Let Victor Cruz tell you what is at stake for all the long-shot dreamers of the New York Football Giants in the make-or-break preseason game tonight against the Bears:
“People all over the world want to be a New York Giant,” Cruz said. “They see us and they see the tradition that’s here and they see the type of players and the character that’s a part of this team and it’s just a tremendous honor to be a part of it.”
Cruz was one of those long-shot dreamers two summers ago, and look at him now, one of the inspirational reminders who walks among Giants that all things are possible. A symbol of hope. Mark Herzlich, the linebacker who beat cancer, is another one.
If you are on the bubble, or anywhere near it, you had better approach this night as make-or-break. The way Cruz did two years ago before he terrorized the Jets with his professional life on the line.
“I was anxious to prove to myself that I could play at this level,” Cruz recalled, “and I went out there and got it done.”
Cornerback Justin Tryon showed coach Tom Coughlin how much he wanted to be a Giant last October when he tackled Reggie Bush on a punt return — with a broken arm.
“I didn’t know that it was broken myself,” Tryon recalled. “I think after that play I actually played a few more plays on defense and some of the guys were calling my name on the sideline, and they’re like ‘Tryon, Tryon, Tryon,’ and they’re just pointing at their arms, ‘Look at your arm, look at your arm, come out, come out!’ so then I looked at my arm, it looked like a Z. … ‘Oh, wow, maybe I do need to come out.’ ”
He spent the rest of the Giants’ Super Bowl season on injured reserve.
Tryon was drafted out of Arizona State in 2008 by the Redskins, was traded to the Colts and intercepted Mark Sanchez in the 2010 playoff loss to the Jets, and now he’s back fighting to hold on to the NFL dream he has been dreaming since he was 5 years old — a dream interrupted by a terrible personal nightmare.
Tryon’s troubled brother, Jermaine, was stabbed in the torso by a friend and murdered in a parking lot in Lancaster, Calif., five years ago, pronounced dead at 2:31 on Mother’s Day morning at Antelope Valley Hospital. They were two years apart, but very close. Tryon was at Stanford to run in the Pac-10 Championship 400-meter relay later that morning when one of his twin kid brothers called with the tragic news. He dropped the phone and fell to the floor devastated. He told no one, grieved alone.
“He ran his race. … He still ran,” his mother, JoHanna Carlton Tryon, said over the telephone.
He and his teammates didn’t win the race, but that’s not the point. When the coach reminded everyone it was Mother’s Day weekend, Tryon broke down and cried. When he called home, he told his mother about a long conversation he had had with his brother earlier the previous day.
“The last conversation they had, [Jermaine] was encouraging him, telling him to ‘Do your thing, you’re gonna be all right, I’m gonna be watching you, give it your all,’ ” JoHanna said. “He called to tell me, ‘Ma, I feel good that I talked to him before he left. We had a good conversation, ma. He’s all right, ma. He’s all right, ma.’ ”
She was asked if she drew strength from her son in that moment.
“Yes and no,” JoHanna said. “Because I felt he was there alone, and he had to go through it by himself.”
Justin told JoHanna about a dream he had last year.
“In the dream they were just talking, and he was totally shocked Jermaine came to visit him,” JoHanna said, “so he pulled on his goatee to make sure this is real. When he woke up, the pillow was soaking wet. Justin was crying.”
Before the start of training camp, the family went to Disneyland.
“And there’s always like a missing piece, and that missing piece is Jermaine,” JoHanna said. “His smile would light up a room.”
Jermaine is buried at Eternal Valley Memorial Park and Mortuary.
“When Justin comes to California, he’ll visit Jermaine,” JoHanna said.
She is a woman of faith, and she spreads that gospel to each of her four sons.
“God promotes and He demotes,” JoHanna said. “You have to have faith and believe. As long as you know you’re doing your very best and you’re doing 110 [percent], that’s all you can do. What else can you do? I always tell them, ‘Each day is a blessing. Each day you wake up and see another day, you’ve been blessed with another opportunity’.”
She knows that Justin knows.
“You play for the Lord,” she says. “You play for your coaches, you play for your team, but you thank God for the job.
“He’s gonna be all right. He has nothing to worry about.”