The punting career: New Orleans Saints, then the Phoenix Cardinals trade

texture · Subsidized era, → YDAU

• When: Subsidized-era pro career, running into the YDAU present (Cardinals #71)
• What: Orin's Show-caliber punting carried him to the pros — first the New Orleans Saints (the robes-and-halos entertainment; the flying-roach infant-blinding outbreak and the graveyard mudslide that drove him to request a trade), then to the Phoenix Cardinals as "Orin Incandenza, punter," #71 — "two reserve guards and cash for Orin Incandenza" (with a free safety) in the trade. He landed "in a kind of desiccated circle, near the Tucson of his own father's desiccated youth" — the blasted Desert Southwest JOI himself had fled. Team-of-record markers: the Saints era is attested by the mailroom form-reply ("we regrettably say ORIN INCANDENZA #71 can not answer your letter in person," signed "Jethro Bodine, Assistant Mailroom Technician") that is Orin's invariant answer to Avril's letters, archived under her 20 June YWQMD letter (n110) — he wears #71 with both franchises (see Dating notes). Outside corroboration of the college career: Gately, ironing fake licenses years earlier, watched "the B.U. punter" on TV — "a hometown Boston kid" who "was already one of the finest punt-specialists in N.C.A.A. history" (scene 173).