NFL's harsh side will soon show itself - Ingles

If you were ever wanted to teach a total stranger the diametrical attractions between America's two favorite athletic pastimes, here's what I'd suggest: Just start at the beginning.

Spend a few days at a major-league spring training or an NFL training camp, and that will tell the total story of a baseball lover's fancy and a football fan's passion. Every spring, baseball romantics flock to Florida and Arizona in search of gentle breezes and some sort of metaphorical reference that reminds them that baseball has eased its way back into their lives. Football fans show up in the insufferable August heat to watch three hours of head knocking and brutal body slamming and quickly acknowledge, what's love got to do with this.

Baseball's romance is in the soothing way players ease their way back into the regular season. Football's reality is in the fierce and pitiless way it goes about its business at training camp. Complete evidence of this was on display Monday afternoon at Rams Park, when the harsh business of football dominated the day. Long snapper Chris Massey, a Ram for the last 10 years and one of the best long snappers in the business, lost his job to a younger man with healthier knees and a significantly lighter potential salary.

Massey had essentially spent the last three weeks training Ohio State rookie Jake McQuaide to take his job, and he did his work all too well. McQuaide didn't even know he had won the two-man competition until he walked in the locker room before team meetings to find Massey clearing out his locker, and Massey shook his hand and congratulated him.

That is the revolving door existence of pro football. Every time you see someone coming in the door, it means someone else is getting shoved out at the same time. "It's just a reality of the league," said head coach Steve Spagnuolo after practice. "I think (everyone in the locker room) is cognizant of the fact that a week from (Tuesday) every team in the league is going to have to cut 10 guys from the roster."

In baseball, the kids in camp know that the worst thing that can happen to them is that at some point during the spring they will grab their belongings and move from the major-league clubhouse and go down the hallway to the minor-league clubhouse. But life at NFL training camp has a less comfortable end. There are 90 players in the locker room at Rams Park today, and many of them are sharing stalls and NFL dreams. But when those dreams end here, there is no minor-league locker room down the hall.

"Everybody knows the reality is we can only have 53 players," said Spagnuolo.

For a lot of the youngsters in camp, the first few weeks are almost like a wonderful dream. You're in the NFL, going to practice, eating at the training table, living in a wonderful hotel and living the fantasy. But this is the time that wide-eyed dream changes. The first time you walk into the locker room at camp and you see someone's empty stall, everything changes.

"I definitely think that's the moment when it lets you know that nothing's ever permanent in the NFL," said punter and eight-year NFL veteran Donnie Jones. "We're all temporary here. These next few weeks, they start making the cuts, guys start losing jobs, well, that's the toughest part of the job, losing teammates, losing friends. And any time someone gets released, (the rookies) all have to know: 'Wow, the next could be me'"

Jones would know what that feels like better than most. Eight years ago in his first NFL camp in Seattle, he was cut five times by the Seahawks and either brought back to the practice squad or the 53-man roster repeatedly. "I was on (the roster), I was off, I was on, I was off," he said. "And then at the end of the season, they cut me from the practice squad.

"The first time I got cut, I could tell it was coming," Jones said. "And I took it personal. But I learned, you can't take it personal because it's just part of life in the NFL."

Life in the NFL means that the Rams had to make a calculated business decision regarding the Massey versus McQuaide competition. Do you hold on to a loyal football soldier who has gone to war for you for nearly a decade and given up a few ligaments along the way, or do you go with the kid whose knees are both healthy, can run faster and will cost you about $500,000 less on the books?

Massey can still play in this league and will end up catching on somewhere else because there just aren't that many men on the planet who do what he does well. Chances are he will find another team, play for three or four more years and never look back.

But in the meantime, it will take a while to get over that angry feeling that is seething in his gut right now, and who can blame him?

There may be no crying in baseball, but in football tears flow regularly around this time of the year when dreams begin to die in rapid succession as every little twitch, glitch and success is evaluated by a hundred observing eyes. The scouts are on the field taking notes. The coaches are watching everything and the TV cameras high above the practice field are monitoring everything.

That's why on Monday at practice, when tight end Michael Hoomanawanui came down the wrong way and strained his calf muscle and had to leave practice, he reacted angrily. He knows this is the wrong time to be getting another injury that could keep him off the field and possibly slide him down the depth chart. That's why it must have eaten at wide receiver Danario Alexander's guts to have to skip another practice Monday to submit to another MRI on his balky left knee. Alexander is one of those great football stories, a guy who has fought through countless knee operations to not only find his way on an NFL roster but also has shown the flashes that let you know just how dazzling his potential is.

But he is also one of those agonizing NFL stories, too, because like we said, football is a pitiless business. So as talented a playmaker as Alexander has shown he can be, he has also shown how fragile he is. And if he doesn't stay on the field long enough to restore some sort of confidence that he can be a reliable lineup fixture, then the organization may ultimately choose a lesser receiver with inferior skills but two solid knees. This article was written by Bryan Burwell and appeared in The St.Louis Post-Dispatch.