Malcolm Rodriguez’s eyes welled up with tears as soon as he opened the box.
Rodriguez, the Detroit Lions rookie linebacker, sent a pair of cleats off to be painted as part of the NFL’s “My Cause, My Cleats” program for Sunday’s game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, a tribute to his grandmother, Yolanda Martinez, who died this spring after a long battle with cancer.
Rodriguez spent countless hours at his grandmother’s house as a youth.
She watched him and his brother and their cousin while their parents worked. They built forts in her front room and filled their bellies with her cooking, tostados and Mexican rice, homemade beans and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.