A brief story about the former Giants wide receiver and his roller-hockey league (!) in Wallington, N.J., courtesy a twice-forwarded email.
Everything sic:
So Amani Toomer plays roller hockey at Wallington, and apparently he is in my one teams division. I had a game last night at 11:30 for roller hockey and we are playing Amani Toomers team. They have two guys that are really good and everyone else is mediocre. We beat them 6-2. Anyway, it's 6-1, late in the game, and Toomer, who has been using his elbows all game, runs Dave. Now Toomer wasn't bad the first time we played him like 6 months ago. His hands were really good but he had trouble skating. His skating has gotten much better, but he plays a little dirty now. Anyway, he runs my friend and defensive partner Dave, who is 5'-6", into the corner and Dave falls down. So Dave grabs his leg (a la Jeff Van Gundy) and starts pulling on it. The refs blow the play dead and Toomer turns around to Dave and goes "You just gonna grab my leg like that?" So Dave says something I didn't hear and Toomer just throws a left and hits him in the head. So I skate over and hit Toomer, to stand up for my teammate. He doesn't fall, turns around and goes "You got something to say to me?" Now on skates, he's like 6'-9", so I'm looking up and thinking "Holy Christ, if he hits me, I'm dead." Meanwhile my mouth doesn't compute this fact, and I decide to blurt out "Stop acting like a [expletive for female dog] cause you suck at 2 sports." Which riled him up. Anyway, his teammate comes in and pushes me away as the ref comes in and pushes Toomer away. The other ref (this guy Mark) skates over and goes to the other kid "Go push your teammate away, not their guys" and after he leaves I look at Mark and go "I think he saved my life."
So Toomer is all fired up skating away. He turns and yells at me and Dave "You guys are little [expletive for female dogs]." To which I say "Little [expletive for female dogs] who are kicking your ass up and down the rink." Then I decide to add in "That's pretty funny coming from the worst Giants player in history!" and someone else from the bench yelled "I'm glad I'm an Eagles fan!" The game ends like 2 minutes later (Toomer got 14 minutes, Dave got 2) and Toomer skates off without shaking anyone's hand. Dave went up to him as he was leaving to apologize and say good game, but Dave tells us in the locker room this is what happened:
Dave: Hey man, I'm sorry about that before, good game.
Toomer: [expletive F———] you man.Seriously tho, how bush league is that, coming from a former professional athlete? We were joking in the locker room that he was gonna tweet about it, and then one of the guys goes "Who is following Amani Toomer on Twitter?" I also said from then on I was gonna call him Brashear, and then decided to take it a step further and say I would just call him "cookie". My friend Raul (who we got the tickets from) also made a pretty funny point...the guy played in the NFL, and he lets Dave - a 5'-6" kid who will never see the amount of money Toomer has - get under his skin in a beer league hockey game? Ridiculous. I told Raul I'm sure Toomer would be tormented by that while driving home in his Bentley.
Grain of salt and all that, but note that there is indeed an "Amani T." playing with the Jackals in an Inline Skating Club of America league, and that these Jackals did indeed lose 6-2 last week to a team that did indeed feature a guy named Raul and another named Dave. (And also note that Toomer seems like a solid guy, and he's certainly not the worst player in Giants history — not by a shanked 30-yarder.) Big dudes obviously shouldn't go around punching little dudes, but there's something sort of likable about an ex-jock who shakes out the old competitive urges by sucking at a second sport that isn't golf.
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