He didn’t tell the old friend that this autumn had been the first without Mo Better football games in more than 20 years. Chris had held practices through the spring and into the summer, but by August it was clear that the program didn’t have enough kids in any age group to field even a single team. The concerns about brain damage “killed the market,” he said. “Absolutely. That’s real.” So, Chris was pivoting the program to account for the shifting sands. He now called it Mo Better Leadership Academy. Rather than limit his reach to boys who played football, Chris envisioned an expansive community organization that taught leadership and life skills through a range of activities, including sports teams for both boys and girls and music classes. He had purple hats designed and stitched up with the new name, and he wore one on this night. This was more than just an idea. Chris had already been meeting with middle school principals about partnerships, though the details were still being worked out. He hoped to have Mo Better basketball and soccer teams within a year, maybe golf, too. He wasn’t sure about football. He hoped its days weren’t over, but he understood he had to adjust to stay in the mix. Without any games or practices on the calendar, his autumn had been dull. “I miss the action,” he said.
BEFORE THE SUMMER was up, as it was slowly dawning on the coaches that the Mo Better season might have to be canceled, Vick left the program on bitter terms. He and his mother, Miss Elsie, joined up with the Brooklyn Saints, which had been founded in 2009 by a group of former Mo Better coaches. One of those coaches was stepfather to Curtis Samuel, and the Carolina Panthers wide receiver now sponsored the program. Vick’s first season there, the program had only enough boys to form one team, in the Mitey Mite age group.
Vick felt hurt by Mo Better’s decline and was upset that his youngest son, D-Lo, wouldn’t play out his youth football career in purple and gold. Yet he hadn’t been surprised. The previous two seasons—D-Lo’s first two as a Mo Better Mitey Mite—were a debacle, with no playoff games and many forfeits across the age groups. Some weeks, the program had no money to pay the referee, leaving parents to string together the $45 before the first quarter could start. “It really got embarrassing,” Vick said. He laid some of the blame at Chris’s feet. “Making too many promises,” Vick said. But the politicians didn’t grant the funding and kids didn’t come out to the park. “I remember when Mo Better had the nicest banquet and the biggest trophies,” he said. After its final season, it had neither.
If Chris couldn’t resurrect the football team, the 2014 Pee Wees would go down as the last playoff team in Mo Better’s illustrious history. The program’s final moment of glory, in Vick’s mind, had been the banquet following that 2014 season. They had gathered in Brooklyn Borough Hall on a bitingly cold Friday evening in March 2015, a lofty and elegant scene in Vick’s memory, shimmering with tall gold trophies and celebrity appearances. Everything had been the way it was supposed to be.
THE MONTHS AFTER the Brick City loss were stressful for Oomz. His father’s arrest upstate brought the familiar blend of shock, sadness, frustration, and disappointment. He never got used to the fear that his father would be locked up again. For those watching from the outside, Big Oomz’s latest troubles seemed to follow a familiar path. He had come home to much fanfare and relief, only to soon collide with the cold realization that hits most formerly incarcerated people. To get some money into his pocket, he relied on low-paid, part-time, hard-labor jobs that came and went without consistency. Could anyone truly fault him for turning back to his old, more lucrative business dealings?
After all, even Coach Vick had thought about resuming his hustling career. If not for how much he loved coaching a football team of grade schoolers, Vick admitted, he probably would have. Like Big Oomz, Vick was scraping together part-time work, in construction and security, honest money that failed to bring financial stability but paid the bills. He was still living in his own apartment, furnishing it slowly and inexpensively. It was a home that gave him nearly as much pride as his Mitey Mites did. “Wherever’s there’s work, I’ll be there,” he said. He was as committed as ever to setting a good example for the boys who looked up to him, especially D-Lo. Vick had been stunned into a new urgency when his 24-year-old son, Donte, was sentenced to nine years in prison for his robbery conviction.
Big Oomz denied that he’d gotten back into the drug game. He said he was riding in the wrong car with the wrong person and had no idea about the heroin inside. The judge seemed to give him the benefit of the doubt. Big Oomz pleaded guilty to a minor drug possession charge and served 90 days in jail before returning home, where the status quo of part-time employment was waiting for him. “It’s still a transition,” his mother, Monique, said. “A lot of places don’t want to hire a felon.”
During those months between his father’s arrest and return, Oomz struggled in school. His mother and grandmother observed that the boy was falling into the same traps at Mott Hall as he had at PS 156: too close to home, too many friends, too many distractions. Before his seventh-grade year, his mother transferred him to a middle school in Park Slope, an affluent, mostly white, café-and-brunch neighborhood in western Brooklyn. It was the most diverse school he had ever attended. His grades improved in seventh and eighth grade, though Monique still thought the boy didn’t dedicate enough mental energy to school. She was encouraged that he at least maintained aspirations beyond professional sports. Instead of becoming a doctor, he now considered studying computer science and maybe pursuing a career in video-game design. He figured he’d change his mind again before college.
