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| | | | | | | |  Tuesday, November 14, 2000
I heard all cheers during my induction
By Eric Dickerson
Special to ABC Sports Online
Well, first of all, my Hall of Fame class of Tom Mack, Ozzie Newsome, Billy Shaw and Lawrence Taylor was a great one. We all got along, which was the most important thing. We knew that the ceremony with the speeches was going to be a tense moment. Everyone wanted to say the right thing and thank everyone.
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Eric Dickerson was inducted into the Hall in 1999. |
One of the big running jokes was that somebody was going to forget to thank someone. And sure enough, it happened to Shaw, because he went first. He kept teasing me all week. They all knew I was really nervous about getting up there talking. Everywhere I went that week, I thought about that speech.
So when the time came for the induction, Shaw forget to thank his wife. And then when he sat down next to me, he looked right in her face and whispered, "Oh my god, I forgot my wife." And I said, "I'll take care of it." And I can see his wife doing the cutthroat thing, saying "No, no, no." Shaw then said "Do it."
When I got up to give my speech, I said we had a lot of fun this week, but one of the big things we were going to forget to do was thank someone. So I said, "Will Ms. Bill Shaw please stand up." And then everyone started laughing. He actually got down on his knees on the stage to her. That was one of the funniest moments of the whole thing.
Jackie Slater did such a great job as my presenter. Jackie has been a very close friend of mine ever since I played for the Rams. He said afterward: "Eric, those were the things I feel about you." I have a great respect for him as a man, a friend, and a football player last. Jackie was the father figure on our team. Let's say we were talking about girls in the locker room when Jackie would walk by. All of a sudden, the conversation would stop. He said "What?" and we would say "Oh, nothing, nothing." We had that kind of respect for Jackie. I knew he would be great up there on the podium in Canton, and he was.
I didn't have a speech prepared until we were having breakfast that morning. I had a speech written out. But I said this is just not for me, I don't work well just reading something. I do better just talking off the cuff. So what I did was just put down little notes about people I wanted to talk about. If you know somebody, you know what you want to say about him or her. I just went down a list of people, moments and situations I wanted to talk about. For me, I think it worked out great.
The one thing I really remember is the parade that morning with the people out on the street. We are talking 100,000 people. That is something I never forget. When you play football, you go into different cities, sometimes in your own city, and something happens and they boo you. That day no one booed at all. It was all cheers.
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