by David Klass
Most of my teammates were already on the field, stretching or kicking balls back and forth in pairs and triangles. Usually Coach Collins is out there, too, in his faded blue sweatpants and tattered Rutgers University shirt. He always wears the same silver whistle around his neck, and when he sees me run up he raises the whistle to his lips and blows a shrill blast, and the team circles up around me to begin stretching.
On this afternoon, Coach Collins was late. He must have been held up at a faculty meeting or something. No problem—I could start the practice on my own. “Okay, bozos, circle up!” I shouted. And soon I was taking the team through warm-ups, from the first groin stretches to the final leg raisers. There were the usual bad jokes and stupid banter. “Hey, Zig,” Harlan called out to Norm Zigler, our flaky center forward, “did you step in something or is that just the way you smell?”
“You wish you smelled like me,” Zigler shot back.
And then other teammates joined in, and it became a crude free-for-all. “No, Zig, he’s right. You stink.”
“Breathe deep and enjoy, guys. This is the way a man smells.”
“You’re wilting the grass. I swear, dead fish smell better. Why don’t you try taking a shower every month or so?”
“Why don’t you get your girlfriend a new leash?”
“At least I have a girlfriend.”
“You don’t think I could get a girlfriend if I wanted?”
“I don’t even think your right hand would go on a date with you.”
It was funny and I enjoyed it, although I missed the Mouse. He was the funniest guy on the team by a hundred miles, and every now and then I wondered why he hadn’t come to school that day. Was he sick from the late night dunking? Afraid of being marked? I tried to put all such worries out of my mind and just enjoy the routine of soccer practice. I led them through push-ups and sit-ups at a rapid clip, and we were just finishing our leg raisers when Greg Maniac Murray shouted out, “Hey, Brickman, I hear the police called you in to Tobias’s office. You been robbing banks again?”
For a moment, everyone stopped stretching and stared at me. “No, they wanted to arrest all of you losers for impersonating a soccer team,” I told them, “but I talked them out of it.” There was laughter, and before anyone could ask me any more questions I shouted, “Last set of leg raisers, six inches, to the death!” Everyone knew what I meant—we would all begin at the same time and the last guy who could keep his heels six inches above the grass would win.
It wasn’t really a contest. I’m the only guy on the soccer team who wrestles, and years of wrestling practices have given me steel stomach muscles. I can do seventy-five sit-ups on an inclined board with a fifty-pound weight strapped to my chest. We lay there on our backs in the grass, with the bugs crawling over our faces and through our hair, our legs straight out and our heels six inches above the ground, and after about a minute the groans started. One by one, teammates gave up and lowered their feet.
After two minutes, there were only three of us left, Patrick Dunn, Maniac Murray, and me. The Maniac let out one of his trademark high-pitched bellows that had earned him his nickname—“YA-YA-YYYAAAHHH”—and dropped his feet in surrender. Then there were just two of us. Pat was a tough kid. We had played defense side by side for years, and I knew he would swim through boiling oil before giving up. With my heels six inches from the ground and my legs locked in place, I did a half sit-up and looked over at him. He was starting to cramp, and his face was turning red. “Don’t put yourself through this,” I advised him.
“I’m enjoying this,” Pat managed to spit back, through gritted teeth.
“Good, because I can go on forever.”
“Me too. Longer than forever.”
“You’re in agony. Give up.”
“Never.”
Pat’s cramps got worse, and he started beating on his stomach with his fists, to try to pound out the knots. But of course this never works—once you start to cramp, you’re a goner. Finally he had to lower his heels with a disgusted “Brickman, you’re not human.”
I kept my feet up for fifteen seconds more, to enjoy the burn that I was starting to feel from my ribs to my thighs, and to remind those bozos who their captain was. Then I rocked up and popped to my feet. “Two miles,” I announced. “Last four to finish take down the soccer nets after practice.”
