A good example

SABANETA, Dominican Republic -- The trek to Luis Castillo's boyhood home begins where the paved road ends. So it's not one you can take on a whim. "You'll never make it in that," Polinar Torrez, a cousin of the San Diego Chargers' defensive lineman, says with a laugh as he points to a visitor's car. "You'll need a 4-by-4. Or maybe a motorbike."

Or maybe a burro, because what road there was washed away in the recent rains. Plus, you will have to ford rivers, climb some pretty steep hills and . . . well, now even Torrez is having second thoughts.

"Are you sure you really want to do this?" he asks.

Castillo's journey, after all, is one just one man has made. While hundreds of baseball players have found their way from the lush hillsides of the Dominican Republic to the major leagues, Castillo is the first football player to go from an extended childhood in the DR to the NFL.

And his trip was as eventful as it was historic, beginning with national honors on the field and in the classroom in high school and at Northwestern -- where he was just the fourth player in school history to win All-America and Academic All-America recognition in the same season -- before his selection in the first round of the 2005 NFL draft.

Yet the path from tiny Cidra de Tomas to success wasn't one Castillo blazed. It was one he followed.

Years earlier, his mother, Maria, with little formal education and no business experience, turned a job as a door-to-door saleswoman into a million-dollar company. In comparison, Castillo's journey to the NFL was a piece of cake.

"He didn't have to go through hard times," says Torrez, a man who has clearly seen his share of sacrifice. "She had him ready. She never wavered. She never left him alone."

It's not yet 8 on a chilly November morning when dozens of players, struggling to stifle yawns or rub the sleep from their eyes, file slowly into a classroom at the Chargers' sprawling training complex for their first meeting of the day.

Castillo has already been here for hours. Just two days after surgery to repair a tendon in his right ankle, he is about to begin exhaustive therapy, a program that will cut weeks from his rehabilitation and get him back on the field before the end of the regular season.

It's the second time in as many seasons that an ankle injury derailed what was shaping up to be a Pro Bowl season. But while that might cause doubt and frustration in some, Castillo again followed his mother's lead.