Baltimore free safety Michael Brooks walks down one of the crowded locker room aisles at Memorial Stadium in a defensive position: his left hand wrapped protectively around his right.
It takes a real effort to shield the badly swollen hand, at that.
Brooks can't write with his right hand.
He can't open bottles or cans.
In fact, he can't use his middle two fingers on that hand at all.
But he can play football. So he does.
"I'm the type person who plays with an injury," said Brooks.
For 3 1/2 games, he has played free safety for the CFLs with a broken fourth metacarpal in his right hand, and a removable cast to cover it.
He suffered the break making the tackle on the second-half kickoff
against the B.C. Lions on Oct. 22.
"When I got up from the pile and shook my hand, I could feel the bone move," Brooks said.
He played a series like that, then went to the bench to get the hand casted. He missed three plays. The next day in surgery, he had three long pins inserted to help the bones heal correctly. The pins, he said, contribute to swollen, almost deformed look of the hand.
"There's always a risk, but Mike accepted the risk," said CFLs trainer Steve Kinsey. "The pins could break, but then we'd do another surgery."
Brooks, a 6-foot, 190-pound defender, will wear the cast in the Canadian Football League's Eastern final at Winnipeg Sunday, and, given a victory there, the Grey Cup the next week.
Playing through injury is nothing new for Brooks, it turns out.
.' He played his sophomore season
See CFLS, 4C
From Page 1C
at Page High in Greensboro, N.C., with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee -- and didn't know it until postseason surgery. He had the knee drained before every game.
played eight games of his senior season at North Carolina State with cartilage damage. "I didn't practice," he said, "I just played."
He had arthroscopic surgery just before the Peach Bowl, then picked off two passes against Iowa and was named the game's defensive MVP.
The broken hand presents a different set of problems, though. It cost him a pair of interceptions in the
game, when passes clanked off his new cast.
And he has some memory lapses. On a safety blitz in last week's playoff victory over Toronto, he jumped over would-be blocker Pinball Clemons -- only to realize in midair that he could not use his right hand to catch himself. With a thud, he landed on his side.
.' Yet, in the same game, he made
his first interception since the injury.
"In certain ways, I am handicapped by it," he said. "I can't arm tackle anybody. I'm not going to reach out and grab an ankle. All my tackles have to be perfect tackles. I've got to make sure I'm in the right position."
For most of the season, Brooks has been in the right position. He makes the coverage calls in a secondary that has been unchanged all year. He had four interceptions, five knockdowns and 47 tackles in his first CFL season.
It was good enough to earn him All-East recognition this week, one of two Baltimore defenders (cornerback Irv Smith was the other) honored.
For a guy who spent the past five years in Dallas, San Diego and Denver trying to make it in the NFL, it was sweet vindication.
"This means more because you're playing on a much bigger field in a league that passes twice as much as the NFL," Brooks said. "In the NFL, they probably took you deep once or twice a game. Here, it's four or five times a quarter."
Weather permitting, Winnipeg quarterback Matt Dunigan might rain passes on Brooks Sunday. It is the challenge when you play the Blue Bombers.
Dunigan has thrown 86 passes in the two regular-season games against Baltimore, completing 48. The CFLs have intercepted him five times, once by Brooks.
"We can't give up the deep pass," Brooks said. "That's something Winnipeg thrives on. I think they get impatient. They want to score and score quickly. If you can take the big plays away, you can be real successful."
Starting over in a new league this year, Brooks caught on to the CFL after a slow start. He arrived in camp overweight and desperate.
"I probably saw it as my last chance," he said. "I thought if I couldn't prove myself in the CFL, I couldn't prove myself in the NFL."
What he found was an entirely different game than he'd expected.
"It's an athletic game," Brooks said. "I think it's better suited for me. It's given me the opportunity to show my ability."
Including his ability to play with pain.
CFL PLAYOFFS
EASTERN FINAL
Baltimore at Winnipeg
When: Sunday, 1:30 p.m.
TV: Ch. 2
Sunday's forecast: Cloudy, windy with a high around 30.
WESTERN FINAL
B.C. at Calgary
When: Sunday, 4:30 p.m.
TV: ESPN2
GREY CUP
Nov. 27, at Vancouver, 6:30 p.m.