They were together two Saturdays ago for an autograph show at a Long Island shopping mall, seated in the same order they lined up 35 years ago: Mark Gastineau and Joe Klecko on the outside, Marty Lyons and Abdul Salaam on the inside. They were the New York Sack Exchange, the scourge of quarterbacks in the early 1980s.
On this day, Salaam was the sympathetic figure. Stricken with diabetes, he was relegated to a wheelchair. His condition doesn't allow him to fly, so he traveled by train from Cincinnati to attend the signing. The men at the table had no idea their former teammate on the right flank -- Gastineau -- was battling the most significant health crisis of them all, an unseen killer.