Eat My Schwartz Read online

  Mexican and South American food is a big part of our food culture in L.A. In fact, rice and beans may actually beat matzo ball soup as my first comfort food. That’s because before we were old enough to go to preschool, my brother and I had a nanny named Vita from El Salvador, and we were insane for her cooking. To this day it is hard to think about rice without thinking of her delicious dishes packed with corn, beans, and onion.

  My brother and I were on a first-name basis with the guys at a local joint called Fast Taco. We’ve gone there so often that the owner will come out and instruct his guys on preparing our burritos. For me, the burrito grande is light on my beloved rice and heavy on the chicken, cheese, and shrimp.

  That evening at El Torito was perfect. Comfort food gets its name for a reason. And when I think about it now, the menu that night—chicken and avocado rolls, flaming fajitas, street tacos—was filled with familiar delicious flavors that were perfect for celebrating with my friends, family, mentors, and teachers.

  All my old coaches were there, not just from the football team, but Little League and basketball, too. There were old family friends, like my dad’s pal Neil Berk, who once looked me dead in the eye at Burger King and told me I needed to cut out eating fries, literally taking the food right off my tray. And there was Kermit Cannon, who I met when I was thirteen on a travel baseball team. Kermit and I were still working together back then on my conditioning to make sure I was game-ready for Oregon. Seeing all the people who guided me and spent time working with me to be a better athlete and a better teammate, I felt beyond lucky. They had worked with hundreds, no, thousands of kids over the years. I had worked hard, but so had many of the people in the room. And now they were here to wish me well and see me off, into the unknown.

  I loved being with them and thinking about where I’d been and where I was going. The whole thing was crazy: two years earlier, I had never played a down at offensive tackle. One year earlier, I was still thinking seriously about playing baseball. Now I was heading to a major Division 1 program on a full athletic scholarship to play football.

  An athletic scholarship—or any scholarship, really—is a major achievement. Anyone who earns one anywhere should be proud. But I didn’t want it to end there. I was already thinking—wondering, dreaming—about the next step beyond college. And I wasn’t even in school yet.

  3

  THE QUARTERBACK SNEAK

  Mitch

  When I arrived at Pali High in 2003, two years after Geoff got there, I was 6'4", weighed about 250 pounds, and had zero intention of playing football. Going into my freshman year I knew I wanted to pitch for the baseball team and that was it. You have to understand: I had had a pretty good run in Little League. My size and strength gave me an advantage when it came to throwing hard. We won our division and I was an All Star. It was great to experience success at a young age, and I was eager to see how I’d fare against the next level of competition.

  Looking back, one of the other reasons I was so attached to baseball was that our dad was the coach of our Little League team and it was a really positive experience for all of us. Parents don’t always have the time to interact with kids, but my dad made it a priority and he made it fun. My dad isn’t a shouter. He wouldn’t yell or belittle anyone. You know the guy who’s even-keeled? The guy who, when he raises his voice, that’s when you can tell when something’s wrong? Well, that guy is our dad.

  The rules about being part of a team—trying your hardest, doing your job, trusting and relying on others, picking up slack for your teammates if you are needed, cheering for you teammates—were basics for us. Our dad guided us in the lessons of teamwork and taught us to enjoy the effort that goes into accomplishing something, and then to enjoy the satisfaction of the accomplishment.

  So while I liked football at the time—like Geoff, I had attended UCLA games with my parents, who graduated from the school in 1977, and I rooted for the 49ers on TV—I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it the way I did baseball.

  Fortunately, my dad, who had seen all the college scholarship interest that Geoff was getting, had other plans. He and Geoff floated the idea that, given my pitching “talents,” I would be a natural quarterback.

  I can hear you laughing. There are no 250-pound high school freshman quarterbacks anywhere in the known universe. But I was fourteen years old, so what did I know? As far as I was concerned, I was a pretty good athlete, and I loved the idea of throwing passes. I thought going out for JV quarterback was, if not a sure thing, then at least in the realm of possibility.

