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Health & Fitness

Junior ... I get the message

Memories of Junior Seau are difficult to erase.

Took a walk on the beach the other day. Carlsbad Village Drive to the Oceanside pier. About 3.5 miles.

On the way passed by Junior Seau’s old house. This time last

year I might have seen him. Strumming on a uke. Maybe even walking out into the surf to catch a wave. I would have said hello.

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You see, I didn’t know Junior Seau. No more than you probably did. But I admired him, or least what I thought I knew of him. Since he decided to end his own life last May 2 I’ve come to learn a lot more about him. Most of it I liked, some of it I didn’t. 

Guess I really didn’t need to know that much about him just like he didn’t
need to know that much about me.

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But the story had to be told…didn’t it? Afterall, he committed suicide last May 2 and a lot of things changed beyond  folks strolling along the Strand and having chance encounters with one of the better football players who ever lived.

I never met Junior. After that stroll on the beach I rushed home and knowing it was somewhere in my stack of memorabilia I found an old Sports Illustrated magazine with Junior’s photo on the cover. He had signed it over the blue Chargers’ helmet he was wearing in the picture. I don’t recall where or when that happened, but he did sign it.

The article in the Sept. 6, 1993 issue was titled “A Blast From The Past – San Diego Chargers Linebacker Junior Seau: The New Butkus.”

He is screaming on the cover, eyes intently focused on another offense, another quarterback no doubt. Inside he is shown riding a jet-ski , posing with his mom and dad and strolling on the beach with a couple of dogs and former wife Gina and the obligatory action shots.

So …. Why?  Almost a year later that is the overriding question – why did he end his life? I don’t know. You don’t know. One possibility is brain damage from concussions he suffered playing the game. Quite possibly. Another could simply be depression.

They turned off the spigot of big-time football for Junior and he turned on all
the wrong spigots – gambling, bad investments, you know all those wrong turns.

The one turn he never needed to make was the one away from his family. That’s what got him to the seaside mansion on the Strand and that’s where he should have focused his attention in his life after football.

It’s a pretty simple message and I’m sure it’s one Junior would like all of us to hear right now … always remember where you came from.

Junior, I wish you were there strumming that uke right now … but I have the autograph and I get the message.

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