amused.
“Manca, get off the field!” Johnson yelled. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“I’ve got asthma,” explained Manca, turning to the best half-truth he could muster. (On the one hand, Manca did indeed suffer from asthma as a young kid. On the other hand, Manca hadn’t been a young kid in, oh, ten years.)
“Asthma, huh?” said Johnson. “Then go inside and talk to the doctor. But don’t come back here until you’re ready to compete.”
That was it.
Or was it?
In the hours…days…weeks that passed, each retelling of the “Massimo Manca Incident” served to embroider Johnson’s increasingly larger-than-life aura. What began as “Don’t come back here until you’re ready to compete” morphed into “You have no business being here”; which morphed into “Get the hell out of my face!”; which morphed into the the now-immortal “The asthma field is over there!” Manca beat-down.
“I remember it vividly,” says Steve Folsom, a Cowboys tight end. “The guy was having an asthma attack on the field, and Jimmy just kicked him off.”
“One kid was trying to breathe, and he just couldn’t,” says Willis Crockett, a Dallas linebacker. “I was right there. Jimmy points and says, ‘The asthma field is over there.’”
“I was a witness,” swears Ray Horton, the Cowboys’ safety. “Jimmy was yelling at our trainer, ‘You get him off my field right now! You cut his ass right now and get him off my field!’”
“It’s a true story,” says Jim Jeffcoat, the defensive lineman. “The guy’s name was Luis Zendejas. Jimmy looked at him and said…”
Before long, Manca was no longer a free-agent kicker with little chance of making the squad, but a strong halfback. A beefy linebacker. An offensive lineman with a grizzly bear’s might and Paul Bunyan’s size. Manca was the greatest football player who had ever lived, and Johnson had banned him from the game for life. Asthma? I’ll show you asthma!
“The whole thing grew to a ridiculous level,” Manca says. “It wasn’t that big of a deal.”
No matter. Thanks to one disposable kicker, Johnson had taken the first step in molding the Cowboys into his Cowboys: He had scared the bejesus out of his players. If Coach is willing to banish someone because of a life-threatening asthma attack, well, what the hell will he do to me?
Nestled against the Santa Monica Mountains and surrounded by more than 14,800 acres of natural open space, Thousand Oaks is the sort of sleepy town one expects to find in South Dakota or Kansas, not in the action-packed state of California.
With the exception of the Conejo Valley Botanic Garden and an occasional celebrity sighting (Thousand Oaks’s residents include Frankie Valli, Mariel Hemingway, and Belinda Carlisle), the main draw is the campus of Cal Lutheran University. Boasting majestic scenery and one of the state’s better liberal arts programs, the school is both beautiful and respected.
It is here that the 1989 Dallas Cowboys began to take shape.
For the previous twenty-six years that the Cowboys called Thousand Oaks their home-away-from-home, training camp was an annual exercise in dullness. Under Tom Landry, workouts went as planned, assistant coaches understood what to expect, and returnees knew that—unless they were inflicted with incurable blindness—their spots were mostly secure.
No more.
The Cowboys congregated for their first official training camp meeting on the morning of July 28, 1989, and if one thing became blatantly clear to holdovers from the Landry Era, it was that their new coach was an entirely different breed—and completely insufferable. For nearly forty-five minutes, Johnson blathered on about what could be accomplished with the power of teamwork; how effort and unity could move even the largest mountain; and blah, blah, blah, blah. “Listen,” he said. “We’re gonna play like champions, we’re gonna act like champions, and we’re gonna be
“Manca, get off the field!” Johnson yelled. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“I’ve got asthma,” explained Manca, turning to the best half-truth he could muster. (On the one hand, Manca did indeed suffer from asthma as a young kid. On the other hand, Manca hadn’t been a young kid in, oh, ten years.)
“Asthma, huh?” said Johnson. “Then go inside and talk to the doctor. But don’t come back here until you’re ready to compete.”
That was it.
Or was it?
In the hours…days…weeks that passed, each retelling of the “Massimo Manca Incident” served to embroider Johnson’s increasingly larger-than-life aura. What began as “Don’t come back here until you’re ready to compete” morphed into “You have no business being here”; which morphed into “Get the hell out of my face!”; which morphed into the the now-immortal “The asthma field is over there!” Manca beat-down.
“I remember it vividly,” says Steve Folsom, a Cowboys tight end. “The guy was having an asthma attack on the field, and Jimmy just kicked him off.”
“One kid was trying to breathe, and he just couldn’t,” says Willis Crockett, a Dallas linebacker. “I was right there. Jimmy points and says, ‘The asthma field is over there.’”
“I was a witness,” swears Ray Horton, the Cowboys’ safety. “Jimmy was yelling at our trainer, ‘You get him off my field right now! You cut his ass right now and get him off my field!’”
“It’s a true story,” says Jim Jeffcoat, the defensive lineman. “The guy’s name was Luis Zendejas. Jimmy looked at him and said…”
Before long, Manca was no longer a free-agent kicker with little chance of making the squad, but a strong halfback. A beefy linebacker. An offensive lineman with a grizzly bear’s might and Paul Bunyan’s size. Manca was the greatest football player who had ever lived, and Johnson had banned him from the game for life. Asthma? I’ll show you asthma!
“The whole thing grew to a ridiculous level,” Manca says. “It wasn’t that big of a deal.”
No matter. Thanks to one disposable kicker, Johnson had taken the first step in molding the Cowboys into his Cowboys: He had scared the bejesus out of his players. If Coach is willing to banish someone because of a life-threatening asthma attack, well, what the hell will he do to me?
Nestled against the Santa Monica Mountains and surrounded by more than 14,800 acres of natural open space, Thousand Oaks is the sort of sleepy town one expects to find in South Dakota or Kansas, not in the action-packed state of California.
With the exception of the Conejo Valley Botanic Garden and an occasional celebrity sighting (Thousand Oaks’s residents include Frankie Valli, Mariel Hemingway, and Belinda Carlisle), the main draw is the campus of Cal Lutheran University. Boasting majestic scenery and one of the state’s better liberal arts programs, the school is both beautiful and respected.
It is here that the 1989 Dallas Cowboys began to take shape.
For the previous twenty-six years that the Cowboys called Thousand Oaks their home-away-from-home, training camp was an annual exercise in dullness. Under Tom Landry, workouts went as planned, assistant coaches understood what to expect, and returnees knew that—unless they were inflicted with incurable blindness—their spots were mostly secure.
No more.
The Cowboys congregated for their first official training camp meeting on the morning of July 28, 1989, and if one thing became blatantly clear to holdovers from the Landry Era, it was that their new coach was an entirely different breed—and completely insufferable. For nearly forty-five minutes, Johnson blathered on about what could be accomplished with the power of teamwork; how effort and unity could move even the largest mountain; and blah, blah, blah, blah. “Listen,” he said. “We’re gonna play like champions, we’re gonna act like champions, and we’re gonna be
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