Sports: Mayberry at peace as an ex-Buc

Mayberry at peace as an ex-Buc

By GARY SHELTON

First, you check for the anger.

Surely, there has to be some, doesn't there? Some indignation, some ire, some good old fashioned bitterness? He gave the team the best years of his life, didn't he? His last game was the Pro Bowl, wasn't it? Who gets thrown away after the Pro Bowl?

As a rule, most athletes exit badly. The majority are led away kicking and screaming, making one final excuse, pleading for one final year. The dictionary doesn't hold many definitions between "resentment" and "retirement," so when a man has spent the better part of a decade as a warrior, fighting the good fight in the middle of the battlefield, you almost expect outrage in the final chapter.

Not this time.

Not with Tony Mayberry, man at peace.

"I don't have any negative feelings at all," said Mayberry, ex-Buccaneer. "A lot of people ask me that, but I really don't. I guess I'm lucky that I'm old enough to keep things in perspective. I don't see how it can be that bad a thing with everything good that's happened to me."

If that strikes you as an uncommon response, remember that Mayberry, 32, had an uncommon career in the middle of the Bucs' offensive line. He started for nine seasons, including 144 straight regular-season games. He was the first Bucs offensive lineman to make the Pro Bowl. Also the second, and the third and, to date, the only. He was here when the team was awful, and he was here when it was good. For a decade, it was the same: Mayberry in the middle.

But football is a harsh business sometimes, and the game tapes don't lie. The Bucs watched a year ago and noticed Mayberry's play had slipped dramatically. On a team that believes in running inside the tackles, it was like a boxer losing his jab. So, despite being NFC runner-up, despite Mayberry reaching the Pro Bowl again, the team decided its upgrades would start at center. When the Vikings' Jeff Christy, whom the Bucs saw as a more athletic player, became available as a free agent, they went after him as if they were conducting a rescue mission.

"It was a difficult decision," general manager Rich McKay said, "especially when you have a guy who has been a good player as long as Tony had been. You won't find anyone who doesn't like Tony Mayberry. He was a loyal soldier, and he played at times when other guys wouldn't be out there. But it came down to a decision we were going to retool up (front). To get better, we believed, we had to make that move."

Still, you would understand if the move wounded Mayberry, wouldn't you? A player watches his team go from nowhere to the verge of somewhere special and suddenly he's voted off the island? For most of his career, Mayberry was thought of as one of the few bright spots. Suddenly, at the end, he was one of the problems. A lot of players have shouted their goodbyes over less.

Mayberry, however, seems to have achieved a tranquility you seldom find. He speaks of his former team and his voice never changes. He is quiet, thoughtful, appreciative. Who knows? Maybe he should give seminars.

"I've never been one to hold a grudge," Mayberry said. "I've been blessed. All my career, someone was looking out for me. This was the team that gave me my opportunity."

Mayberry said the end was not a shock to him. He was in the final year of his contract, after all. The Bucs made no move to renew. After spending years in a locker room, watching the business of sport, that told him something. And Mayberry is one of those rare players honest enough to admit that, yes, his play did slip a year ago.

"Honestly, yes," he said. "It's easy to blame it on other things, whether it's injuries or going one game to another, but that wasn't the level I was accustomed to playing."

Perhaps Mayberry will reach that level again. He does not call himself retired, and he has not decided on his post-football career. Over the off-season, he said, "a handful" of teams contacted him. He took a physical with the Rams and failed it because of a bad shoulder. He had surgery two weeks ago and says he won't reach a decision on his future until he sees how well the shoulder heals.

"Whether I play any more is still to be seen," Mayberry said. "But whatever I do, I'm convinced it will be on my terms. The first step is to get myself healthy and then go from there."

In the meantime, there are memories. Of the bad days. Of the good days. If this team wins big this year, he says, he'll feel good for it.

"I don't know how it would have been to go from a team that was great and stayed there for 10 years," Mayberry said. "It was cool to watch it grow, to be a part of it."

And the fans' memories? What should they be of Mayberry?

He was a tough player, for one. He played hard every week. And maybe this: Every season, no matter how rotten things looked to the rest of us, Mayberry convinced himself -- absolutely convinced himself -- that this year it would be different. And he played long enough, and well enough, until he came to a couple years that really were.

As legacies go, that's pretty good.

As goodbyes go, he wasn't bad, either.