by Mike Lupica
When he did call Anna she was on her way to a sleepover at her friend Caroline’s, in the car with Caroline and her mom, saying she couldn’t really talk right now.
But said, “What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
“You called about nothing?”
“Like I haven’t done that before?”
“Good point.”
“I can call you tomorrow, if you want.”
Anna said, “Listen, maybe I’ll call you later.”
“Try not to sound so excited about it,” he joked.
He had been trying to be nice, as hard as he could. There hadn’t been any blowups since the big one about Jack Sutton and ego and her being a know-it-all. They’d managed to get through another Charlie Show. And they were having lunches together.
But things still weren’t great, weren’t the way they were supposed to be between them. And Charlie wanted them to be the way they used to be. Badly.
“I’ll keep that advice in mind.”
“I’ll be up watching college football if you want to call,” he said.
“I know.”
“Your gramps came to my game today.”
“Know that, too.”
“Call me later.”
“Maybe.”
But sounding like for the first time in a while, she wanted things to be un-different between them herself.
His mom was at the grocery store when he walked in the house, having left a note on the counter. When she got home he told her about Mr. Warren and cancer, first thing, and they were still talking about it at dinner.
His mom telling him that one of her bosses at Sony, old but not as old as Mr. Warren, had been living with non-Hodgkin’s for a long time and showed every sign of going right on living with it.
“Sometimes,” she said, “diseases that sound like the worst thing in the world, because they involve cancer, move more slowly inside old people than the old people themselves move.”
“For real?”
“For real. I wouldn’t lie to you any more than he would.”
“I still can’t believe he came to the game.”
“Maybe,” his mom said, “Joe Warren needs somebody like you in his life as much as you need somebody like him.”
Then he told her something he never had, about that day in Mr. Warren’s garden when he’d told the old man about his dad and how he’d left and was never coming back; how good Mr. Warren had it with Matt even when things weren’t so great.
“You said that?”
“I did,” Charlie said, and told her that was the day Mr. Warren had said that he was more than just a football friend.
“Sounds like he was right.”
He went into the den to watch the Alabama-Arkansas game, switching back and forth between that and Ohio State-Wisconsin. It wasn’t the pros, but it was football, and it was on. There was a quarterback from Wisconsin, a junior, flying under the radar so far this season, whom Charlie thought might be able to help the Bulldogs in a couple of years.
If Mr. Warren was still listening to him about football players in a couple of years.
If Mr. Warren was still around.
Charlie thinking about that now that he was alone watching football, even if Mr. Warren acted like his illness was no biggie, making his form of cancer sound like the flu. Maybe that’s what he’d really been getting at today, talking about enjoying things the way they were, enjoying what you had and not worrying about what you didn’t.
One time today, when they were walking around the field, Joe Warren had said, “If the football season you were watching is the only one you were ever going to have, how much would each of the games be worth?”
If you looked at things that way, maybe the season the Bulldogs were having wasn’t so terrible after all.
Anna called at halftime of the Alabama-Arkansas game. She probably knew it was halftime, being Anna, and had found a way to watch football even at Caroline’s house with a bunch of other girls.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he said. “Where’s the rest of the sleepover squad?”
“Attempting to make brownies. I am staying out of it.”
Charlie heard her take the phone away and say, “Talking to Charlie, be there in a minute.” Then: “Shut up!”
“What’s happening?”
“Lots of Instagramming and Facebooking with the girls. Lot of video chatting.”
“Maybe I should call you tomorrow.”
“Why were you calling me before?”
“To tell you that you were right,” he said. “And that I’m sorry.”
“You’ll have to be more specific. If you called me every time I was right about something, you’d need more minutes on your phone plan.”
“You were right that I’d started getting too full of myself,” Charlie said.
“That’s not why I was mad and you know it,” she said. “I was mad because you didn’t tell me about Jack Sutton before Gramps told you not to tell me.”
“I was wrong about that, too.”
“Did Gramps tell you to call me?”
“He did,” Charlie said. “But I was going to anyway.”
“So this is all it’s supposed to take, one phone call, after all the mean stuff you said to me?”
“I was a jerk that day,” he said. “Hundred percent.”
“You don’t have to tell me, I was there, remember?”
“I did say I was sorry.”
She paused and said, “My dad likes to say that sorry doesn’t fix the lamp.”
There was another pause and then she said, “Listen, I gotta go eat the stupid brownies now, call me tomorrow.”
“Maybe we can hang around or something?”
“I’ll check my schedule.”
He was starting to think of a clever comeback to that when he realized that she’d already ended the call. But then Charlie knew the deal by now.
She even had to win phone calls.
Thirty-Three
THE NEXT SUNDAY THE BULLDOGS played the Rams in St. Louis. They played as if the past few weeks hadn’t happened, stopping their losing streak, played as if the whole stretch of bad football had been some kind of bad dream.
