BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

I never figured Boomer Esiason would get old. He was too cocky, too hip. Publicly, he looked too free from worry or fear or anger or anything that tends to put miles on a man.

He was too blond, you know? Besides, who could be old that calls himself Boomer?

Esiason turned 36 last month. Into middle age he goes, with the rest of us.

Somehow, I never thought I'd see the quarterback who sat in front of the replacement players' bus 10 years ago - has it really been that long? - return to Spinney Field and say, "This is a chance for me to go out gracefully."

That was Boomer on Monday. So was this:

"I'd like to make sure the young guys know how to appreciate what they have. It's prestigious. You're lucky to be here. You're making money that 99 percent of the population doesn't make. You're working for six months."

This is not a view shared by many of his younger brethren. Probably, it wasn't in Esiason's thoughts as he blocked that bus. But a decade will do that to you.

Now, you can almost hear Esiason saying, "When I was your age . . . " Soon, we'll be calling him Norman.

You hang your years on certain memories. After awhile, you realize the memories don't get older. You do.

I remember talking to Esiason in 1981, when he was a sophomore at Maryland. He sat out the previous year, as a redshirt. He spent that season enjoying his team's games from the upper deck, with his girlfriend and a flask of Jack Daniel's.

"That's exactly right," Esiason said Monday.

Well, not exactly.

"Girlfriends," he said. '87, I remember watching Esiason's sit-in on TV. "It was a bus that had nobody on it," Esiason said Monday. "A bus that was parked. It was symbolic more than anything."

I asked Esiason where that guy is now. A memory, maybe.

"I think there's still a part of me like that, but also a part of me that's grown up (and) understands what his actions mean to everybody else. Your actions speak for your teammates and your organization. When you're younger, you're not sensitive to that," he said.

Over the years, I counted on Esiason throwing TD passes at Maryland. I counted on Esiason to be outspoken, as he was the day after the '84 draft, when he suggested everyone who allowed him to slide into the second round had made a huge mistake.

I counted on him play-faking to Stanley Wilson, before dropping bombs on defenses that could never quite catch Eddie Brown.

But Boomer, aging? I never counted on that.

"I don't have the arm strength I once did," said Esiason. "But I have the experience. (Defenses) can't do anything to me I haven't seen."

Other things have occurred. Esiason's son Gunnar, 6 now, was born with cystic fibrosis. Sick kids age a man, in ways only he can know.

"Every time he coughs, I think, 'What's another wind sprint?' " Esiason said. Gunnar was due for his six-month physical Monday, routine for CF patients.

"He's anxious. He knows he gets needles," Esiason said. "He knows he gets X-rays. It's a six-hour deal. I let him sleep with me last night."

The Bengals are full of young, prosperous players now, who think the world will always be theirs. Immortality is a privilege of youth. But it's a shame they can't know what Boomer Esiason knows.

"I never took for granted being an NFL quarterback," he said. "If it didn't mean anything to me, I could have retired a couple years ago."

I told him I never pictured him as an old player. "We all get older," he said.

Yes, we do. I wrote about Esiason's wife, the former Cheryl Hyde, when she played field hockey in high school.

It was a long time ago.

Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty welcomes your calls at 768-8454.

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