Dolphins' top pick doesn't quite leave his working-class hometown behind

[DolFan619]

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/football/pro/dolphins/sfl-flsphyde18sbmay18,0,3360047.column

Jake Long is all about hard work

Dave Hyde
Sports Columnist

May 18, 2008

LAPEER, Mich. - Come on. Let's go. Walk out the Long family's ranch-style home into the cool of a Michigan spring. Hop into the deep-black, leather-trimmed, community-sized, pickup truck with 963 miles on the odometer — the one item Jake Long self-gifted himself with this past month.

Let's take a tour of Jake's World.

There, through the trees, two backyards away, out toward the pond on which he would play hockey in winters. That's the home of Jake Weingartz, Long's best friend since kindergarten. Big Jake and Little Jake, everyone calls them. And there's the neighbor's home, the Charnleys. The man putting new grass in the yard in a Dolphins cap is Long's dad, John. He's working here after recently being temporarily laid off from his job in a General Motors factory.

There's the Michalczuk's home. Like every place here, the yard seems a few acres of open space. As a teen, Jake would cut their grass for $45 a pop.

"Just to get some spending money," the No. 1 pick in last month's NFL Draft explained.

There's the town a few miles up, straight from the paintbrushes of Rockwell. The main street's called Main Street. The town square actually is a square. And everywhere are signs saluting the biggest town hero since Danielle Gay was crowned Miss Michigan a few years back."Congrats, Jake Long!" says the sign outside the library.

"Congratulations, Jake Long!" reads the sign outside Harmony Hall.

Long parks his truck on the street outside Dagwood's Deli, which sits next to Blondie's ice cream store. He walks into the restaurant, where the sign says, "Good Eats, No Crybabies," and there's a lunch line waiting to be served.

"We're swamped!" the woman behind the counter mouths to Long.

"Hi, mom," he says, then gives a quick wave to Denise Long's co-worker. "Hi, Marie."

He goes to the back of the line, people giving him a Midwestern nod of hello, those at the crowded tables turning to look.

"Jake, I haven't seen you since the draft," says Gary Oester, the athletic director at Long's Lapeer East High. "That was a lot of fun watching you."

Long shakes his hand and says, "Thanks. How're you doing?"

"That story turned out good on the NFL Network," Oester says. "It was pretty neat to see the school on TV like that."

This was during the draft coverage. The NFL Network came to Lapeer East and filmed Long working out. For a town of 9,000 people that historically has been known only for having the state's oldest courthouse, Long has been a boon to civic pride. And feel-good fun.

His mom makes him a chicken-breast sandwich when he gets to the front of the line, and he takes it to the only open table in back. Soon, a high-school girl stops with one of Long's Michigan football cards for him to sign. A businessman shakes his hand in congratulations. Marie comes from behind the counter, sits down at the table and small-talks as he signs a couple cards. He blows the Sharpie signature dry so it doesn't smudge.

Sitting here, a few weeks from being the draft's top pick, in the working-class town where he grew up, at the deli where his mom has made sandwiches for the past 21 years, Long's story sounds as much the American Dream as a cornerstone in the Dolphins' rebuilding. At least until he starts talking football.

"What I love most," he says, "is just to punish people. Just bury them."


Tradition of tough men

On these man-made mountains of shoulders, Long wears two tattoos. Each tells a story. On the left shoulder, just above his biceps, is a story of family. A black rose. His father and uncles each got one years ago, when they became men, as some bond of brotherhood.

These are tough men from an area known for breeding tough men. Here, people like the Longs talk of retiring "up north," where the land is untamed, instead of the soft and sunny South. Here, they have jobs that test your mind and callous your hands, like working on an assembly line moving casting heads and engine blocks.

John Long, 49, has done that at a Saginaw plant for the past 10 years of his nearly 30-year career at General Motors. It's a 55-mile drive each way. Some snowy nights it took him three hours to get to work. But he never missed a day until this year, when a strike by axel makers at another plant shut down production all along the truck-making line. The economy is hurting all over Michigan from that.

Jake and his older brother got the black rose when they were old enough, too. One generation was linked to another.

"We'd always talked how we were going to do it, just like they did it," Long said of himself and his brother, now a teacher. On the other shoulder is a tattoo of St. Joseph, a miracle worker of the Catholic Church. Four years ago, Long awoke to a smoke-filled room in the Ann Arbor home he was sharing with 11 University of Michigan teammates.

He put his shirt over his face but still couldn't breathe. He opened the bedroom door, but a wave of heat and smoke pushed him back. This was the night the Detroit Pistons won the NBA championship, and fire officials later theorized a neighbor setting off bottle rockets in celebration hit one of the couches on this home's porch. The house burned down in 36 minutes.

Long slammed the bedroom door shut, tripped over the bed and opened the window. He jumped down 25 feet, his landing softened by the roof of a Ford Bronco. He thought he was fine. Paramedics demanded he go to the hospital.

Soon, Long had trouble breathing. He started spitting up black gunk from the smoke. A tube was put down his throat, and he was knocked out with morphine.

Three days later, he woke up.

During that time, his lungs were vacuumed out, his family stood watch and his aunt put a St. Joseph's card under his pillow. She said not to lose it. He still has the card. But to ensure he carries the saint with him everywhere, he put the tattoo on his shoulder.


Ties to high school

Out front of Lapeer East High, there's another ode, this sign reading, "Jake Long Is Our No. 1 Pick, Too!"

Here, as a senior, Long captained a 7-2 football team, averaged 20 points and 9.5 rebounds on the basketball team and set the school record of nine home runs in baseball. Sue Wilmers, his school counselor, ticks down the same list of adjectives describing him that she did when Michigan coach Lloyd Carr came on a scouting trip: Friendly, humble, popular, hard-working.

Long didn't just play tackle and defensive end in football. He would line up as fullback on goal-line situations. In one first half, he scored three touchdowns.

In the yearbook for his Class of 2003, Long wrote, "In 10 years, I plan on playing football in the NFL and being rich with a beautiful wife and a big family." Five years later, he's batting 2 of 4. Not that his friends see any change. Big Jake and Little Jake went to buy Mother's Day presents together recently. Big Jake, who just signed the $58 million contract, came up a little short.

"He owes me $10," says Little Jake, who is 5 feet 9 and 175 pounds compared to Long's 6-7, 315 pounds.

Weingartz, who played football at Division II Wayne State, is the new coach at Lapeer East, where he and Long starred. Each afternoon just after 2 p.m., Long walks into the training room as classes end and players start to lift weights. Amid the high school kids, he lifts with Weingartz.

The two Jakes then head to the track that circles the football field. They'll sprint the straightaway and jog the corners beside farm fields that run into the horizon. After six of those, they typically start running 40-yard sprints. Weingartz's players ask to join them.

"You can't keep up with us," Weingartz says.


The work ahead

No one knows where the road leads for Long. But it's easy to see where the road comes from, Highway 24, which runs near his home. He's ready to get on it south, too. The draft, the contract, the media blitz that goes with the No. 1 pick — it's all behind him now, as Lapeer soon will be for a while.

"I'm glad I can concentrate on football now," Long says, sitting in the family home. A Michigan helmet autographed by the players on Jake's team sits on a shelf above the TV, a present to his father. He'll need a Dolphins helmet now.

His mom has no plans to stop working, at least for the next four years, when the Long's youngest son will be through college. His father might retire from GM after 30 years in June, then start a new career working in something he has planned.

The son of these working-class genes says exactly what you would expect, what people across Lapeer often say: "I'm ready to work."

[Sunstroke]

Great article... I'm really looking forward to watching Jake Long "punish" people the next 10 years.