Off we went in a thundering herd. No one wants to stick around after practice, so there was lots of incentive not to lose. I’d helped hang the nets up dozens of times, not to mention liming the field, and doing whatever else was necessary. But I made it a point never to lose the run and have to take the nets down. Taking them down was a kind of punishment, and therefore unfit for the captain of the team.
I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed that run. My stomach was still burning from the leg raisers, so I didn’t push it. I stayed in the middle of the front pack, chin up, elbows pumping, sucking air as I ran right into the teeth of the wind. We skirted the edge of the football practice field where the varsity team was out sweating and bleeding and pushing tackling sleighs and running plays as they prepared for their next game in what was one of their better seasons in recent memory. I saw Slag, looking like a cement truck with his shoulder pads on, ramming a tackling sleigh like he was trying to break it in half. And I heard Mr. Bowerman, the ferocious and truly disgusting head football coach, shouting at one of the substitute quarterbacks, “YOU CALL THAT A SPIRAL? I’VE PULLED BETTER-LOOKING THINGS OUT OF MY NOSE!”
As the distance and the effort of fighting the wind began taking their toll on the leaders, I moved up to the front of the pack. We passed the tennis courts, which were empty. No one could play with such gusts of wind—a lobbed tennis ball might take flight and never come back to earth.
Then we were in the home stretch, running along the muddy bank, where the footing was slippery and gusts of wind scooped up creek water and doused us with unexpected cold showers. I loved it! I loved the sudden, numbing spritzes of icy creek water, and the dull SQUISH-THUMP, SQUISH-THUMP of footsteps on the muddy earth, and I completely lost myself in the mindless rhythm of a two-mile race as all around me my teammates gasped and strained to keep the pace. It was only when I turned toward the soccer field, for the final hundred-yard sprint, that I saw the crowd.
Coach Collins was there, standing next to Athletic Director Hart, who was not a big soccer fan and rarely if ever attended one of our games. I couldn’t believe he had come out to a mere practice. Mrs. Simmons, our head guidance counselor, was talking to him. She was a nice lady, but not known as a giant sports fan. A tall blond man in a leather jacket and dark glasses, who I had never seen before, stood apart from the rest of them and turned to one side, silhouetting himself against the late afternoon sun. And standing in the middle of the field as if he owned it, wearing a Lawndale Braves soccer uniform, was the Phenom.
There were fifty yards to go. Hector Martinez was in the lead, running hard, trying to finish first. Normally, I would have let him. I had won the leg raiser contest, and it’s not such a good idea to win at everything. But when I saw the crowd, I picked up the pace.
I spotted fans in our bleachers. This had never happened before at any soccer practice in all of recorded history. But Kris was sitting up there, and next to her was Jewel Healy—easily the most popular girl in our entire school if popularity is measured by the number of guys who wanted to go out with her, and the number of girls who wanted to be her. It didn’t make sense for Jewel to be sitting there with the wind blowing her perfect blond hair—what was she doing at a soccer practice? Even football practices were beneath her. Even football games were beneath her. And what was she doing hanging out with Kris, and vice versa?
When there were thirty yards to go, I pulled even with Hector. He was running a great race for a sophomore, but I was a senior and the team captain, and jogging in the evening for years had given me an extra gas tank. Step by step I moved ahead of him to finish first by a good five yards. Hector sank to the ground, ga
sping for air, but I stayed up, hands on my hips, looking right into the face of the Phenom.
He didn’t have to say anything. We both understood the situation. That very morning I had told him no way in hell he was joining our team. And now he was on my field, standing next to my coach, wearing my team’s soccer shirt.
I also figured out pretty quick who the tall guy in the leather jacket was, now that I was close enough to get a good look at him. Even though he was wearing reflecting sunglasses, I could see the family resemblance. The Phenom had brought his father, who looked like a big and arrogant jerk in his own right.
