Playing football with 'reckless abandon' -- at age 55

It was with the same intent one studies a bug through a microscope that I looked at John Pita of Santa Rosa recently. I wanted to check his brain function. Did he have an extra leg, drool uncontrollably, anything extraordinary, tell-tale, a give-away really, why a 55-year old man would want to play semi-pro football?

I mean, John was eligible for his AARP card five years ago. Most 55-year-old men hit the sofa, a bag of chips, the remote or, in a moment of extreme exercise largesse, a hiking trail. They don't run down a football field for Santa Rosa's North Bay Rattlers and try to hit someone so hard they want to send the guy back to next week.

"John plays with reckless abandon," said the Rattlers head coach, Howard Berry. "He wants to be Bill Bates."

Bill Bates is the legendary former Dallas Cowboy defensive back and special-teams player from the '80s and '90s who considered himself the human spear and thought nothing of throwing his little 200-pound body (small by NFL standards) into a ton of beef blocking for a ballcarrier. He was exceptional for his lack of fear, considering his lack of size. One day, if there is football god, he needs to hook up Bates and Pita, 5-foot-10, 170 pounds, who can't give up football anymore than a chain-smoker can give up nicotine.

"I'm Peter Pan," said Pita, a security guard for River Rock Casino. "I'm a little kid."

A little kid who has a 24-year old son, John, a 21-year old daughter, Naomi, and a wife of 30 years, Rebecca, who can't attend Rattlers games because she can't bear the thought of seeing her husband throwing his body into a meat grinder, fearing John might look like Spam in a can coming out the other end.

"She doesn't care for it," Pita said, "but she knows what kind of person I am. If I didn't play an organized game (of football), I'd be playing street ball somewhere. So she gave up (protesting)."

While he said he has never heard a discouraging word, Pita can see it in the eyes of the opposition, that look of bizarre wonderment, a phrase uniquely appropriate to Pita.

"Hey, this is not a senior citizen's league out here," said Pita, interpreting the stares he receives. "This is not for old guys. You're shark bait."

Then Pita whacks someone back to last Thursday and those young guys perk up in admiration. An occasional safety who plays on all the Rattlers special teams, Pita made a double hit last Saturday against the NorCal Lawmen from San Leandro, another semi-pro team in the Gold Coast Football League. Pita knocked a guy down on a kickoff and, feeling so excited he wanted to do it again, knocked down another guy on the same play.

"It feels good to get a hit like that," Pita said, "no matter how old you are."

During that game a player from the San Leandro team lay motionless after a tackle. He was taken to a hospital by ambulance. Later in the game the public address announcer said he had sustained a concussion and was moving his limbs without pain.

"That was a reality check," Pita said. "I thought about it and said I'm glad it wasn't me. Of course I have a little fear when I play but I play 100 percent because otherwise you get hurt."

And if he gets hurt?

"That's the way it goes," Pita said.

It is remarkable a 55-year old man can say that. At that age, most people have experienced serious body pain along the way and care not to revisit the experience. Pita, for his part, is also remarkable in that he doesn't look 55. A little gray around the temples, he could pass for 40. He said he's never had surgery.

Pita believes in living life, not sitting on the couch and watching it pass him by. It's easy to make a statement like that. It's quite another thing to live it. Especially when living life is playing tackle football for nothing as opposed to living life as a 55-year old man walking around Spring Lake sipping bottled water.

"You could get hurt just mowing your lawn," said Rattlers offensive lineman Chris Reed, a former SRJC star from the 1980s.

That is true, although the lawn is not trying to knock your head off. Ah, but that's putting too much of a fine spin on things and robs the very zest that occupies Pita. It's not an analytical thing Pita does. It's a love thing. And love, for anyone who has ever experienced it about anything, doesn't always make sense.

"I look at vets who come back from war," said Pita, born and raised in San Francisco, "who have no legs and yet they are out doing things. So why can't I do what I do? I'm thankful I have a full body."

He never played organized football after graduating from John O'Connell Technical High School until he started playing semi-pro 18 years ago. Pita knows how to tackle and is not a rube when it comes to playing the game. Berry doesn't wince when Pita is in the game, though Berry spot-plays him on defense, a concession to Pita's age.

"John is amazing, he really is," Berry said. "When he first came to the team last year I had a long talk with him before our first practice. 'Are you sure you want to do this?' I asked. He knows what he's doing. He'll do whatever we ask of him."

Playing semi-pro football for anyone is a lot to ask. The players don't get paid and aren't provided insurance. They have to buy their own equipment. They have to arrange for transportation to away games that include trips to Sacramento. They sign a waiver agreeing not to sue the league or the Rattlers in case of injury. The team played from 1995-99, disbanded and reformed in 2004. It plays all its home games at Santa Rosa High School.

In other words, this is not beer-league, slow-pitch softball for players who can't give up baseball and the adult beverage.

In further words, considering you pay $375 to play ($150 if you are a returning player), you better breathe this stuff and it's best you arrive in shape.

"I'm one of the older guys on the team," said Reed, a security guard at Sutter Hospital, "and everybody gives me a hard time."

Reed is 42.

"John must be getting close to receiving Social Security," Reed said.

Sure, but that's something you say about old folks. You are as young as you feel, that's what people say. What Pita would say, you're as young as the forearm you can deliver without winding up in a body cast.

"I do believe there are guys in my age range who play football," Pita said.

I looked at him like he was a politician promising lower gas prices.

"Or," Pita said, "maybe not."

Yes, John, that would be a definite, a most certain maybe not. Like lower gas prices.

You can reach Staff Columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5490 or at bob.padecky@pressdemocrat.com