  Those first two weeks at practice, I worked out as quarterback with the JV squad. I don’t remember much of it, but evidently while my footwork and arm strength didn’t blow the coaches away, my size sure did. One morning the coaches said they wanted to try me on the offensive line, which, I discovered later, had been my dad and Geoff’s plan all along. I had never seen a blocking dummy, I couldn’t tell you the difference between a two-point stance and a three-point stance. To me, a stunt was a trick you pulled—like telling an unsuspecting kid he should try out for quarterback—not a sneaky maneuver by defensive linemen who try to get past the offensive line by slanting or moving laterally at the snap instead of plowing straight ahead.

  But at that point, I had been working out with the team—and the same tenets of sportsmanship and commitment that I learned in Little League surfaced immediately. I moved to the line without a single word of protest.

  Let the record show, however, that I did get to play one series as QB in the first game of my freshman season. I took a snap from the shotgun position, stood in the pocket without moving an inch, and threw a 20-yard completion.

  I think that means I have a very high passer rating.

  I still love throwing footballs. Later, in college, I developed my own pregame routine. I’d head out on the field without my pads and toss the ball with my buddy Spencer Ladner, who played tight end. As we warmed up, we slowly moved farther and farther apart, increasing the distance of our throws until I got out to the 50-yard line. At this point the game wasn’t catch anymore; it was more like target practice: hit the crossbar of the goalpost from 60 yards away.

  I did it a number of times.

  * * *

  Obviously, being the younger brother of a sought-after football player in high school made me better known than the average incoming freshman. But high school is segmented—freshmen hang with freshmen, juniors with juniors, so my classmates weren’t that aware of my brother. On sports teams, the social barriers break down a little bit; you meet kids from other grades. By the time I was a junior, though, Geoff was gone and I was my own person.

  Who was that person? I was the quieter one then and I’m the quieter one now. I’m more low-key. I’m not a party guy. I don’t drink much—socially or otherwise. I’ve sampled a variety of drinks in my day, but I just don’t like the taste. While I’m very much a team player, I enjoy solitary pursuits: watching TV, gaming, reading, and cooking.

  When I think of celebrating, I think of eating well. I’d rather go to a Brazilian churrascaria and sample the all-you-can-eat platters of meat that come around than go bar hopping. I love those places, not that I chomp away mindlessly like Homer Simpson come to life. Put it this way: when my parents and I celebrated my getting drafted, my mother said she felt sorry for the restaurant because I spent three hours savoring the never-ending parade of meats. Hey, I’m just committed to high-protein diets.

  Of course, being a Jewish mother, she also enjoyed watching her son eat, I’m sure. What mother doesn’t?

  My football skills thrived at Pali High, and at the same time, my baseball career hit a plateau, as other kids caught up physically to me. My high school pitching career was solid but unspectacular. My once supersonic pitches that dominated in Little League weren’t quite so intimidating against older competition. I was good but I needed to throw a lot harder to have a future in it. As for my own hitting career, it was pretty dull. The fact is, I didn’t hit all
that many homers for someone my size.

  * * *

  On the football field, hitting has a different meaning, and it was slowly dawning on me that I might have the chance to develop into a real football player. The first clue, obviously, was that I was usually bigger than everyone else on the field, so that was a plus. As a team, we were pretty bad, despite the best efforts of my teammates and our father-and-son coaches, Leo Castro and Aaronn Castro, and the assistant, Ron Evans. We only won nine games in my three years on varsity. We also lacked a dedicated offensive line coach—although Kelly Loftus, who also worked with Geoff, was very helpful in getting me ready for the football camps. But in terms of blocking skills and schemes, I wasn’t getting a lot of hands-on guidance I’d need for the college game.

  Despite all that, everyone kept saying that I was as good as or better than my brother. Even my brother said I was more of a natural than he was. That comparison was really important, and not because of any sibling rivalry. Knowing that Geoff got a lot of attention and went on to get a scholarship at a school with a major football program made me realize that I had the potential to be good. And I also realized it was up to me and nobody else to fulfill that potential.

