This story is excerpted from My Giant Life by Lawrence Taylor with Williams Wyatt. To buy the book, click here. Thirty-one years ago today, Joe Theismann suffered a career-ending injury at the hands of Taylor. The Hall of Fame defender describes what that scene was like.Joe Theismann and I are linked forever because of an unfortunate incident that happened on November 18, 1985, during a Monday night game at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., against the Redskins.At the beginning of the second quarter, Theismann handed off to John Riggins. The Diesel bulled toward the middle of the line, putting his head down for the impact. Then he changed his tack, stopping and flipping the ball back to Theismann. They were trying a flea flicker. Theismann wanted to throw downfield to Art Monk.Unfortunately for the Redskins and Theismann, we read the play correctly. We were blitzing. It felt like our entire defense was pouring in on Theismann. I got a hold of him and pulled him down. As we went to the ground, my knee rammed into his lower right leg; Harry Carson and Gary Reasons also congregated at Theismann on the sack. He didnt get up. I didnt expect him to, either. I knew hed been hurt badly.Theismann later told the New York Times in a 2005 interview: The pain was unbelievable, it snapped like a breadstick. It sounded like two muzzled gunshots off my left shoulder. Pow, pow! It was at that point, I also found out what a magnificent machine the human body is. Almost immediately, from the knee down, all the feeling was gone in my right leg. The endorphins had kicked in, and I was not in pain.Everybody on the field saw Theismann sprawled out on the field and knew he was in trouble. I know I started hollering for the doctors to get to him in a hurry to give him some help. Initially, some of the Redskins thought I was taunting after the sack. That obviously wasnt the case.Its just one of those things that happened. I knew he was hurt when I heard him under the pile yelling and I understood. Thats why I tried to get everybody off him and get some help for him. I knew when youre sitting on the bottom of the pile -- I dont care if its a toe sprain, or an ankle sprain, I dont care what it is -- it seems like forever, like the people on top of you are never going to figure it out. All you want is the people to get off of you and to get some help. And to breathe again.Everybody just kind of stood around like nobody knew what had happened.At that juncture of his career, Theismann was still a decent football player and an icon in Washington. Of course, Id been playing against him for years. And during our time, we spent a lot of time together and wed see each other a lot. Just like anybody else, you hate to see somebody sit there and suffer. So I wanted to get some help out there for the sumbitch.What happened? He fractured both the tibia and the fibula. In other words, the lower leg bones in his right leg were broken between his ankle and knee. That end result left his leg bent gruesomely in different directions.A lot of time passed before they quit tending to Joe and got him off the field and on his way to the hospital. Jay Schroeder took over at quarterback. Nobody knew at the time that Theismann would never play again.An ESPN poll of viewers later voted that play as the NFLs Most Shocking Moment in History.Really, its not a moment I want to remember or care to see again. Ive never seen the play. Football is a tough game, so players are always going to get hurt while playing the game. Thats one of the hazards of the job. Believe me; Ive seen a lot worse hits on film than the one on Joe, though. Everyone who thinks they know me wants to talk about that Monday Night Football game. First of all, like I said, I have never watched the play, dont wont to watch it, and I never will watch it. I saw it in person. I dont want to see it again.I remember calling him the morning after I broke his leg. A woman answered the phone. I dont know if she was his girlfriend or wife at the time. I hear her say, Joe, Joe, that guy is on the phone! When he got on the phone, he told me that I had broken both the bones in his leg. I kidded him by telling him that I didnt do anything half-assed. I told him, If Im going to break them, Im going to break them both.To Joes credit, he never blamed me for what happened. Weve never had a problem. Ive never had a problem with Joe. And every time we see each other, we talk. We talked before then, we still talk, and there is no animosity there. I know his son very well. Hey, I did [Theismann] a favor. He had Lloyds of London [insurance]. He made about $3 million.Joe had a helluva a career, and he did well after the NFL. But hes always maintained that his legacy is that injury. As he told the Orlando Sentinel, Ill forever be known as the Godfather of Broken Legs.This excerpt from My Giant Life by Lawrence Taylor with William Wyatt is printed with the permission of Triumph Books. For more information and to order a copy, please visit this link. Cheap Stitched NFL Jerseys . Rinne played two periods in his first game since left hip surgery in early May. Gabriel Bourque scored 3:07 into the second period and Austin Watson tallied 5:15 later for Nashville. Cheap Jerseys USA . Its 1987 and a Brazilian playmaker, known as Mirandinha, is being paraded around St James Park to the passionate Newcastle fans. http://www.cheapwholesalejerseyschina.com/ . Fellow centre Pavel Datsyuk remains out because of a concussion. Zetterberg has 11 goals and 19 assists for a team-high 30 points, and Datsyuk has a team-high 12 goals and 11 assists. Wholesale NFL Jerseys Authentic . Its sharpness matched my mind. This was no night to go to sleep. Cheap Jerseys From China . Capitals head coach Adam Oates said Ovechkin was injured in the first period against the Vancouver Canucks on Monday and clarified it was not a head injury. Before the race, the four U.S. women in the 400 freestyle relay at the 1976 Montreal Summer Games caucused to visualize the perfect