He mattered because of his exceptional athletic ability. Regardless of which sport Randy Moss conquered in his native West Virginia, whether it was plucking a football out of the sky, running down a baseball in center field, slam-dunking a basketball, or sprinting past everyone on the track, he invariably became the focus. This was not because he craved attention - quite the opposite, actually - but because at any moment, the locals knew he was capable of doing something spectacular, and they wanted to be able to say they were there.
Moss's blessing, and curse
Achievement and controversy follow star receiver
"We were playing in the sectional championship," recalled Jim Fout, his baseball coach at Dunlop High School in Belle, W.Va. "Randy was playing center field, shading toward right. A kid hit the ball to the gap in left-center. I'm looking at it thinking, 'That's a triple.' There was no way anyone was going to catch that ball. Well, not only did Randy catch it, he actually overran it. He had to come back and get it."
Moss's athletic prowess has proven to be a blessing and a curse. In 10 NFL seasons with Minnesota, Oakland, and New England, he has been to the Pro Bowl eight times and is third in career touchdown receptions (124). In his first year with the Patriots, he set an NFL record for touchdown receptions in a season (23).
His performance has made him millions of dollars, but also made him a public figure, whose mistakes have been highlighted nearly as much as his accomplishments.
Moss will take the field for the Patriots this afternoon in the AFC Championship game against the San Diego Chargers with the spotlight firmly fixed on him, partly because of a season in which he reestablished himself as the most feared receiver in the game, but also because of allegations by a Florida woman last week that he caused her "serious injury" in an incident during the Patriots' bye week in early January.
"I don't know why these kind of issues follow him," said Bob Pruett, his football coach at Marshall, "but they always have, all the way back to high school."
Racial intoleranceIt all started there, in Rand, W.Va., a small, predominantly African-American community adjacent to a chemical factory. Moss walked to school each day past the Dunlop plant into Belle, where the majority of the population was white.
The racial tension at Dunlop High School, where blacks were truly in the minority, was palpable. Just a stone's throw from Moss's locker was a hallway called Red Neck Alley, where kids draped their lockers with Confederate flags and symbols of the Ku Klux Klan.
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