  * * *

  I started cooking in high school as well. I owe this to my mom, the Food Network, a giant freezer in the garage, and being hungry all the time.

  My mom was always a working mother, and although she made a point to be home for dinner—one of the reasons my parents bought their house was because it was fairly close to her law office—she also raised us to be as independent and resourceful as possible. And she encouraged us to help ourselves in the kitchen.

  When you have two giant teenagers, you need food, and my parents had a giant freezer in the garage. They subscribed to a food service that would fill the freezer up with meat, poultry, seafood, and some veggies. The amount of food supplied to us was intended to last a “normal” family six months. But between Geoff and I, it would last three months, which meant my parents had to cough up the remaining payments before we could reorder. When Geoff left to go to Oregon, it took me and Mom and Dad about four and a half months to finish off the food. And once Geoff and I were both out of the house, the service threatened to cut my parents off because they weren’t ordering enough. That’s gratitude for you!

  So I had encouragement, and I had access. The last element I needed to drive me into the kitchen was inspiration. Enter the Food Network. To me it was the most relevant channel on TV, filled with useful, interesting programs—not filler stuff—about a subject that is close to my heart (and stomach).

  One day I saw a Wolfgang Puck episode about making pizza, and it struck me that this was a fun, not too work-intensive dish. You spend maybe five minutes of work making the dough, and you knead it for about three more minutes. Then you let it sit and rise for two hours and then come back and work on it for five minutes more. In other words, it was something you could do without needing a huge amount of focus. Perfect for a teenager, right?

  It became one of those things I tried and just got into.

  I made pizzas. A lot of them. I would call up my friends from Pali and ask what their favorite toppings were, invite them over, and deliver a custom pizza for each of my buddies. I’m sure my friends thought it was awesome—free pizza for a teenager is pretty sweet—but I got something out of it, too. It was good training because with each of my mini-masterpieces, I got to see how different toppings went together, and from my friends’ increasingly exotic requests I got new ideas for combinations. Now, years later and thanks to all that practice, I have the dough down. I am not a thick-crust fan, although I can understand the appeal of the heavier, Sicilian-based crusts you get in many pizzerias and, of course, in Chicago. To me the perfect crust is thin and crispy, with enough substance to hold the toppings without falling apart. It should not dominate the pizza, which can happen with thicker crusts.

  What I enjoy most about making pizzas is that you can play around with the toppings. That is the creative part. You can use goat cheese as a base and then add another milder cheese to create blended sensations. You can experiment with vegetables and meats.

  There are no secret recipes I’m working with. These are the basics: flour, cheese, tomatoes, olive oil, and imagination.

  Then again, sometimes too much imagination can be a dangerous thing in the kitchen. Case in point: my brother is a huge shrimp fan. In fact, there is no doubt he’s going to write about Shrimp Pasta before this book is done, if he hasn’t already. That’s one of his signature dishes. Unfortunately, shrimp was probably the key ingredient in our worst pizza ever. We used an olive oil base when instead we probably should have used a moister white sauce. With pizza, you need a hot oven to cook the dough, but high temperature meant the oil basically scorched and dried the shrimp. They were so shriveled up, you actually felt sorry for them. It is the one failed pizza attempt that I carry around with me. But what coaches say on the football field is equally true in the kitchen: no pain, no gain.

  One of these days, I’ll make a shrimp pizza for Geoff that will make him forget that first fiasco.

  * * *

  By the time I graduated from Pali, I had been picked twice as an All-State Underclassman and earned All-Western League and All-City honors as a junior. In my senior year, the honors just kept piling up: I won the CIR Los Angeles City Offensive Lineman of the Year, the Western Lineman of the Year, and PrepStar All-West Region honors, and the rating service Rivals listed me as the twenty-seventh best tackle in the country, while Scout.com listed me at twenty-third.