swim.?They calculated the times it would take each of them to stay with or surge past the East Germans who had been clobbering them by body lengths in events often decided by fingertips.?They?convinced themselves that their brains could override artificially induced brawn. It was the final event of the meet -- and they were driven by pride and a good amount of anger.Each swimmer executed in the way she had imagined. Incandescent talent Shirley Babashoff swam the anchor leg and they prevailed.The Last Gold, a documentary that will be shown in select theaters on July 11, focuses on the meaning of a race that took place 40 years ago but?couldnt?be more relevant today.?Like most sports movies, the dramatic narrative hinges on an inspirational moment.?Yet this film is suffused with sadness.?Now ranging in age from 55 to 61, the American swimmers still feel cheated of peak moments and unrecognized in any form by the International Olympic Committee, which years ago turned down a U.S. request to upgrade or award new medals and revise the record books.?The East German women who won all but two of 13 swimming gold medals in 1976 -- and their contemporaries in other sports -- lost in the long run. ?Thousands were trapped in a communist system and subject to secret police surveillance. Some were doped before they even hit puberty. As adults, many developed health issues, including cancer and reproductive problems, or had children with birth defects.Olympic sports officials in unified Germany paid compensation to a group of affected athletes in 2002 and recently announced plans for a second fund.Babashoff and teammates Jill Sterkel and Wendy Boglioli reunited at the U.S. Olympic swim trials in Omaha, Nebraska, in late June and met with reporters to promote the film. (Kim Peyton, who led off the U.S. relay in the lane next to East German superstar Kornelia Ender, died at age 29 of an inoperable brain tumor.)They found themselves talking as much about the present as the past. The fact that Russia has this whole systematic [sports doping] -- it doesnt surprise me, said an animated, vivacious Boglioli, who works as a motivational speaker. It was just a matter of time, because theres no consequences. She finished behind two East Germans in the 100-meter butterfly.Boglioli then referred to the current legal dispute over whether Russian track and field athletes should compete at the Rio Games in August. This idea that theyre going to appeal, and maybe we should let them go and maybe we shouldnt, and oh, that wont look good if theyre not there, and what should we do about that? No, she said. They cheated, and its done, and they dont get to go. Said Sterkel, the former womens swim coach at the University of Texas: Had people stepped up 40 years ago, maybe we wouldnt be here now. Doping culture migrated and took root elsewhere rather than being eradicated, Sterkel said, and she thinks there should be no statute of limitations. They let that message go, and its just a bad lesson thatt cheaters might prosper sometimes, she said.ddddddddddddhe swimmers spoke from a place of pain and authority. Sterkel was just 15 years old in Montreal. Peyton and Babashoff were 19, and Boglioli was 21. Drug testing was in its infancy. The Olympics were celebrated as a venue for pure, amateur competition. In the movie, the women described the demoralizing feeling of being beaten before they dived in, their training and drive trumped by chemistry.Babashoff, who had been a candidate for multiple gold medals but collected four silvers instead, voiced suspicions about her bulked-up rivals. She got ripped for it, which taught me to keep my mouth shut, Sterkel said, echoing the reluctance of todays athletes to point fingers in the absence of positive tests.In Omaha, Babashoff sat back and let her teammates do most of the talking. Her memoir, Making Waves, was released this month.A longtime letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service in her native Southern California, Babashoff retains a competitors edge to her voice when she talks about 1976. I just feel like some of them, the East German women, still feel like we were taking steroids too, she said. Theyre just kind of overly brainwashed. Stubborn on saying that we deserved what we worked for, and thats the only thing that kind of gets me upset.The Last Gold, which was produced by the sports national governing body, USA Swimming, also illuminates the stories of several East German athletes. Boglioli expressed sympathy for those who were most deeply affected. Thats just horrific what these women went through, she said. I cant even imagine. I have medals, Ive got my health, I have healthy kids and grandkids -- and they dont have that.I look at an International Olympic Committee that is about the welfare, not only fair play, but protecting the athletes, and they failed to protect these women victims.Much of the footage in the movie looks antique: soldiers patrolling the Berlin Wall, swimmers tugging at tank suits in the starting blocks, scoreboards bereft of color and the cringe-worthy loud yellow blazers worn by ABC commentators Curt Gowdy and Donna de Varona. The grossly inflated physiques of the young East German athletes are jaw-dropping. Doping is harder to read at a glance now.However, the themes that surfaced in the pools and on the playing fields of the 1970s have proved durable and insidious. Coercion, dummy labs and state involvement are embedded in the doping DNA of many modern Russian athletes, just as they were the East Germans. Medals lost in the moment take years to make their way to the right hands, or never change hands at all.I dont want to compare what we went through to the things theyve had to deal with, Sterkel said. They are the true victims, but in some situations, there are victims on both sides.Many current athletes will relate.??The Last Gold will be shown in select theaters on July 11. A portion of the proceeds goes to the USA Swimming Foundation.?Go to thelastgold.com for more information.? ' ' '