“Okay, guys, circle up,” Coach Collins called out with a big smile as the rest of my teammates ran up. “Over here. Come quickly. I have great news. Outstanding news!” I had never seen Coach Collins in this kind of mood before. He’s a pretty low-key, even-tempered guy. He has sat patiently through a lot of soccer debacles that would have given other coaches white hair and high blood pressure. But now Coach Collins was grinning as if he had just discovered a gold mine in the middle of our soccer field. “Guys, we have a new teammate. Some of you may have met him already. This is Antonio Silva.”
He said it like he expected applause, or maybe a thunderclap. Instead, there was an awkward little silence. My teammates were busy trying to figure out our coach’s almost drunkenly happy mood, and they were also evaluating the presence of the guidance counselor and the athletic director at a soccer practice, to say nothing of the most popular girl in the school, or the blond man in the leather jacket who seemed to be posing for an unseen camera, as if he was starring in a movie that the rest of us didn’t know was being shot.
I broke the silence. “Coach, he can’t play with us.”
The Phenom looked back at me. Coach Collins blinked and sounded like he might choke. “What? Why not?”
“League rules. Transfers aren’t allowed in mid-season.”
Athletic Director Hart wasted no time in correcting me. “Transfers aren’t allowed in mid-season from one school in America to another,” he agreed. “But Antonio has never been registered in an American school, so he’s like a new student. I checked with the league office, and there’s no problem.”
“There you go!” Coach Collins said joyfully. “No problem! Bingo! Now, why don’t we welcome our new teammate by running some drills. We’ll go half field, offense against defense. Antonio, I hear you’re a goal scorer, so why don’t you start the drill at center forward. Norm, since the Mouse is out today, why don’t you slide over to right wing.”
In less than thirty seconds I was at my sweeper position, with Pat in front of me, Harlan on one side, and Hector on the other. It was just a practice drill, but at the same time it was a hell of a lot more than practice, at least for me. “They don’t score,” I growled to my defense. “No matter what we need to do, they don’t score.”
And they didn’t. Not the first time we ran the drill, when the Phenom passed the ball to Zigzag Zigler at right wing, who zigged and zagged to the sideline and then gave the ball away like a Christmas present to Harlan James.
And not the second time, when the Phenom passed the ball to “Canoe Feet” Cavanaugh at left wing. Now, you don’t get a nickname like Canoe Feet by being graceful. Sure enough, Cavanaugh couldn’t make up his mind whether to try to dribble or to pass it back to the Phenom, so he ended up stopping short and tripping over his own remarkably large feet, and then falling flat on his face on the soccer ball, his mouth wide open, as if he planned to swallow the ball whole.
The Phenom watched this with a look of disbelief. I don’t think he had ever seen this particular move on a soccer field before. I’m not sure in the whole proud soccer history of Brazil it had ever even been attempted.
“Okay, let’s run it again,” Coach Collins shouted, a little embarrassed that he was being exposed as the coach of a team of dorks. “Antonio, this time hold the ball if you need to.” What Coach was really saying was that Antonio should forget about passing and try to dribble through our defense on his own. Coach Collins blew his whistle.
And that was when I learned something about life. It’s not a very nice lesson to have to swallow, but it’s a true one. Life can be just plain unfair. Desire can count for nothing. Training and conditioning can count for even less. And if you don’t think what I’m saying is true, you’ve never gone up against a player the soccer gods have smiled on.
It happened like this. Antonio veered left, and Hector Martinez came out to tackle him. The Phenom head-faked left and then darted right, and in an instant he was by Hector and sprinting for the middle. This Phenom could move! No way Hector could catch him from behind.
Pat moved up to stop the dribble, and I knew Pat would at least take a piece out of the Phenom. The tough Irish defender went for a sliding tackle that was designed to get the ball and a little leg, too, but Antonio flipped the ball expertly into the air with his toe, and jumped right over the sliding Pat, like a hurdler. He came down light as a feather with the ball at his feet and Pat flat on his back behind him.
