year, and then played my senior year. And I think what happened my junior year, I'll tell you exactly what happened, is I actually did try out for the team. And the first or second day of practice, I'm a DB, I'm safety or cornerback or whatever. A big running back comes through the line. And this guy for my not high is like 6'2, 220. He's a big guy. I'm 5'9, you know, all of 165 when I'm wet. So anyway, I thought, oh, okay, well, I've seen this on TV. I'm gonna use my head, which nowadays when you watch it, it's don't use your head, use your shoulder, you know, do proper tackling. But back in the day, I went in and I bent down to tackle the guy, bleeding with my head. Well, he was running and one of his knees clipped me in the head, and I fell backwards, almost was knocked out. And then my neck hurt, and then I'm like kind of just wobbling off the field, and the coach is like, Schneider, what's going on? The next day I quit. That hit was so hard, and I hurt my neck, and I wasn't getting any sympathy from the coaches. Again, this is the 70s back in the day, where it's like, get your ass back out there. Oh, you got a little boo-boo. Get back out there. Well, the boo-boo was on my neck, and I did not get back out there. So that ended football my junior year. Well, my senior year, Judy, I'm gonna get into it. I start training. I go, you know, there's a couple of guys and I that meet up a couple of nights a week. We go over to Minot High, we're weightlifting, I'm running every night. I am 100% getting into shape for football my senior year. And the folks are on board with this too. And we had a couple of practices, and I don't know if you remember this, but dad, dad was a police hypnotist, had the lie detector, you know, chief of detectives for the minor police department. Well, dad's gonna hypnotize me for football to help me. And you kind of already know where this is gonna go. You're gonna walk like a chicken. Judy, you saw the outcome. You saw the outcome because so dad hypnotizes me, and it's weird because you know, you may or may not believe in hypnosis, but he did it with a ballpoint pen. So he would hold up this pen and have you just stare at the end of it and then hypnotize you. And again, whether you believe in the body.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Are you sure it wasn't a sobriety test?

SPEAKER_02 17:21

Yeah, it might have been that. And I failed both. So anyway, I got grounded. No, I'm kidding, that didn't happen. But anyway, so he hypnotizes me. The focus of the hypnosis is two things. One is to remember every play in the playbook, which I already told you, I was good at that, had studied with that, and you know, kind of weirdly, you know who helped me with that? I don't know if you know this either, who helped me memorize the playbook? Mom. Mom sat in the couch in the living room and would call out, you know, or say something, and then I would call the play. So again, as weird, our mom, not knowing anything about sports. Yes. Well, or English and write and even reading and and cheering for the wrong team. And maybe this is why I didn't have a career as a quarterback, but you know, because I have my German mom helping me. But anyway, she's helping me memorize the plays. That's dad's, you know, hypnosis focus is the plays and to throw tight spirals. Well, that's a physical thing. So we're talking metal, we're talking physical. Well, the metal thing worked out great. We had actually a practice down at Bismarck. I think we scrimmaged against Bismarck High or Mandan. You guys came down for that, and yeah, the hypnosis worked uh halfway. I had every play memorized fantastically well.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Did you walk up to the line though and say, Vas is los? You said you called the play in German.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

I'm kidding, I'm kidding. No. So anyway, it worked out great in regards to the playbook. Did not work out well with the spirals. I remember we had a little sprint out where I ran out and the fullback ran out, and it was it was a five-yard pass, and it looked like a wounded duck, almost end over end. It was so horrible. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And then that kind of knocked the whole confidence, you know, out of my head in regards to the hypnosis thing. Although Judy, I swear to God, it worked with the the play calling. Real quick, back to our neighbor, the guy that lived right next to us, and he played sports as well at Minot High. Well, I always tell people, and this is a true story, and it's a suspended story from Donnie, but it's a true story. Judy, I was the top senior quarterback for the largest high school in the state of North Dakota in 1979. True statement. Well, you know, you peel away that layer, and then you know, the reality is that I was actually beat out by a junior who happened to be our neighbor. So again, me being the top senior quarterback of the biggest high school in the state of North Dakota didn't really mean anything because I wasn't the starter. Our neighbor was actually the starter and uh played. But again, kind of just a cool little thing that I can spin. But kind of weird too that you know neighbors living right next to each other are the starting and the backup quarterback for minor high school football.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

And never practiced together.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

No, no. I helped, he was a baseball player, a really good baseball player, and I helped him a little bit with baseball. And we go outside and play catch with baseball, and he was a pitcher. So were you the catcher?