In the meantime, Oomz kept alive his most ambitious dreams. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to aim for the NFL or NBA. During basketball season, Oomz was practically obsessed with the sport, playing on the blacktops several times a week and watching every NBA game he could catch. It was a natural development. Within his circle of friends, as well as a fast-growing share of the American population, basketball was the most popular sport, far more talked and thought about than football. Though he still wasn’t tall, Oomz was talented enough to carry hoop dreams. His buddy posted on Facebook a video of Oomz crossing over an opponent so badly that the boy fell down, to the raucous cheers of all in the audience. Near the end of the 2017 NBA season, Oomz changed his Facebook profile photo to an image of him dribbling a basketball with the caption, “Just a Young nigga trying to make it out.”
He still played football. At the end of his eighth-grade year, the city’s education department assigned him to Samuel J. Tilden High School in East Flatbush, one of the three high schools nearest Betsy Head Park. But Oomz no longer lived in Brownsville. He stayed with Monique, who had moved two miles south to Canarsie. As summer vacation began, Oomz was having second thoughts about Tilden. He considered applying for a transfer. Erasmus Hall’s football coach had reached out. “Been asking me to come play for them,” Oomz said. The coach said he would be the JV team’s starting running back and middle linebacker and was expected to soon help their varsity compete for a city championship. The possibility was almost too sweet to imagine: Oomz, Isaiah, and Chaka standing together at midfield holding up the trophy.
Thoughts of this potential reunion excited Oomz, pulled his mind back to that glorious, near-perfect 2014 season. Only years later did he come to realize how the rigid routine of those months pushed him through the tumult at home after his father’s return, at school among his disobedient classmates, and in the streets that swallowed up Poppa.
Five months after that season ended, on that cold Friday night in March 2015, Oomz showed up late and unhappy to Mo Better’s annual banquet. His father’s case was pending. Uncertainty hovered over his family.
Dapper in a royal blue suit, Oomz slouched in the front row. All around him, boys sat, smiling and giggling, on cushy chairs under a big chandelier in the opulent main room of Brooklyn Borough Hall. In the row behind Oomz, Isaiah, in a black suit, looked around the room wide-eyed, at the portraits of white faces on the walls and the gold-plated moldings on the ceiling. A
few seats over, Hart, in a gray suit, gazed at the tall, shiny trophies on the table at the front. This year’s end-of-season banquet was an upgrade from the previous one. Chris organized a slate of speakers, including the borough president, a state senator, a state assemblywoman, a police captain, and several former players who’d gone on to impressive careers: a doctor, a principal, a professional football player, and an assistant coach on the New England Patriots. It was a sentimental evening. At one point, the lights dimmed and the former players marched down the center aisle holding candles, which they then handed—“passing the torch”—to current players. A few minutes later, players recited speeches they’d written about Black Lives Matter, domestic violence, and “being a man.”
At first, Oomz took it all in with a look of indifference, but within minutes his mood began to thaw. When the trophies were given out and his name was called for the Hitman Award as the team’s most brutal tackler, Oomz slowly pushed himself up and waddled to the podium, eyes on the ground but a slight smirk on his face. The boy held the big trophy with both hands. A smile grew. People were clapping. Coach Vick met Oomz in the aisle and embraced him. The coach whispered a few wise words, his purple suede suit jacket engulfing the boy.
Taking in the scene, an older man whose son had played for Mo Better years before said to the father next to him, “I recognize that name. Is that whose son I think it is?”
“They say he plays like him too,” the father replied.
“Oh! Boy must be a hell of a player, then.”
“You know it. Bet he ends up even better than his dad.”
The older man nodded his head, watched Oomz slide back into his seat, and turned back to the father.
“We should all be so lucky.”
Oomz during halftime of the first game of the season in September 2014.
Oomz in September 2014 practicing on the same field his father once practiced on during Mo Better’s glory years.
Isaiah reaching for a water bottle during halftime of the first game of the 2014 season.
Isaiah (jacket) and Oomz lead their team off the bus before a game in East Orange, NJ, in September 2014.
Coach Chris Legree speaking to the Junior Pee Wees before a game in East Orange, NJ, in September 2014.
The Mo Better boys kicking up dust doing up-downs during a September 2014 practice as Coach Gary looks on.
Chaka putting on his gloves as Dorian looks on before practice at Betsy Head in late September 2014.
Marquis and his father hoped that football could pave a road to private high school, which was too expensive for their family without a sizable financial aid package.
Hart listening to instruction from Coach Esau during halftime of the first game of the 2014 season.