Antonio could have gone for the goal then, and I was ready for him. But instead he danced sideways, the ball sticking to his feet like it was glued to the toes of his soccer shoes. Harlan came roaring in from the left side, and he meant business. He was fast on his feet, a terrific athlete, and a very experienced defender. But just when it seemed that he had gotten directly in front of the Phenom, Antonio faked left, then right, then left again, in three lightning jukes. Harlan was fooled by the first fake, and confused by the second one, and so flummoxed by the third that his body seemed to get pulled in three different directions at once and he ended up falling on his butt, contorted like a Gumby toy, one leg sprawled awkwardly behind him, one sockless foot twisted up in front of him, literally faked out of his shoe.
Then the Phenom turned toward the goal, and headed right at me. Behind me, I could hear Charley the Fish hitting the panic button. “Stop him, Joe. Get on him. Joe, don’t wait!” It would be nice to play with a brave, courageous goalie behind me, but instead I had Charley the Fish, one of the biggest cowards ever to stand in front of a net. “HE’S GETTING TOO CLOSE, JOE! STOOOPPP HHIIIIMMMMM!”
Most strikers need to glance down at the ball as they dribble and have a tough time fixing on the defender coming out to stop them. The Phenom didn’t watch the ball. He treated it as a part of his body, a third foot that the soccer gods had grafted on. So he watched me as I came out to stop him, and I watched him. Just by the way he ran, I knew I couldn’t risk playing the ball. He was too quick, and he had too many moves. I had to play his body, and if necessary bring him down.
Then he was in front of me, about twenty-five yards from the goal. He stopped on a dime, the ball between his feet, so that he could go either way. I was in a classic defender’s position right in front of him, knees bent, arms out wide for balance, ready to anticipate him to either side, or to dive in and take him down if he gave me the chance. He didn’t—he immediately went right. Or at least his whole center of gravity shifted right, so that I stepped wide with my left foot to stop him. But it was only a fake—a faster, better fake than I had ever seen before. He reversed direction in the blink of an eye and went left, and I stuck my right foot out to cut that direction off, too. And in the frozen heartbeat when I had my legs splayed out to either side, he tapped the ball right between them in a move called a nutmeg, which is about the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to a defender.
The ball rolled between my legs. The Phenom flashed back right, and around me, and I dove at him with everything I had, ready to mash him to the grass, even if I had to grab him and throw him down with a wrestling move. But I was a microsecond late, his first step was so fast that I barely made any contact—not nearly enough to knock him off his feet—so I went sprawling face first, and tasted grass and turf, while the Phenom ran to the ball he had tapped between my legs, and faced Charley the Fish one-on-one.
Antonio shot from fifteen yards out, his right foot st
riking the ball with a startling ka-POW The ball zoomed like a targeted missile into the right upper corner of the goal, ripped the netting from its nail on the back of the goal, and continued for another thirty yards before it finally rolled to a stop.
I got up slowly, first on my elbows, and then on my knees, not quite believing what had happened, and also not quite believing what I was hearing. It was applause. Coach Collins was clapping on the sideline, shouting to no one in particular, “Did you see that! Man, did you see that!” And Mr. Hart and Mrs. Simmons were also clapping. All around me, my own teammates were clapping! Even Pat and Harlan and Hector—my humiliated fellow defensemen—were clapping and patting Antonio on the back! And from the high bleacher where they were sitting, Kris and Jewel were on their feet, clapping, and I heard Kris yell out, “Way to go, Antonio!”
The rest of soccer practice was a miserable blur. It seemed to flash by with me standing to one side, watching the Phenom show off. He could dribble the ball with just his right foot. With just his left foot. With just his forehead. He could make Zigler and Cavanaugh and Maniac Murray actually look half-decent by giving them great passes, and by getting so open that even they could pass the ball back to him. He could score at will.
Finally, mercifully, it was over. We circled up in midfield. “Thank you for coming out today,” Coach Collins said to Antonio. “I don’t know what to say, except that you’ve shown us how this game should be played. We hope you’ll stay with our team. Everybody, let’s give Antonio a big hand.” And they gave him one more big hand. And then practice was over, and the team jogged off toward the locker room.