The Prospectors’ locker room at quarter timeout is a chaotic jumble of players, trainers and television cameramen. The players remain largely immobile, regaining strength, leaving it up to the others, the outsiders, to step over them or go around.

Trainers scurry about dispensing medication. Cameramen pursue better angles in their esthetic desire to capture it all artfully for posterity.

For those players who want food, a table off in one corner holds a varied supply, soy meat both cooked and raw, assorted vegetables, sugar cubes, chocolate bars, a basket of fruit disproportionately laden with oranges, an ice chest stocked with nutriment enriched soft drinks, and an insulated jug of coffee.

The drug bin in the center of the room gets a much greater play, however.

Two of the Prospectors, Orval Frazier and Buddy Healy, undergo minor corrective surgery in the training room. Afterwards, they’ll be given rapid transfusions of plasma, coagulants and liquid nutriments to fortify them for the second quarter.

Harland Minick is carried off the field and taken to a hospital for extensive knee surgery.

Lammy Howe is carried off the field, too. After the game, when there is time for such things, there will be words of praise and tender sentiments for Lammy. For the time being, he’s stuffed rather unceremoniously into a blue and gold body bag and stored in a deep freeze outside the locker room door. An ambulance from the mortuary specified in his player’s file is already on its way over to pick him up.

T.K., as usual, bypasses drugs for food. He only nibbles, not wanting to risk cramping. He starts off with a fistful of raw cauliflower, follows that up with six ounces of broiled soy meat and grabs an orange for dessert. Digging a fingernail in on top, he peels it around in a circle, ending up with a continuous strip of peeling one inch wide and six inches long. Carefully, he breaks the orange into two hemispheres and pops one of them into his mouth. He chews it up and spits the seeds out into a corner.

While most quarterbacks have long turned to using chemicals or specially developed ointments on their hands to give them better ball control, T.K., as always, still swears by freshly squeezed orange juice. He rubs the remaining half of his orange between his two hands, squeezing the juice out over his palms and fingers. The juice contracts, dehydrates and tightens his skin and makes his hands sticky, exactly the way he likes them.

Coach Carrerra storms in. Actually, he spent the entire first quarter right here in the locker room watching the game. He left just prior to the team’s arrival simply so he could come blustering back in with a proper showing of wrath. He’s a great one for dramatic effect. He doesn’t waste time on small talk.