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Browns LB
Wali Rainer
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Before the season began, they were Yoda and young Luke Skywalker.
Chris Spielman was Yoda. The teacher. The expansion Browns had brought Spielman in to
be their starting middle linebacker. When Spielman first came into the NFL, word was that
he was too short, too slow and not athletic enough to be a star middle linebacker.
Spielman proved every last naysayer wrong; his leadership, love of the game and
competitiveness made him a four-time Pro Bowl player with the Lions.
Wali Rainer was young Skywalker. The apprentice. The Browns drafted Rainer in the
fourth round this year. The scouting report said he had the measurables of an undrafted
player but the productivity of a prospect.
Yoda and young Skywalker, Spielman and young Rainer. Kindred spirits on different
timetables. Time running out. Time just beginning. Rainer absorbed all he could from
Spielman. Tactics. How to study film. A middle linebacker’s keys. Then one day
Spielman imparted a piece of wisdom to Rainer: "Play every play like it’s your
last play." It was a football lesson Spielman not only conveyed with his words but
showcased with his actions. Then fate hammered the point home. A neck injury ended
Spielman’s career during the preseason. Rainer was no longer the pupil. He was now
the starter.
Play every play like it’s your last play.
Spielman may not have known it at the time, but he was preaching to the choir when he
spoke those words to Rainer, who not only has followed that advice throughout his football
career but throughout his life.
When Rainer was 13, he and his brother were held up at gunpoint. A dozen or so heavily
armed men in their late 20s and early 30s told Rainer and his 14-year-old brother to give
them their clothes. Not just their Starter jackets either. Pretty much everything. Wali
was left with nothing but his underwear as he and his brother raced to the safety of their
home.
"It was a scary moment, but I feel very blessed that nothing really
happened," Wali Rainer says.
Play every play like it’s your last play.
Sometimes armed thugs just take your clothes. Other times, they open fire. When Rainer
was a bit older, he learned bullets don’t just fly through the air in wars and in
movies. Bullets were flying in his neighborhood.
On one occasion, he went to the store, leaving his car behind. When he returned, he
learned a shooting had taken place and his car had been struck by the gunfire.
Another time, Rainer was driving a friend somewhere when gunfire again erupted.
"They hit my car, and I jumped out and I rolled out and ran down the street,"
Rainer says.
Play every play like it’s your last play.
When Wali was growing up, he had an older cousin who was a role model to him. Ricky
Rainer would show Wali and his brother new things and the correct path to follow in life.
Ricky, too, was something of a Yoda to Wali. When Wali was 8 or 9 years old, this Yoda was
killed by a real-life Darth Vader. In life, the dark side often wins out. Ricky Rainer was
killed. Stabbed to death.
"It was real shocking, because that was like the first death I ever
experienced," Wali Rainer says.
It would not be the last.
"I grew up in a pretty rough area, and I’ve seen a lot of friends go down; a
lot of my friends died," Rainer says.
The area he grew up in near Charlotte, N.C., had all the plagues of modern society.
"Gunshots, drugs, violence, all of that," Rainer says. "It was right in
my eyes, and I just feel blessed to be here."
Rainer estimates that almost a dozen friends and family members have died violent
deaths. In Rainer’s life experiences, when people die of natural causes, the cause is
violence, not old age.
"I think it makes me appreciate just the smallest things," Rainer said.
"It makes me appreciate life a lot more than a lot of people. I love life. I figure
that whatever happened to me, death is even worse. I feel like I could easily have been
dead."
Play every play like it’s your last play.
So why is Rainer able to survive one play at a time in the NFL? Why didn’t he get
swept up by the undertow of drugs and gangs and violence and crime that ends so many other
football careers before they ever begin?
Credit his parents. He had a strong father figure who taught him the meaning of work
ethic by working two full-time jobs as a kindergarten teacher and construction worker.
This was life one play, one day at a time. His parents stressed education, paying $5, $10,
whatever they could, for A’s and B’s in school.
"I feel blessed that I do have my college degree, and I got it in four years, and
I feel like I owe it mostly to them," Rainer says.
His father also taught him where to take out his aggression. When Wali was 8 or 9 years
old, his father told him to clobber other people in the one place where assault charges
would not be filed: the football field.
"It’s one part of life I can take my aggression out, and it’s
legal," Wali Rainer says. "That’s all he used to tell me at a young age,
and it still sticks with me now."
Play every play like it’s your last play.
Rainer has a gash across the bridge of his nose that is always busting open during
football season. Every football season. On the day he was interviewed for this column, he
noted that it had just happened again, requiring stitches. It seems an appropriate symbol
for the tough approach Rainer brings to the game. Quite simply, if the bridge of his nose
is bleeding, he knows it’s football season.
And if it’s football season, it means Rainer is making tackles. When he was
drafted, the scouting reports talked about the physical tools he lacked. This obviously
was not required reading for Rainer, because he led the Browns in tackles this season.
Like Spielman, Rainer proves that if you play every play as if it’s your last, great
things can happen.
"I always idolized people like (Spielman), Mike Singletary, Dick Butkus,"
Rainer says. "Those type of guys people always say are not this enough, they’re
not that enough. But (people) forget what football is really about. … To have passion
for the game and love to play the game, I think that’s what a lot of people really
forget about. That’s what those guys did. Any means necessary to get to the
ballcarrier and just play the game with all their might and all their emotions."
Class dismissed. The apprentice has learned his lessons well. Mom and Pop Rainer are
going to have to shell out some more cash to their son, who is bringing home an
"A" on his report card in the class on how the game is meant to be played. |
