Anthony Calvillo is NOT retired. He may have thrown his last pass as an active CFL player, but he is still working on a shutout.
That’s right…this quarterback has drawn a stubborn line on the playing field of life and held firm like he’s a nose tackle in the centre of the storm for a goal-line stand.
He’s signed his fair share of autographs over the last two decades, but there will always be one person he’ll never put pen to paper for.
He’s just that competitive.
“He will not sign for my son,” says Barron Miles, who would be a fitting fellow inductee if the Canadian Football Hall of Fame deems Calvillo worthy of scrapping the standard waiting period and making AC eligible as soon as 2015.
Truth is Miles’ son was initially a prop for the prank of his larcenous father. Barron, having left the Alouettes for the BC Lions, had intercepted an AC pass and of course innocently suggested that his best friend in football sign it for his son the next time Calvillo was over for dinner.
Barron ll has renewed the request annually and since requested autographs on other balls, football cards, anything to get AC to sign. Calvillo’s ferocious competitive streak will not let down its guard…not even for a 12-year old.
“He is a fiery guy,” says Miles over the phone from Regina.
“If you play basketball with him, he’d be cheating on the score…he starts pushing and getting angry,” says the ex-Alouette, who is delighted to raise the stakes in a smear campaign before AC has a chance to fire back.
For most of Calvillo’s 20 years in pro football, Miles has been his “brother from another mother”.
The two bonded in 1998 in the early parts of their careers, and remained friends through the good times and the bad times.
“Jennifer (Barron’s wife) recalls us walking to the bus stop together like little school boys every morning around 5:30,” recounts Miles.
“We’d transfer from the bus to the Metro (Montreal’s underground subway) and Anthony would get into the film room at Olympic Stadium. I’d go do my lifting.”
They didn’t really connect until the Als broke camp that summer of ‘98. Barron defied the odds and made the cut despite the team bringing six returning DBs to camp (he’d been told he’d be a shoe-in to make the squad with only 2 returning vets).
“We were both fierce competitors with a lot to prove,” testifies Barron.
“Anthony had taken beatings in Hamilton and he didn’t want people to see if they rattled him or got under his skin.”
“A true competitor hates to lose and having those losses made him what he is today. He knows nothing is guaranteed, that you can lose what you have at any point.”
The “little school boys” would pull an all-nighter and bust curfew in 2002 after shattering Montreal’s 25-year Grey Cup drought.
“We were celebrating but at a certain point we looked at eachother like ‘we’re too old for this.’”
Barron moved on long before the back-to-back victories of 2009-10, the only repeat in Alouettes franchise history.
“They are an awesome testament,” he says enviously.
“Anthony doing great things? I don’t think it’s over yet. I still think he’s got great things to come.”
Some offences are content to ‘take what they give ya.’ Calvillo was the master at taking what he could mind-read.
“What makes Anthony so great is he’s so cerebral and so consistent on the football field,” explains Miles.
“You know him and Ben (Cahoon) would run the ‘Choice Routes’, but they would just keep winning games.”
Calvillo and Cahoon, the 2014 Hall of Fame inductee, would both have to make the identical read on coverage and routes would be adjusted on the receiver’s choice. A DB like Miles was only an innocent bystander.
“You’d start over-compensating, giving AC’s target more room outside, knowing the inside move is only a fake and once he cut, you have to break even harder to the outside.”
Defenders have been burnt trying to match the Calvillo-to-receiver mind games over 85,985 yards in regular season, playoffs and Grey Cups.
Getting inside Calvillo’s head on the field was even tougher than physically trying to disrupt his throwing rhythm. Number 13 could shut out Barron’s trash-talk distractions, as easily as Calvillo could shut out Miles’ autograph-hunting son.
“Out in BC he wouldn’t even talk to me on the field,” says Barron. “We were true enemies. It was kinda funny. I could be the jokester. I only talk smack to people I know so I really talked junk to Anthony all the time. He would look at me, but just walk away.”
“I know a lot about him so that was my best chirping.”
“I tease him about his age all the time, but I’m the same age so it backfires.”
