Pat Tillman 1976-2004 Smith: Code of honor throughout Tillman's life Reilly: The star who wanted to be a nobody • Dr. Z: A football player who always stood out • King: Readers' ideas on honoring a fallen hero • Beech: Tillman achieved as a soldier and player • Layden: An indescribably rare pro athlete • SI Flashback: Service first | A cut above

Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjust like that
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what I want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

-- ee cummings

I only talked to Pat Tillman once. It was in the summer of 1998, his rookie season. I was doing the Cardinals camp for my NFC East scouting report for Sports Illustrated, and someone in the Arizona Cardinals' PR department mentioned that he was an unusual youngster, kind of a free spirit, and I might be able to do some kind of offbeat feature on him.

"He brings excitement to the team, like our young quarterback Jake Plummer does," the coach, Vince Tobin had told me.

So Tillman and I sat in the lobby of one of the dorms up in Flagstaff and talked for about half an hour, and I quickly realized that there was a lot more here than one of those cliché-type stories, long hair, free spirits and so forth. I wish I could have just junked the whole scouting report idea and done a piece on Tillman, but that wasn't the assignment.

The kid was something special. The fire burned brightly in him, and he spoke as a player who had always seen the game from the underside, who always had to prove himself. It was unusual, the outlook of an underdog by one who had always been outstanding at any level of competition, at any aspect of life, actually, whether physical or intellectual.

He said the players in the NFL he admired most were the special teamers: Bill Bates, Steve Tasker, the guys who ran downfield under punts and kickoffs. He said he had no idea where the Cardinals could use him, a 202-pound college linebacker whose weight had dropped to 194. Pass coverage in the secondary? He had no idea how it worked, but he'd give it a try.

But he didn't want to give up his job on special teams. K5 was where he played on his kick-coverage unit in college, an outside position.

We talked about life in general, and he asked me not to write it, and looking at my old notebook now I can see how skimpy the stuff is, because I didn't put anything down. The hypocrisy, he said, the phoniness of professional sports was what he hated most. Saying the right things, doing the old interview number ... all the self-serving junk merely to feather one's own nest.

"I wonder how many of them really love the game," he said.

"I've never golfed," was one of the odd quotes I actually did write down in my notebook. Don't ask me why. "I'm protecting golf," he said.

I remember asking him what he was reading. The Day After Tomorrow by Allan Folsom, he said. The perfect training camp read. In and out quickly. Pure escapism. I took down his home phone number. I told him I'd stay in touch.

He was the starting free safety as a rookie, and true to his word, he doubled on the punt and kick teams. He had the second most special teams tackles on the club. He was switched to the strong side the following season, and a year later he set a record for most tackles in the team's history. That was 2000, the year before he left pro football, and I picked him as the strong safety on my All-Pro team for Sports Illustrated.

A couple of the network announcers made fun of the selection. Not the greatest in coverage, etc. But what I had seen was a wild and punishing tackling machine, a guy who lifted the performance of everyone around him. You could see the fire in the whole defensive unit when he led the charge to the ball.

I got a letter from Tillman and his wife, or maybe she was his fiancée then, thanking me for selecting him. It happens every now and then, but it's unusual.

When he went into the army the following September, I thought I could understand why. We had never talked about the military, or patriotism, or commitment to one's country on that day in Flagstaff, but I thought that I might have an understanding of the way he felt. All the phony flag-waving and professed sorrow following 9-11, all that lack of sacrifice ... no, if you feel it deeply enough, then do something about it.

And he did. And he didn't hold any press conferences to explain it, and I thought I could understand that, too. Publicity, first cousin to hype, translation "phony."

OK, we'll lead with the Madonna segment, then do Tillman and the army, and then we'll promo Survivors.

No thanks. What he had to do would be done quietly.

"Doesn't do to talk too much about all this," the hunter, Wilson, tells Macomber in Hemingway's story, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. "Talk the whole thing away."

I had the phone number he had given me three years before that. Would it make any sense to phone him? Journalistically, maybe, but it was something I just couldn't do. It was his call. He had chosen to play it silent. The decision had to be respected.

I was working on my draft stuff when I heard of his death. It hit me like a punch in the stomach. It was a numbing thing. I haven't read anything or heard anything said that could describe that feeling of terrible emptiness of having this young man taken from us.

I found my old notebook and looked at the notes from our interview. I had promised to keep in touch and never had. I found the old phone number he had given me. You do crazy things sometimes. I don't know why, but I dialed it, not knowing what to expect. I got a recording. It was impossible to reach the number as dialed.

It's impossible, the whole thing is impossible, the whole crazy world and the fact that young men such as Pat Tillman have to go out and do what they think is right and find death at 27 years old. He knew that there would be no words to describe what he had decided to do, and there are no words to describe his death. And let's leave it at that.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Paul Zimmerman covers the NFL for the magazine and SI.com. His Power Rankings, "Inside Football" column and Mailbag appear weekly on SI.com.