By Dan Steinberg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 15, 2006; E01
Troy Perkins has almost reached the bank of elevators before he remembers the good news. It's Thursday. Doughnut Day.
It's yet another reason D.C. United's starting goalkeeper is happy to be arriving at his second job in a Tysons Corner office park, where the many perks include a crash course on the mortgage industry, a bit of extra money to supplement his soccer income and, on Thursdays, doughnuts that Perkins promises are "unbelievable."
Perkins, 24, has the lowest goals-against average in MLS. He has played every minute of every game for a United side in the midst of its best streak in franchise history. The previous afternoon, he had been named to his first MLS all-star team.
Now, he walks into his office at the First National Bank of Arizona, greets his co-workers, logs on to his computer and settles in for his initial task of the afternoon: an employment verification phone call.
"It's very weird," admitted Sean Wathen, one of Perkins's supervisors and a budding United fan. "You're like the bad-ass starting goalie -- it's like being the quarterback for the best team in the NFL. Ask that guy to do a verification of employment, and he'd freaking shove it down my throat. But he has no arrogance about him at all."
To be sure, there are financial incentives behind the 20 to 25 hours a week Perkins spends creating customer files, verifying information about borrowers and collecting W-2 forms, bank statements and Social Security cards. Just two years removed from a developmental contract that paid him $850 a month, Perkins earns a base MLS salary of $29,400. Many of the Chelsea players Perkins will face in the All-Star Game next month earn more in a week.
But there are plenty of underpaid MLS players and few mortgage loan processors, and so there are other motivations that send Perkins on his daily commute in a bright red Mini Cooper. He wants to be prepared in case an injury prematurely ends his athletic career. He wants to have a life outside of soccer; last year he coached a youth team and was turned off by overly competitive parents with unrealistic expectations for their children. He wants to understand the mortgage market, which is why he now speaks easily about debt-to-income ratios and loan-to-value ratios and forms 1003 and 1008.
And what do his teammates make of all this?
"He's definitely his own breed of guy," said forward Alecko Eskandarian, Perkins's former roommate. "He's just out there, man. He's different."
Want proof? Perkins finished his humanities degree at South Florida by doing independent research on the lives of Venetian women during the Renaissance. He currently is studying the poet Robert Bly in his spare time; "kind of diving into the male psyche and all that kind of stuff," he said. He reads and discusses the Wall Street Journal with fellow goalkeeper Ryan McIntosh, and offers advice on home electronics and cellphones and mortgage rates to teammates, who consider him the ultimate font of random information. The Ohio native cooks almost all his own meals, specializing in Southern food with the help of an autographed copy of "Good Grits: Southern Boy Cooks."
And then there's the yachting thing.
"I mean, sometimes he comes in here with boating attire, Velcro-strap shoes with some khaki pants and a polo shirt, like he's coming from the yacht club," midfielder Brian Carroll said.
"If he had the brim hat you could actually call him Gilligan," agreed goalkeepers coach Mark Simpson.
Perkins, who had never been on a boat before college, fell in love with the water and now socializes with friends on the waterfront nearly every weekend. He's pricing used 50- to 55-foot yachts, hoping to buy one within the next six months and live on it with his wife, Betsy, who is working toward an advanced pharmaceuticals degree at Auburn. In preparation for living on the water, he's currently tackling a 1,500-page book on watercraft navigation.
He had always applied a similar focus to soccer, filling his childhood bedroom with soccer posters and motivational sayings. When he transferred to Evansville for his senior season because of a coaching change at South Florida, he immediately became a team captain, asking coaches to stay with him after practice and pretty much moving into the weight room.
"We couldn't keep him out of there," then-coach Dave Golan said. "I mean, the guy's a machine."
Perkins was not chosen in the 2004 MLS draft and signed with United, where he began the same routine, pestering Eskandarian to take extra shots on him after practice.
"And I remember his first month or two on the team it was so easy for me to score on him, it was hilarious -- I almost felt bad," Eskandarian said. "And I'd be like, 'Dude, have you had enough?' and he was like, 'No, 10 more.' And we kept shooting, kept shooting every day after practice, and sooner or later a couple months went by and I'm like, 'Man it's not as easy to score on him anymore.' "
Because of injuries to United's other two goalkeepers that year, the 6-foot-2, 190-pound Perkins assumed the starting role while working part time at a sporting goods store. He performed well as a starter, although he eventually ceded the job back to Nick Rimando, who remained the first-string keeper last year. But Perkins had a strong preseason this spring and was pushing for the starting role even before Rimando was injured again.
Perkins was shaky in United's opener, after which he apologized to coaches and asked for another chance. Since then, he has had scoreless stretches of 338 and 247 minutes and has recorded a league-leading seven shutouts, tied for second in franchise history.
"His play has been absolutely rock solid," said Simpson, who said he thinks Perkins could be in the pool of U.S. players invited to future national team training camps. "He has earned his spot, he's kept his spot and right now it's tough to take him off the field."
All the while Perkins was pursuing his second career. His mother, Debbie, has been in the mortgage industry for more than 25 years, but she didn't encourage her sons to follow suit. Older brother Travis is a golfer on the Nationwide Tour, and Troy never had expressed an interest in mortgages before a friend arranged for his interview in December.
"He told me he had a job interview with a mortgage company, and I said, 'Oh Troy, you don't want to do that,' " Debbie Perkins said. "He called me back and said, 'I'm going to start working next week,' and I'm like, 'You've got to be kidding me!' "
In his interview, Perkins promised to work until 8 or 9 p.m. if necessary, but he's settled into a less draining routine. He arrives at RFK Stadium around 9 a.m. and leaves at 1:30 or 2, packing his lunch and heading to the office. He stays until 5:30 or 6, working slightly less in weeks when United plays on the road, which he notes on a large office calendar.
His co-workers describe Perkins as humble and serious and hardworking; one supervisor said he has to persuade Perkins to take short breaks to socialize. His office mates only gradually learned about Perkins's soccer career; when they found out, several asked what it was like to be a backup.
"And I'm going: 'You know what, I've been playing, guys. I've been starting,' " said Perkins, who didn't tell co-workers about the all-star game, saying it made him uncomfortable and that he doesn't like drawing attention to himself.
But he signs balls and jerseys for co-workers' children, was featured in the company newsletter last month and has became a popular target of workplace jokes. Friends put an image of Perkins allowing a goal on his computer's desktop, and they needled him this week for not playing during a friendly with Celtic FC.
Perkins said he would keep his part-time job even if he gets a raise from MLS and would like to pursue a full-time career in the mortgage industry eventually, and his supervisors said they're willing to wait.
"The kid's aggressive, he's driven, he's a smart kid and there's no sense of entitlement," said Craig Chapman, executive vice president for First National. "I didn't care about his soccer, because really that doesn't help me. It was about his attitude and his ability. He's a pretty gifted kid."