Blocking out pain: Hit by a car in 2006, Brown refuses to quit football

With a hand the size of a bear's paw, Taj Brown wiped the pain from his eyes, readying himself for another wave of questions. The unavoidable questions and stares. The needling. The pointing.

Not only is Brown big -- 6 feet, 4 inches, 305 pounds -- but he's been beaten up, too.

What happened to your leg, big fellah? How'd you get those scars?

You play football? How?

"The questions," Brown said with a deep sigh and deflating tone, "being in high school, it's something I have to do. Still today, everybody asks about it.

"I'm used to it, but I don't like it. Truthfully, I'm trying to forget about it."

That'll be tough.

The reminders are everywhere: from the crosswalk at Merced High's main entrance to the scars that adorn his right leg to the pain in his mangled foot.

It's been three years since this real-life giant found himself on his back near the gutter on Olive Street, bloodied and broken, thrown nearly

100 feet by a minivan.

Smith was walking slowly through the campus' main crosswalk at around 6:45 p.m., a bit lethargic from freshman football practice and dinner at McDonald's.

"I really wasn't paying attention to anything," Brown recalled.

To make matters worse, he was wearing an orange T-shirt, rendering him virtually invisible in the glow of the sunset.

Brown stopped at the median as the timer expired, and was waved through by another car.

He never saw the van in the next lane over. The van never saw him.

The impact shattered both the fibula and tibia bones in Brown's lower right leg. He crashed into the windshield and was carried by the van, before being thrown down Olive.

He landed near the bus entrance, across the street from the Carl's Jr. restaurant.

"I remember being on the ground," Brown said. "To be honest, I thought I was back at home having a bad dream and sweating.

"When I wiped my face, I saw the blood. I still thought it was a bad dream."

If only it were a dream.

If only this weren't real.

Brown had to have

15 percent of the muscle mass in his lower right leg removed. Two steel rods were inserted to stabilize the limb. A hole had to be burrowed into his inner calf to stop a gangrene infection.

Doctors say he'll need at least one more surgery to fix a club-like right foot. His toes have been forced into a curled position because the tendons in his foot have been pulled taut. As a result, Brown endures a reccuring problem with festering blisters.

"Our biggest fear was for his survival. Forget football," Merced coach Rob Scheidt said. "A few inches here or there -- he would have been killed.

"They found him in a gutter. That's how close it was for Taj."

And yet he plays.

Brown fought the pain as sophomore in 2007. He learned to trust his leg as a part-time starter on the varsity team a season ago.

"I had falling issue, and still do," said Brown, who won the starting job by Week 9 and was a force in three playoff games. "It's hard for me to completely trust that (the leg is) there."

As Merced (0-2) goes searching for its first win of the season tonight against Fresno Edison, Brown -- a team captain -- isn't using his past injuries or recovery story to inspire his teammates.

He ain't that kind of kid, Merced defensive coordinator Paul Hogue said of his right tackle.

"He leads by example. I've never heard him say, 'Well, I've had this injury,' or 'This has happened to me, so you need to step it up,'" Hogue said.

"He doesn't talk about it. He just does it. Nobody worked harder in the offseason. He would borrow my bike, ride it down here to flip tires and run stairs by himself."

Even with a sometimes gimpy leg, Brown is Merced's Strong Man. He can bench press his own body weight and squat nearly 500 pounds.

His measurables and highlight film have generated phone calls and letters from small Division-I schools, including San Diego State and Nevada-Reno.

But the Cals and Arizona States of the recruiting world -- the marquee programs that have combed this part of the Valley the past three years -- have shied away from Brown.

It's the leg.

"His size is a plus, and so is his work ethic," Hogue said. "But unfortunately, the thing that will hold him back is that leg.

"We've always said, if he didn't have that thing that slows him down just enough, he'd be one of the top prospects to come out of this area in a long time."

There is one question that inspires a smile; one question Taj never gets tired of answering...

Why, after all this, do you keep playing football?

"I can't stop now. I love it too much," Brown said. "At the time, they said I couldn't play football again. That motivates me.

"This leg won't hold me back. It won't take football away from me."

James Burns is sports editor of the Sun-Star. He can be reached at jburns@mercedsun-star.com.