Tom threw for one touchdown, ran for another, shocking everybody in the dome in St. Louis with the run, a perfect ball fake on third-and-goal from the five-yard line, fooling even his own teammates with a naked bootleg. He practically walked into the end zone for the score that made it 21–17 at the time for the Bulldogs, in a game they’d eventually win 31–20.
Big division win, as big as the loss to the Rams had been when Jack got flagged for fifteen yards at the end. But what made the win huge for Charlie was the way the team had earned it, the way the defense had gotten stops when it had to and the way the offense mixed passing and running on the last drive.
It was the kind of win that inspired hope. The kind of hope Mr. Warren was always talking about, as if hope were really the best medicine in the world for him.
Anna had agreed to come over to Charlie’s house and watch the game, still not officially accepting his apology, just saying she was willing to watch the game with him and for him not to read too much into it. Once she was there, she got lost in the action the way she always did. And when the Bulldogs’ last field goal put them up by eleven, she landed with such a crash jumping off his bed, Charlie’s mom yelled up and asked which lamp they’d broken.
“All good, Mom,” Charlie called back.
“I know the drill,” she said. “Bulldogs score again.”
Jack Sutton played most of the second half, was involved in a bunch of tackles, knocked down a pass on a blitz, and even got his first sack since his season debut against the Bengals. It came on third down, during the Rams’ last drive of the game when they st
ill had a shot at scoring a touchdown and tying the game at twenty-eight with a two-point conversion.
But it was more than his play. Charlie could see him, when the camera was on him, talking it up in the defensive huddle, talking it up with the defensive linemen when they were sitting on the bench. Trying to be a leader. Maybe trying to get their trust back for the big games to come.
“Forgot what it felt like for us to win a game,” Charlie said when Tom Pinkett took a knee and ran out the last of the clock.
Before Anna could answer, her phone buzzed. She looked to see who it was, showed Charlie that her phone said “Gramps.”
“Did I watch?” she said into her phone. “No, Gramps, I decided to go back and watch the whole season of The Voice so far. Of course I watched!”
She made a face and said, “Yes, I watched with Charlie.” Looked at Charlie as she said, “Decided to throw him a bone.”
Then she was handing Charlie the phone and he heard Joe Warren saying, “What did I tell you, Charlie boy? New season, starting right now. Brand-new season.”
Charlie could hear a lot of excited chatter in the background.
“Who was it,” Charlie said, “that told me all it takes is one game to change everything?”
“Some old fart,” Joe Warren said. Then, “See you at practice this week?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Give Anna a hug for me?”
“No, sir.”
“She forgive you yet?”
“Very nice to talk to you, too, sir,” Charlie said. They both laughed, and then Joe Warren told him to tell Anna he’d call her tomorrow; he was on his way down to the locker room.
• • •
The next week the Bulldogs played the Steelers at Bulldogs Stadium. The Bulldogs with a chance to get to 5–6 with five games to play, putting them a couple games out of first in a weak NFC West, trailing the 49ers and Seahawks, both tied for first place.
Charlie was back in Joe Warren’s suite for that one, sitting next to the old man with the score tied at twenty, four minutes left, Bulldogs’ ball.
Jack Sutton had intercepted a ball in the flat early in the game, stepping in front of the Steelers’ tight end and tipping the ball to himself, grabbing it out of the air, running thirty yards to the end zone.
Like he was back running down Alvarado Street.
But he wasn’t the story of this game over the last four minutes, this was just the most balanced offense the Bulldogs had shown in a while, Tom mixing short passes with runs, the Bulldogs actually running the ball more than they had in weeks, Silas Burrell doing the heavy lifting, on his way to only his second hundred-yard rushing game of the season. He ended up scoring the winning touchdown, carrying three Steelers’ tacklers into the end zone.
After the touchdown, Charlie walked outside and looked around at Bulldogs Stadium going crazy, actually feeling the place shake, wondering if the players on the field could feel the ground shaking.
He had never seen the place so happy, never felt so connected to the rest of the fans, knowing that this was the way sports was supposed to make you feel. All in a place that had sometimes seemed not just empty of fans at this point in other seasons, but empty of life and fun.
Charlie looked at it all and heard it all and thought:
This is why Mr. Warren wanted to bring football back to his hometown.
Thirty-Four
AS NOVEMBER TURNED INTO DECEMBER, all of a sudden things had gotten a lot better in Charlie’s world.
The Bulldogs were winning some games and Charlie’s other team, the Culver City Cardinals, wouldn’t stop winning, still solidly in first place, on their way to the league’s championship game—and a rematch with Palos Verdes—if both teams held their places at number one and number two.
And things were mostly back to being the way they used to be with Anna.
The Cardinals’ season would end first, one more regular season game against Pacific Palisades, and then the championship game the week after that.
At dinner one night Charlie’s mom said, “It really is amazing that the Bulldogs might not have had anything close to the season they’re having if it hadn’t been for you.”
“It’s more complicated than that, Mom. Things are never that simple in sports.”
