Matbe the following article will give us a clue as to where James might play next year.
Posted on Tue, May. 13, 2003
Dan Le Batard
Here, James enriches with mere presence
COMMENTARY / DAN LE BATARD
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IMMOKALEE - Buzzards circle overhead, waiting for something to die. A yellow light blinks, warning you to beware of crossing panthers. Surrounded by miles and miles of empty swampland, just off an alley named after the alligator, a sleeping man sells watermelons roadside. Past the correctional facility and the poverty-ravaged village for farm workers, past all the airboats and tractors, shirtless fishermen drop their lines into a thin canal, hoping their hooks will quiver with dinner.
''My boy,'' a smiling Julie James says from her kitchen, ``is bringing the carnival with him.''
Second Street, past all the tattered shacks and trailers and front-yard clotheslines sagging from drying wash. A convoy of new Escalades, Hummers and Bentleys are rolling, rims shining and bass thumping, as odd a vision in these parts as hundred-dollar bills falling from the sky. The people of Immokalee, one of the poorest cities in America, can't often afford the expense of going to an NFL game. But now, the NFL game is coming to them.
There's Fred Taylor, Jevon Kearse, Bubba Franks, Santana Moss, Phillip Buchanon, Reggie Wayne, Plaxico Burress, William Joseph, Samari Rolle and others. Rap star Trick Daddy is behind the tinted windows in one of these cars, too. Edgerrin James asked them all to come to his hometown for a charity basketball game, asked for one Saturday night, and they know the quiet James doesn't ask for much. So, as hundreds of kids and adults line Second Street in a tiny town where word spreads faster than the smell of good barbecue, here comes the carnival.
''Would have had twice as many ballers coming, but some teams have camps this weekend,'' Edgerrin James says. ``That's why Daunte [Culpepper] couldn't make it.''
James' cell phone rings.
''Sapp?'' James says. ``How close are you?''
And now here comes Warren Sapp, a carnival all his own.
James was shaped by this tiny town, literally and figuratively. He grew up harvesting watermelons at $20 a truckload, hiding his earnings at night from the co-workers who were addicted to crack cocaine. The work was so grueling that James got to the University of Miami muscularly sculpted even though he had never lifted a weight. He laughs now when talking about how, for entertainment, he used to scavenge for $5 just so he could buy crackheads their hits and watch them smoke it in cans. This was back when he was 10. It was what the kids did.
It is a huge leap, from there to community leader, but James has certainly made it in a way that makes you wonder if Robin Hood had dreadlocks and gold teeth. Just for the heck of it, James will round up area kids who have good grades and good attendance and reward them by driving them, spur of the moment, to Disney World or, better yet, Culpepper's house. Those Reebok ads James does? He has the sneaker company pay him in merchandise, so he can outfit the hundreds of players and cheerleaders in Immokalee's Pop Warner league.
James is straight from these scarred streets, and proud of it. ''A thug,'' to use his words, but that's just Santa Claus talking tough. James doesn't have any use for the TV cameras. He isn't interested in smiling nice for the photo op while holding up the big cardboard check. And he doesn't speak in public-relations sound bytes, which is part of why he didn't get nearly the attention for leading the NFL twice in rushing that Ricky Williams got for leading it once.
So when you ask why he does so much for Immokalee, James doesn't talk about ''the importance of giving back.'' He flatly says, ''If I don't do it, who will? If I don't do it, there won't be nothing out here. Nobody cares about these people, man.'' James is like the truth he speaks -- real, rugged and raw.
James remembers his childhood and how the only buzz that ever made its way through town was when a friend of a friend somehow got former Redskins quarterback Mark Rypien to speak to the local high schoolers.
''Once,'' James says. ``That's it. That's the only time someone famous rolled through here. I remember how much I wish I had something like this when I was a kid. That's all I could do -- wish.''
James is standing outside what the neighborhood kids call The Fun House now. James built it for them and even let them spray-paint a room. By his own admission, James can be very cheap (he stays at Embassy Suites with those kids at Disney World because the breakfast is free), but he took this former crack house and refurbished it. He put in big-screen TVs, a billiards room, a chess room, an outdoor basketball court with bleachers and $50,000 worth of weights.
The fresh blue paint and mint condition of The Fun House stand out in a farming area where the Coalition of Immokalee Workers estimates that the median farm income is less than $10,000 a year per household.
James has a rare appreciation for how UM helped him climb out of this city and into the NFL, which is why he gave a $250,000 donation to the school, owns matching 1975 Impalas in Miami's green-and-orange colors and recently tried to have his Colts uniform number changed to his UM No. 5 before being rebuffed by the NFL.
The NFLers who filled the billiards room and his mother's kitchen before Saturday's charity basketball game were mostly Florida kids who remember what it was like to grow up in similar conditions and have football help lift them out of it.
''This used to be a drug haven and now look at it,'' says Pierre Rutledge, head of The Edgerrin James Foundation. 'Edge is so reserved, though, he doesn't tell people about all the good work he does. I keep telling him, `There's nothing wrong with people knowing what you do.' ''
James keeps odd hours, working out at 2 a.m. when a friend turns on the high school football field's lights for him. He often falls asleep on the black leather couch in The Fun House, only to wake up to a floor littered with kids who didn't want to wake him by playing the video games.
''I got here the other day at 2 in the morning, and I didn't have nobody else around, so I rounded up a few people who were using drugs and had them help me lift until 5 or 6 in the morning,'' James says. ``They're people, too, you know? Just because they've got drug problems doesn't mean they aren't people.
``The cops come by and tell me I shouldn't leave my Bentley outside, but I'm comfortable here. Nothing is going to happen to my Bentley. Ain't but one person around here who owns a Bentley. Even the addicts respect my stuff.''
James, with a contract worth more than $49 million, has told his mother and grandmother they can live anywhere in the world, but they've opted to remain here.
They don't want to go someplace richer?
Well, then, the boy they raised will keep bringing the richness to them.
