buffalo, the hallelujah, and a dog

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I have never thought of Buffalo as a city of rebirth. It’s too cold there. And the city has been dying for more than a generation. All of upstate New York is like that, the creeping death and a winter that pounds the graveyards into tundra for much of the year. I have a healthy respect for Buffalo, for this very reason. But only a madman would go there to be reborn. LaDainian Tramayne Tomlinson is just such a madman. He was supposed to fade away, to be hidden deep in the roster of some team needing depth at running back after the San Diego Chargers traded him away at the end of last season. His motor had run down, his legs couldn’t do it anymore. Nine seasons is a long time for a workhorse. The body revolts. The ligaments, sinews, and tendons start to scream inside their fleshy shell all year long. And so, Tomlinson was meant to go out to pasture like all the rest, collecting a few more paychecks from a league whose memory is necessarily short.

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