“As far as I can tell, Tom Pinkett and Jack Sutton didn’t bring themselves to Los Angeles.”
“You know who really deserves a ton of credit?” Charlie said.
“Who?”
“Anna.”
“Interesting theory. Not that I’m sure I understand it.”
“Think about it, because Anna made me think about it when we were fighting,” Charlie said. “She’s the one who basically put me next to Mr. Warren. And if I’m not next to Mr. Warren, it doesn’t matter whether I think Tom Pinkett can still play or not. She’s the one who gave me the chance. She’s the one who convinced me to do the podcast and to believe in myself. You’ve got to give her props for Tom and Jack Sutton, too.”
His mom got out of her chair then, came around the table, hugged him from behind, gave him a quick kiss on top of his head, went and sat back down.
“What was that for?”
“That,” she said, “was for being you.”
• • •
The Saturday after the Bulldogs won 28–17 in Arizona with three more touchdown passes for Tom Pinkett, his total for the season putting him fourth in the league now, the Culver City Cardinals played for the championship of their league.
Rematch with Palos Verdes. Memorial Field. One vs. two. All that.
Let’s go.
Anna was there with Charlie’s mom, Joe Warren telling Charlie the night before that he was coming, too, wouldn’t miss it, might be a little late because he had a couple of stops he had to make first, but to look for him on the Cardinals’ side of the field.
“I want to hang with the winners,” Joe Warren said on the phone. “Look at us, Charlie boy, both coming up winners right now, like nothing can stop either one of us.”
About five minutes before the kickoff, Steve Fallon came over to Charlie and shook his hand.
“You were right about Jack Sutton,” Kevin’s dad, the big radio host, said. “I was wrong.”
Charlie grinned and shook his head. “What do you expect from the media?”
“You know,” Steve Fallon said, “I’ve been thinking, maybe we could do something else with you on my show besides just having you make fantasy picks.”
“You’ll have to talk to my agent.” Charlie pointed to the bleachers.
“Your mom?” Steve Fallon said.
“Anna.”
Coach Dayley came over then and said to Charlie, “You ready?”
“To play or coach?”
“How about both? How about we get one of those moments today where you know what they’re going to call and then know exactly what to do about it?”
“Anything else?” Charlie said.
“No,” Coach said, “that ought to do it.”
Both teams lined up for the kickoff now, the Cardinals getting the ball, Charlie on the sideline. He turned and looked into the stands again, saw where his mom and Anna were sitting. Still no sign of Joe Warren. Maybe he’d gotten tied up at one of the stops he said he had to make.
And in that moment, Charlie Gaines knew something, not just in his football brain but in his heart:
He was even more excited to be here than he’d been in Bulldogs Stadium, to know he was going to be something more than a spectator. To be a part of this team, part of the day, playing in a Big Game like this.
He had come into the season without any expectations for himself, thinking of himself as a total scrub, maybe thinking of himself that way so he wouldn’t be disappointed when he didn’t really contribute the way his teammates did.
Bu
t things were different now, Charlie actually surprised at how fired up he was, how anxious he was to get out there, how the stakes hadn’t just been raised for the Culver City Cardinals because of the way they’d played all season, but had been raised for Charlie himself.
Charlie the football player.
The second game between the two teams turned out to be even better than the first, both Jarrod and Palos Verdes’ Graham Yost throwing touchdown passes in the first half, Kevin returning a punt for a touchdown, the game tied at the half, the Cardinals eventually taking a 20–19 lead into the fourth quarter.
Charlie had played the entire second quarter, just because he was doing a good job of bringing it on this day. On the Vikings’ last series of the half, he’d noticed as Graham moved his fullback a little to the right of his normal setup spot, remembering they’d run the screen when Graham had moved the kid earlier. Charlie nearly got to Graham right before he released the ball, batting down the pass, just missing a sack.
But as well as he’d played, he was back next to Coach for most of the third quarter, even as Coach told him when the teams were switching sides at the end of the quarter that he was going to get him back out there.
“Cool,” Charlie said, wanting to get back out there, wanting to be a player today and not just an assistant coach.
“But for now,” Coach Dayley said, “keep those eyes of yours open for me.”
“Always.”
Every chance he got, though, he swiveled his head around and put those eyes on the bleachers, looking for Joe Warren.
Still not there.
Charlie wanting him to be here, more than he ever thought he would. Wishing that the old man had seen him knock down that pass and nearly get that sack. Wanting Mr. Warren to see something more than Charlie’s football brain on display today.
Wanting him to cheer for the guy he called Charlie boy the way the dads in the stands cheered for their own boys.
With eight minutes to go in the game, Graham Yost eluded a big rush and threw a touchdown pass to his tight end. The Vikings missed on the conversion, but they now led 25–20.
Charlie watching it happen, standing next to his coach.
Coach Dayley, talking to himself more than Charlie, said, “If we really are the best team in the league, we’ll be that team now.”