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Again, I was Judy.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

Yeah, again, you know, this in this scenario, I didn't have to throw anybody out. I was just catching the ball, doing nothing else. But yeah, I was the catcher. So I helped him with baseball, but he and I, yeah, never practiced together with football. And then senior year, we're playing football, and uh, we a couple of games in, and one day we're practicing, and uh, I'm walking out to practice. You know this story well. And I hate this story. This is the end of Donnie's high school career for all intents and purposes, walking out to practice. You know, back then padded practices. There were no no pads. Well, you know, we had to walk out behind the high school, then over to the practice field, and he had to go through a couple of parking lots, not paying attention, classic Donnie story. Stepped off a curb, off a curb in the parking lot, and hurt my knee and did some ligament damage on my knee, and had to get carried into the locker room, had to go to the hospital, Trinity Hospital, dad had to show up. I'm still in my football gear. This is like you see on TV where they're cutting off, you know, they're cutting out my crying desk.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Oh, wait, no. They're crying.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Oh, yeah, no crying. No, no crying, Judy. Crying was at Perkins. There's no crying when you're at high school.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

All right, all right.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

But that was again the end of uh the career at that point, and not a good story to tell because and you know what's sad about that? What's super sad about that is that a couple of weeks later, our starting quarterback, our neighbor, got hurt, and then they had to put in the third string quarterback, which sadly that would have been me if I wouldn't have been hurt and I would have been playing, you know, playing in a varsity football game as The starting quarterback, which would have been phenomenal. But I missed that opportunity because of stepping off a curb and uh hurting myself. And again, now when I tell that story, it's this super embarrassing story.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

It is. You could have been Nick Foles of class 5A basketball. I mean uh football. Oh, you could have been Nick Foles leading them to the championship. Yes, yeah. Well, weirdly, just a few short weeks later, right? So this is totally strange. Is I was playing in the powder puff football game. I was a junior and I was the quarterback, and you were announcing the game. Because his little broadcasting little thing went way back then, but he was announcing the game. And sadly, every time I threw a pass, he would say, It's the Hindenburg. And I'm like, okay, not the Hindenburg. And he was a senior, so he was cheering for his senior team and calling the game like uh some of the announcers do today when they're homers. But anyway, I'm sitting there and I'm playing quarterback, and all of a sudden, and it's supposed to be powder pot football, not tackle football, but here come the seniors, get her, and they come running, they charge the line, and boom, they pile on. Sadly, I'm carried off the field in a stretcher just like you. Except, and I ended up at the hospital too, a few weeks later. So I thought that was odd.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

A lot of our stories mirror each other, and we have these kind of twin stories. And I think if you watch our podcast, some of the ones in the past and some of the ones upcoming, that a lot of situations we have similar stories. But you're right, I was the PA announcer. I'm up in the booth. It's my first exposure. And I love how you the way you say little broadcasting career or little broadcasting. It turned out to be pretty big. I really like that word little when you're talking about things. Little man, little broadcasting, little broadcasting, you know, all that kind of stuff. So anyway, that's turned out to be a pretty big career for me, just FYI. So I'm up in the booth, a professional broadcaster is a senior in high school, and they give me the PA microphone. Not a good thing to do. And I had fun calling that game. But I do remember when you got hurt, and I was cheering for the seniors. I'm a senior, and all my friends are seniors and whatnot. And I know some juniors, and you know, hang out with some of the juniors and some of your friends, and you're the quarterback, and you think that I would have some loyalty to you. And I didn't, although, you know what? I love calling that game because you were playing in it. And then there was that big hit where again it was the blitz, it was the the blind side hit, whatever it was. And then I I can't remember exactly how I called it, but it might have been like the the Joe Frey and down goes Frasier, except for down goes Schneider. And then, you know, at first it was kind of like, oh my gosh, you know, we got an injury on the field, and we're kind of laughing about it. Well, then all of a sudden, here comes the ambulance, and all of a sudden, here comes the stretcher, and the crowd grows silent, and then it's just like you see on TV when they're wheeling you off. The several hundred spectators in attendance, yeah, applauded you. And then you might have even from the stretcher, I wiggled my toes.

unknown 25:02

No, I'm kidding.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

It wasn't that big of a hit. I have one more story, and it's one that I find kind of funny that you decided to leave out, but it was what happened to your basketball career, right? Because you never talked about the basketball career where you sabotaged yourself, but we had this party. It was a five-day rager. I know you like to refer to it as our little woodstock when our dad was at lie detector school. But anyway, the answer to the question was classic when her dad asked you if you'd been drinking because you were all excited about your basketball cap.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

Dad gets in my face and he goes, Did you drink? Did you drink at the party? And I was like, No. And he goes, But are you sure? I go, Yeah, no, I didn't drink. You didn't have one sip of al you didn't have one sip of beer at that party? And I said, Well, maybe I sipped a little bit of foam.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

That's where I think the most classic answer and the end to everything for you was foam drinkers don't go to basketball camp.