Hart (center) and his Pee Wee teammates were nervous before their big game against East Orange in September 2014.
The Pee Wees and Junior Pee Wees board a school bus bound for East Orange, NJ, early on a Sunday morning in September 2014.
Donnie (black shirt) and other boys gathered around Oomz (with phone) after a victory in East Orange, NJ, in September 2014.
Coaches Esau (white shirt) and Andrell (NY hat) address the Pee Wees at the end of a Friday evening practice in late September 2014.
Esau and Andrell going over strategy before the Pee Wees’ big game against Brick City in late September 2014.
Isaiah (2) and the Pee Wee offense seek a game-winning score in the fourth quarter of a tie game against Brick City in late September 2014.
When the coin was tossed for the first game of the season at Franklin K. Lane High School in September 2014, the Pee Wees had 16 players on the team, the minimum required by league rules.
Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK WAS POSSIBLE THANKS TO THE SCORES OF kids, parents, and coaches who generously allowed me into their lives. I am forever indebted to them.
I have eternal gratitude, too, for my agent, David Patterson, a constant source of enthusiasm and foresight since the day we met, and my editor, Ben Adams, whose brilliant vision transformed this book into a story I wouldn’t have known how to write without him.
My editors at BuzzFeed, Tina Susman and Marisa Carroll, and their bosses, Shani Hilton and Ben Smith, have been supportive through this whole process, and taught me many of the tactics I used to report and write this. Tom Finkel gave me my first real job when he was editor of the Riverfront Times in Saint Louis. Later, as my editor at the Village Voice in New York City, he dug into this story with me, editing the article that marked the starting point of my reporting for this project.
I’m grateful to Keegan Hamilton, who read a late-stage draft of the manuscript quickly and on short notice, providing notes that proved essential; to Adam Serwer, Jack Feeney, Joe Eskenazi, Driadonna Roland, and John Tucker for reading early drafts and offering edits that shaped the book; and to Joel Anderson, Tracy Clayton, Nico Medina Mora, Tessa Stuart, Jesus Diaz, Camilo Smith, and Leah Faye Cooper for helping me work out ideas at the core of this book.
During these five years of reporting and writing, I have been guided by lessons passed down from editors, professors, and mentors: Dale Maharidge and Jess Bruder, who read the embarrassing work I was turning in at the beginning of journalism school, taught me how to write, and continue to provide guidance at every step; Stephen Fried, who is still the toughest editor I’ve ever had and a mentor generous with his time and knowledge; Sarah Fenske and Tom Walsh, who instilled an appreciation for the journalistic art of stirring shit up; Mark Schoofs, who showed me how tireless reporting can change the world; Steve Kandell, Brandon Reynolds, and Jack Buehrer, who always strove to identify and understand the bigger meaning behind a story.
I thank my roommate Alex Vessels for the comfortable environment we’ve lived in, and for our long conversations about our home borough. And for having listened to my drunken ramblings about this project more times than I could count, I thank Nick Philips, Alex Campbell, Katie Baker, Jessica Testa, David Noriega, Anna Roth, Ian Port, and Alan Scherstuhl.
I thank my family. This is a book about how circumstances at birth shape a life, and mine were privileged. I have been blessed with a support system of loved ones: Auntie Ging, Auntie Mae, Auntie Lyn, Auntie Alyssa, Auntie Donna, Uncle Marlon, Uncle Joey, Uncle Paul, and Uncle Chuck, who set examples of generosity, empathy, and decency; Uncle Bobby and Uncle Spanky, who taught me about responsibility and leadership; my cousins Jed, Roscoe, Mico, Mitch, Lauren, and Chris, who showed me how to dress, what music to listen to, and how to treat people.
I thank my father, Fahim Samaha, for stoking my curiosity about the world, sharing his joy for life, and teaching me the virtue of hard work.
Most of all, I thank my mother, Lucy Concepcion, who sacrificed more than I will ever know, raised me right, and always tells me she believes in me. I hope to live up to the wisdom, devotion, and love she has blessed me with.
Albert Samaha is a criminal justice reporter at BuzzFeed News. He has written for the Village Voice, San Francisco Weekly, and the Riverfront Times, and his work has appeared in the San Francisco Examiner, the New York Observer, and Pop-Up Magazine. His stories have won awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Education Writers Association, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, and others. He is a graduate of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and lives in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
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A note on research: Population data is from the US Census Bureau. New York City crime numbers are from the New York City Police Department’s regularly published statistics. Newark crime numbers are from the Newark Police Department’s regularly published statistics. School test score numbers are from the New York City Department of Education’s database. Criminal case details are from court documents. Additional information came from interviews with more than 300 people over the course of four and a half years of reporting.
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