LOS ANGELES -- It was just after 2 a.m. Thursday when I exited an ESPYS after-party somewhere in some uncharted section of downtown L.A., hailed a cab and stepped off the curb. After that, things got fuzzy.
I remember a shout, screeching tires and the glare of fast approaching headlights. I got just enough warning to leap over the hard-charging Honda Civic's front fender and into the windshield, shoulder first.
So, this is what getting hit by a car feels like.
When I came to, I was on the sidewalk, my shoulder hurting like crazy, shards of glass in my forearm and blood dripping from my fingers, while limo drivers and other witnesses screamed this way and that. The paramedics told me I was lucky to be alive ("Last time I saw a windshield like that," said one, "guy lost both his legs"), and all I could think was, "Damn! I just bought this Banana Republic tie-and-shirt ensemble!"
That, and "Holy crap, that's T.O.!"
Terrell Owens was standing over me. I'm told he was the first do-gooder on the scene of the accident. That he helped me to my feet and off the street to safe ground. That he didn't leave my side. It seems the mercurial Dallas Cowboys receiver is my hero. But my hero looks scared, and this scares me.
Media Blitz
"Wow, you all right, man?" Owens kept asking me, but in a manner that would suggest there is no possible way that I, in fact, could be all right. "Don't move. Just sit there. Breathe. Don't move."
It's now that I noticed the car's jacked windshield, which sports a hole the size of, well, my upper torso.
Yikes, I did that?
"That was crazy. Crazy," Owens confirmed. "You all right, man?
I'm fine, nothing to worry about, but Owens is so concerned, so kind, and I'm so touched by this -- we hardly know each other -- that I think my lip is quivering. There's a good chance I could break down like T.O. at that news conference. (It's just not fair. That's my receiver, man.)
After presenting with Kate Walsh, Terrell Owens came to our reporter's rescue on the streets of Los Angeles.
This is embarrassing. The crowd grew to include friends, like Page 2 columnist LZ Granderson, and strangers (one vagrant offered to wipe the blood from my arms with his shirt; another asked me for change). Through it all, T.O. stuck by my side! I mean, it was ESPYS night, people! A hot party was raging in a building not 20 feet away, and another one, Justin Timberlake's late-nighter, would soon kick off at a hotel nearby, and yet one of the biggest names in sports was spending his night curbside with me?
"So, T.O. was nice, huh?" says the medic who took my blood pressure inside the ambulance. "Boy, you think you know somebody, but the media doesn't tell you the whole story. You never know how they really are."
Guilty as charged.
When the medics were done with the paperwork (note: patient has lacerations, bruised knee, stained shorts, etc.) I headed back to the street to deal with the police, meet the driver and thank my hero ... but T.O. was gone. He didn't care to wait for the cameras, the spotlight, the attention. Didn't need to hear my thanks. He simply vanished into the dark night, alone (well, with his bodyguard, also a nice man) like a samurai, his work complete.
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