  Meanwhile that other thing you do in high school—you know, going to class—went pretty well, too. I’m a competitive guy, and I like to excel whether I’m on the field, in the classroom, or in the kitchen. I don’t want to waste my time or anyone else’s. So my other senior-year achievement was landing on the principal’s honor roll and dean’s list, thanks to a 4.3 GPA.

  I had scholarship offers from notable schools: Cal, Michigan, Stanford, Virginia, Tennessee, Oregon, and Washington. I guess I can thank Geoff for some of them. When he went through the college selection process, the whole family went along with him, which means I tagged along as he met with coaches and players and looked at the facilities. I’m three years younger than Geoff, but I had already caught up to him in size, so the coaches couldn’t help but notice me. I was in ninth grade at the time, and immediately set off pings on the recruitment radar systems of some of the best football programs in the country.

  You can’t teach size, right?

  When it came time for me to choose a school, Geoff was great. He loved Oregon and had really grown with the program, but he didn’t pressure me at all. In the end, it was a tough decision between Cal-Berkeley and Stanford that suddenly got easier when Stanford dismissed Coach Walt Harris. The new coach—some guy named Jim Harbaugh—called me to introduce himself. Of course now, having built winning programs at Stanford and with the San Francisco 49ers, Harbaugh is considered one of the great coaches around, but back in 2006–07 he wasn’t a household name. So faced with the unknown coach and coaching staff at Stanford versus the coaches I had met at Cal-Berkeley, I went with Cal. It had pretty much everything I wanted. It’s an excellent school, academically speaking. I really liked the coaches—from Ron Gould, the running back coach who recruited me, to head coach Jeff Tedford, to the offensive line coach Jim Michalczik. They spoke of a program that was dedicated to being both supportive and successful, and I could see that when I visited. Plus, in the back of my mind, I knew going pro was a real possibility. My brother was a serious NFL prospect, and he’d been telling me for years that my size and agility made me a perfect tackle. So I wanted a program that played an offensive style that would help me get ready for the pros. Cal seemed to place a good number of guys in the NFL, so that was a major factor. And the school wasn’t too far from L.A., so I could drive down or hop on a plane without too much trouble. It was a perfect fit.

  Looking back now, I can s
ee that my father and my brother had demonstrated good foresight when they tricked me into playing football.

  I still think I might have been a good high school quarterback, though.

  At my size, I would have been a pretty tough sack.

  4

  DOUBLE MAJORS

  Geoff

  Going up to Eugene, Oregon, as an eighteen-year-old kid was exciting.

  And intimidating.

  I was a raw player coming in as part of a class of six offensive linemen, including a five-star recruit, Aaron Klovis, who was supposed to be one of the best linemen in the nation. I thought it spoke really well of the team that we landed him. But with top-line talent like that, I didn’t have a lot of expectations for myself. I was coming in with a huge learning curve, too, since my high school team was pretty laid-back; we didn’t have two-a-day practices, we didn’t lift weights, we never watched film. In comparison with some of the other guys, I was like a sub-rookie.

  Also, I was still stuttering back then. I always had a positive attitude. But it is tough for stutterers when they find themselves in a new situation and stammer. It can be a little embarrassing. Actually, “little” is the wrong word. It can be totally embarrassing and brutally painful. My heart goes out to all stutterers. I can remember instances when I felt totally inadequate, like I wasn’t normal, like I was cursed. And sometimes, looking back at being an athlete where so much focus is on speed and efficiency, I can’t help wondering if my stutter appeared to be even more of a handicap. When the stutter took over, I was slower at communicating.

  Fortunately, my positive approach and low expectations combined with the excitement and freedom of being in a great college trounced any anxieties I had.

  Seizing the moment, I went up to school four weeks before preseason training started with another offensive line recruit from L.A., Jacob Hucko. We rented a room in a frat house, drove to the facility, and worked out with the upperclassmen. Those first workouts were intimidating. I’d never lifted weights before. I was this big guy who looked strong, but, in comparison to the rest of the team, was probably the weakest guy on the offensive line.