Miami Herald - Wednesday, December 28, 1994
Dan Le Batard, Herald Staff Writer

The doctors put needles in Westhoff's skin, poison chasing poison. Nearly six months of chemotherapy made the life leak out of Westhoff's body and . . .

"I don't really want to talk about this," Westhoff says now, sitting in his office nearly seven years later. "I mean, it's an interesting story, but it didn't help us tackle that SOB last Sunday."

It didn't change Mike Westhoff, this fight against death. He can tell you about the seven-inch bone in his left leg, borrowed from a cadaver. He can tell you how he had a malignant tumor in his thigh the size of an egg. But, hey, Kansas City is coming up, a huge playoff game, and Westhoff's special teams have been dreadful lately. So now the office VCR is humming again -- rewind, stop, pause, slow motion -- and he is describing plays as "catastrophic." He had all sorts of trouble sleeping after Sunday's game, just like he had trouble sleeping the night before he thought they might amputate his leg.

Perspective? It has become a cliche in sports, as common as "one game at a time" and prayer after points. Magic Johnson announces he is HIV positive and all his teammates say the proper things about how this puts sports in the right place. Then the camera lights go off and the microphones are put away and the L.A. Lakers are back in a nightclub at 3 a.m., chasing perfume.

Mike Westhoff doesn't want to hear about putting sports in perspective, not even now that the doctors say the disease has been defeated. He figures something as small as a football saved at least his leg and maybe his life.

"The game helped me through it, let me focus on something other than sickness," Westhoff says through pauses, reluctant to talk about this but too polite to stop. "I needed an intensity, a purpose. You can't just sit back on a couch and hope you make it. Sometimes, I think I should stop more often and appreciate things, appreciate life. But I'm always grinding forward."

Why not? He has been rewarded for it before. He had the surgery in Boston on a Thursday, rsday, two metal plates and 25 screws inserted in the leg, and was back in his Miami office on a Monday, 60 staples holding everything in place. The football field made Westhoff feel a little fresher, did the things the antibiotics couldn't.

Like the time Westhoff, his hair falling out in clumps at home, went to work and got into a loud argument with one of the Dolphins' coaches. He can't remember the subject of the disagreement, but he certainly remembers the feeling -- blood rushing up to his face so fast his head felt hot.

"I had chemotherapy five days earlier," Westhoff says. "That argument was actually the first time in five days that I felt good."

So now he allows football to make him feel bad. Maybe because feeling bad is part of feeling alive. He isn't satisfied knowing someone with his limp shouldn't be golfing at all. No, he curses and throws his club when he isn't golfing well. He has been white-water rafting, wants to try skydiving even though his leg won't allow him to land. Westhoff, who will be 47 next month, treats life like he does kickoff coverage: Pin it in the corner and swarm all over it.

The game has him within its grip. He was watching a tape of a Dolphins game a few days ago, couldn't believe it when he saw himself running on the sidelines next to his kickoff team.

"I did that?" he says through a laugh. "Well, I wasn't really running, was I? It's kind of a hibble-hobble with me. It's not running in the purest sense of the term. What the hell am I doing? I crack myself up."

It is good to see him smile. He hasn't done it much lately. His eyes are red and tired. He doesn't wear disguises, so his pain is plain to see. Says Dolphins cornerback Muhammad Oliver: "You'll see him walking around with his head down -- not moping, just thinking. He is very disturbed when we play poorly. It sticks with him -- bothers him and bothers him and bothers him."

In the past three weeks, the Dolphins have allowed two kickoffs and a punt to be returned for touchdowns. The Dolphins had never, in Westhoff's nine seasons, allowed a kickoff-return TD before this month. So on Sunday, when Detroit's Johnnie Morton returned a kickoff 93 yards, the feeling sneaked up Westhoff's system like bile.

"I was empty," he says.

Morton whistled right past Westhoff, so close that Westhoff could feel the breeze and hear the return man's labored breathing. Westhoff says he actually considered making the tackle himself.

"I thought about it, believe me," he said. "I was just afraid I'd miss. Then I'd be even more embarrassed."

He has a master's degree in educational philosophy, thinks of himself as a professor -- the only difference being that "if 50 percent of my pupils fail, my butt is out the door. If 50 percent of a professor's fail, he gets tenured." He can talk about football forever, is abundantly more cautious when you ask about his fight. He doesn't want to be portrayed as any more courageous than the towel boy, says there are thousands of cancer patients out there more deserving of attention than he.

"I'd really rather not talk about this any more," he says, and pops another football tape into the VCR, too busy living to think about dying.

cutlines

JOE RIMKUS JR./Herald Staff

SPECIAL (TEAMS) COACH: 'Sometimes, I think I should stop more often and appreciate things, appreciate life,' Dolphins assistant Mike Westhoff says. 'But I'm always grinding forward.'

CAPTION: PHOTO Mike Westhoff (A)
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