By Tim Panaccio
Ever wonder what it was like for the pioneers of professional football? You know, the guys who built a solid fan interest in Bert Bell’s league long before television entered the picture. Guys from the 1920s who held full-time jobs, maybe selling insurance, maybe even working on the docks during the day and working out a couple of times a week in the afternoon.
Though this may come as a surprise, even today not all professional sports figures are full-time athletes.
A good example were indoor soccer players from the Philadelphia Fever, which departed this area earlier in the decade. Which brings us to today’s example of a part-time pro athlete, the lacrosse player.
Take Gary Martin. He’s 27 years old and lives in King of Prussia. Gary is a New Yorker by birth and a Penn State graduate with a degree in marketing. He works full-time for Unisys, a high-tech space and communications company. Twice a week, Martin discards his suit for shoulderpads and a lacrosse jersey with the Philadelphia Wings.
The Wings are Philadelphia’s entry in the three-year-old Major Indoor Lacrosse League. As a second-year Wing, Martin will earn $150 a game, under the league’s contract arrangement with players. Top pay is $200 a game for three-year pros. Twice a week, he carpools with several teammates for the nearly 90-minute drive to Baltimore to practice.
“We’ve got five of us in the carpool,” said Martin. “There isn’t an indoor facility around here we could practice so, we go to Baltimore. Plus, we’ve got a lot of guys on the team from Baltimore. It’s a tremendous hassle, this commuting. But you deal with it.”
Obviously, the Gary Martins of the MILL aren’t driving I-95 for the money. They simply enjoy lacrosse. Maybe we ought to mention that the indoor game, often referred to as “box lacrosse,” is a tad different from the outdoor product. Sticks are shorter, teams have just five players and a goalie on the carpet, and defense is porous.
Typical scores from last season’s Wings’ games read 14-13, 11-10, 13-12 – you get the idea.
“It’s a lot different from the outdoor game,” said Martin. “There’s more goals but there’s more checking, too. I was a very offensive player in college and I had to pick up some defense here.”
Judging by the scores, the emphasis of the game is offense, not defense.
Defense in lacrosse is a cross-check, a well-placed knee and a stick high to the chest, if you can get away with such. There was so much of that going on last season that the league decided to extend minor penalties from one minute to two minutes and major penalties from three to five minutes. League officials also have thrown in 10-minute misconducts and a rule that says if a player gets a third 5-minute major, he’s out of the game.
How did the MILL find its players? After all, where does a lacrosse player go after college?
“To clubs,” said Martin. “They’ve got a pretty good club in Philadelphia called Eagles Eye. But it’s nothing like Baltimore, which has maybe eight or nine clubs.”
Those clubs practice outdoors in the spring.
The Northeast corridor from Long Island to Virginia is a hotbed for high school and college lacrosse. The Baltimore-Washington area is probably the lacrosse capital of the country. And that’s why the MILL has teams in both those cities.
“I think they found a lot of players through word of mouth from the club level,” said Martin. “I think the Wings got most of their players from the Baltimore area when they were formed.”
One thing you have to admire about these guys besides the long-distance traveling to practice is that the Wings voted themselves a 10 percent pay cut this season so that the players on the inactive roster could be paid. The MILL’s rules stipulate that only 19 active players get paid at games.
What it comes down to is that about $300 will be thrown into the pool every game and the five or six inactives will split it among them.
“Pays them for showing up and being there,” said Martin.
It’s a rare gesture of humanitarianism by professional athletes, but it’s a sensible way the league can keep its costs down.
“Like I said before, you gotta love this game,” said Martin. “I guess it’s a lot like the old NFL players.”
It’s the difference between the pro athlete and a part-time pro.
(Philadelphia Inquirer, January 17, 1989)