Initiation

After a slimmed down training camp, albeit still seven practices in four days, rookie initiation took center stage in a post WWII French Army base in West Berlin, now training complex for fifteen years to the Berlin Adler American Football Club of the German Football League.
The festivities consisted of nine completely naked football players ranging in size from a couple smallish defensive backs and a kicker to our coveted new 6’7” Czech right tackle; a beer drinking audience of team members, a few dozen male and female family and friends, and the occasional bike rider or jogger passing by on the nearby recreational trail.
As anticipation grew, Patrick, our linebacker from Georgia, and myself became quite wary of the situation and together stood an anxious watch for stealthy Germans looking for a Yankee catch; alas, for one reason or another we were off the menu and were enabled along with our American ex-NFL running back Tony, to happily watched the debauchery ensue.
Much to the surprise and delight of all in attendance, the nine victims ran out of our locker room in complete and utter nudity.
They had been instructed to do so of course by Eric, our veteran center and leader of this long awaited event.
He then led them to a table that held an array of plastic cups filled with different concoctions of the likes that hideous medieval witch from “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” would be proud.
Prior to their entrance, my curiosity got the best of me and I smelled three of the cups: fish heads, iodine, and vomit I would say, and the vapors were enough to nearly summon my gag reflex. Completely non-alcoholic I was told, just flat out inhumane.
The ‘nude men walking’ nervously but proudly strolled to the table, some with a palm over private parts, others not so ashamed, and lined up for execution.
After the ‘vic’ successfully drank the pernicious potable of their choice they were to complete a pre-determined obstacle course in the grass behind the home end-zone.
Much as a team completing a stout regular season record in order to secure home field advantage for the playoffs, those who completed this course with the fastest times would have an easier go of it in later weekly events throughout the season.
And those with slow times were sent hoping for short bus rides home from away games.
So like the glorious competitors of an ancient Greek Olympiad, the athletes downed the greenish-brown libations and ran nude in 40 degree (Fahrenheit) evening air to a garbage can filled with even colder water in which they submerged their heads.
This step was performed to enable the ensuing flower projected at them to stick.
In white face they spun around the top end of a back hoe ten times and swiftly stumbled to a tarp covered in soapy water. There they proceeded to dive or slide across the make shift slip-and-slide, butt cracks and ball sacks a view.
After this act of absurdity they high-kneed through a rope ladder, only to roll a ‘World’s Strongest Man’ type three-foot diameter medicine ball thirty meters to the northeast pylon of the end zone. There they ditched the ball and galloped to the near goalpost where our herculean blocking sled wait.
Sans spikes, only the linemen-types could move it on their own. Most needed help from camera phone-toting teammates nearby.
And all bared their backsides to the hysteria-filled crowd sitting thirty meters behind the spectacle.
I myself have not possessed such a sustained, ab-working laugh in a very long, long time.
Once they pushed the sled past the twenty yard line, Eric stopped the clock and noted the times. Every single player performed their duties in good nature without a hint of protest. The teammates and audience laughed their back sides off and, even those who happened upon the irregular scene did so with modest alarm.
And honestly, this wonderful and positive event, filled with nudity and coercion, plainly could not have happened in our ‘Land of the Free.’
I told a teammate after the festivities that such a scene would just not fly in ‘The States.’ He looked at me inquisitively, thought for a second, and then not spitefully but proudly stated,
“Well then Jon, I’m glad I live in Germany!”
And I’m glad, if only for a while, that I get to experience this place they call Deutschland.