It's just days before the Steelers play for a Super Bowl slot, and Oliver Ross has lower back pain, a tender ankle, and neck and shoulder aches. Hines Ward and Keydrick Vincent are sore all over. Jeff Reed and Troy Polamalu need massages, and Willie Williams needs an adjustment.
Steve Mellon, Post-GazetteSteelers place-kicker Jeff Reed gets an adjustment to his spine during a visit to chiropractor Joel Smooke in Greenfield on Tuesday. Reed, who kicked a winning field goal in Saturday's playoff game against the New York Jets, says he visits Smooke three times a week. The Tuesday visit was "just maintenance," he said.
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Sorry, boys, wait your turn. Mary Figlar needs an adjustment, too.
Virtually every week this season, those Steelers and others, plus dozens of Pittsburghers like Figlar, have crowded into the Greenfield chiropractic office of Joel Smooke for pain relief, realignment or plain relaxation.
The office itself is a dreamscape of Steelers and football paraphernalia, such as AstroTurf with yard markers, signed posters, a goal post, Terrible Towels, and photos of 55-year-old Smooke and his staff dressed as players and cheerleaders.
"If you were a new person coming in and you'd meet him, you'd probably say, 'This guy is crazy,' " said Ross, the starting right tackle who's been a patient of Smooke for three years. "I like the way his practice is run. It's loose."
Chiropractic comes from the Greek words "cheiros," for hands, and "praktos," for done by. Chiropractors manipulate the series of movable bones in the spinal column to reduce causes of irritation to the spinal nerve roots that can affect various bodily aches and pains.
Corey Dillon, star running back of the New England Patriots -- the Steelers' opponent Sunday -- is a believer in chiropractors. He was quoted in a national magazine this week saying that when he was with the Cincinnati Bengals last year and tried to bring a chiropractor to camp, "there was almost a brawl."
Dillon said the Patriots have a chiropractor at Gillette Stadium, their home field in Foxboro, Mass.
For Ross and his teammates, a visit to Smooke is a way to maintain top physical condition for the weekly grind of games. And in the playoffs, where the Super Bowl trophy is the goal and a player's game-day condition can mean the difference between professional football's biggest win and a long disappointing off-season, anything that helps is prized.
"In this game you have to take care of your body," said wide receiver Ward, a patient for the past 18 months. "Over the course of a game your body just feels wrecked. Every Monday it hurts to get out of bed.
"I told [Smooke], I want to feel good in the morning. A lot of my credit goes to him for keeping me healthy."
Smooke, a Squirrel Hill native and lifelong Steelers fan, has been in practice for 15 years, 14 of them in Greenfield. The first Steelers player to seek his services was running back Chris Fuamatu-Ma'Afala about five years ago.
After getting help for a hamstring injury that had dogged him since college, "Fu" continued seeing Smooke and talked him up to teammates until leaving the team in 2002. By then, Ross and Vincent were patients.
Smooke started taking his equipment to the Steelers' preseason camp in Latrobe where he met more players. Now, he can count more than a dozen players who see him at the office, or chiropractor Don Hosafook or massage therapists Cindy McCormick, Kristen Reed and Linda Casella.
"To be honest with you, in the beginning, when you first met [the players], it was like 'Wow!' " said Leah Odorisio, who along with her mother, Linda Civitate, runs the office with Smooke's wife, Kerry.
"But now they're just our regular patients."
Some days, the waiting room seems full of Steelers. Sitting in too-small chairs, watching Smooke's pet canary, Rooney, and several cockatiels chatter in a corner, they patiently wait until Smooke walks out and asks, "Any new traumas?"
As they walk down the hallway -- the Wall of Fame, Smooke calls it, where patients put their handprints on the walls (the Steelers' are in black and gold) -- they might see a poster of themselves or a teammate.
Figlar, a resident of Hazelwood who visits the office twice monthly, said she'd gladly give up her scheduled appointment to any Steeler who needed it.
Just her contribution to a Steelers' Super Bowl.
First Published: January 20, 2005, 5:00 a.m.