The Keeper

by Tim Howard

  I had some strong defensive plays, including one critical block during the final minutes. And it’s true we won the championship that year.

  I’m telling you, though: Jay was breathtaking. I was accustomed to being the strongest athlete around. But Jay was a perfect blend of agility, grace, and power. He had explosive ability on both ends of the court. He was simply the best I’d ever seen.

  That feeling I had playing against him was one I wouldn’t have again for six years. That next time, I’d be standing on a field in Lisbon, watching a teenager named Cristiano Ronaldo.

  I signed with the New Jersey Imperials, and I started playing games three months before I graduated from high school.

  I was 18 years old. I had a Superman tattoo, and someone was paying me to play a sport I loved.

  My senior quote, in the yearbook that would come out after I’d already started playing professionally, was based on a lyric from Public Enemy: It will take a nation of millions to hold me back.

  You remember everything I taught you about taking your leadership seriously?” Mulch asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “It won’t be fun and games anymore. Now that you’re a pro, you’ll be responsible for other people’s livelihood,” he said.

  He narrowed his eyes. “You’d damn well better not forget what I’ve taught you.”

  LIKE NOWHERE ELSE

  I made $250 a week playing for the Imperials—the equivalent of a $13,000-a-year salary—and I felt flush. We trained at the Fairleigh Dickinson University campus, in Teaneck, nearly an hour’s drive along the New Jersey Turnpike. I got an $800 1984 Nissan Sentra—a stick shift, spots of rust above the exhaust. To this day, that little Sentra is still my favorite of all the cars I’ve ever had. That funny little box on wheels gave me freedom.

  The Imperials had some local legends, college stars like Rutgers University’s Dave Masur. But we also had players with day jobs, who worked long hours as plumbers and pipefitters in the Bronx and Long Island City, then commuted to New Jersey to train with us. Many were in their thirties with family obligations and bills to pay. These guys seemed almost prehistoric to me, a carefree 18-year-old.

  The Fairleigh Dickinson campus flanks the Hackensack River. Each day, we arrived for practice to find the field covered with Canadian geese. We had to start doing ball drills to shoo the birds away. However, they never failed to leave reminders of their presence on the grass.

  Our locker room was comparable to the one at my high school, and our “uniforms” were basic, 1950s-style cotton gray T-shirts. There was no money for airfare, so we rode a bus up and down the East Coast, from Vermont to Myrtle Beach. After each game, we’d load the two front seats with refreshments—pizza boxes stacked in one, beer in the other—and dig in. The Irish players led us in drinking tunes and the rest of us sang along.

  Occasionally, the league pulled some publicity stunt to draw larger crowds. At my first away game, against the Myrtle Beach SeaDawgs, they fielded a guest player, Laura Davies, the English professional golfer. It was after the second round of an LPGA event in Myrtle Beach. To be eligible to play in the game, she’d signed a four-year contract with the SeaDawgs, worth $1. The SeaDawgs offered $500 to any player who assisted on a Laura Davies goal. The stunt worked; the game attracted over 2,220 fans—far more than our usual audience of family members and friends. And I’ve got to hand it to Laura Davies: she had some nice touches on the ball.

  We were a ragtag team in an unglamorous league. But playing for the Imperials afforded me the comfort of knowing that I could make mistakes—even some of the same stupid ones I made in rec league—and there would never be more than a couple hundred people to witness them.

  One time, we scored a great goal. I ran to midfield to congratulate my teammates, and while I stood there, the other team executed a quick kickoff and launched the ball into my empty net.

  Thank goodness that game wasn’t on television . . . and that it happened in the days before YouTube.

  I made enough of an impression as the Imperials’ goalie to be called up to the big leagues; I joined the MetroStars for their 1998 season as a backup to Tony Meola.

  When the MLS was formed, everyone expected the MetroStars to dominate. After all, they had Tab Ramos, the creative linchpin of the U.S. team in the 1994 World Cup. Tab had just returned to the States from playing in Spain. There he’d earned the kind of money the rest of us could only dream about. The Metros had signed other big names, too, including the great (albeit aging for a soccer player—he was 34 years old now) Roberto Donadoni.

  That year, they also acquired Alexi Lalas. Famous for his mountain-man look, featuring a wild mop of fiery red hair and a matching beard worthy of ZZ Top, Lalas had been the first American ever to play in the venerated Italian Serie A and he had emerged as one of the more colorful personalities at the 1994 World Cup.

  But somehow, bringing together all those marquee players didn’t stop the MetroStars from losing in every way imaginable. The tone was set in the team’s home opener before a boisterous crowd of 46,000 that watched, slack-jawed, as an Italian defender named Nicola Caricola scored the only goal of the game in the 89th minute. Unfortunately his shot went into his own net.

  Now, almost two decades later, people still talk about the “Caricola Curse”—as of this writing, the team (now the New York Red Bulls) has still never won an MLS Cup.

  Whatever their struggles, I was thrilled to be playing soccer for a living. My salary had jumped when I moved to the MetroStars—I earned the minimum salary, $24,000 a year. It might not be enough to move out of my mom’s apartment, but it felt like real wages: the income of a grown-up.

  The team was a hodgepodge of alpha males. First of all, there was Tab, a guy who could instantly cool whatever room he might enter. Guys might be horsing around, loosening up with a game of “soccer tennis”—they’d tape a line down the center of the locker room, knocking the soccer ball back and forth with their heads. But when Tab walked in, or decided things were too relaxed, he’d cut that game short with one word: enough.

  All of us obeyed.

  Then there was Alexi Lalas. Alexi was like the anti-Tab, an extrovert who liked cranking heavy metal in the shower. Alexi would turn on Ratt or Guns N’ Roses, blasting it loudly, singing along from behind the shower curtain. Tab would walk over and snap off the radio without speaking. Then Alexi would step out of the shower dripping wet. He’d turn it up louder, and Tab’s face would burn red.

  And then there was Tony Meola. Man, I was terrified of Tony. He was a hulking presence, with shirt-stretching biceps and a chest as broad as a Hyundai. After the 1994 World Cup, he’d tried out for the New York Jets, nearly nabbing a spot as a placekicker. And his personality was equally big and brash—he was unafraid to let everyone know that he was the best. Tony could do anything; briefly, he’d even played the lead role in the Off-Broadway hit show Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding.

  And when Tony was ticked off—which was often—he could make guys cower.

  Keepers train together, one guy standing in goal while the others fire shots at him. When Tony sent balls toward me, they either flew past my head or skidded past me on the ground. I dove all over the box in a futile attempt to stop them. Tony rolled his eyes.

  And when I kicked balls at him, Tony would grow exasperated.

  “What the hell is that?” he shouted, flinging up his massive arms as another of my shots ballooned over the net. “That ball sucked.”

  Or worse, he might remind me that I shouldn’t be there, sneering, “This isn’t high school, you know.”

  Once, he turned to Mulch in frustration, throwing a hand in my direction. “I’ve gotta train with this guy? No wonder my performance is dropping off.”

  Later that practice, Mulch said quietly to me, “Just do what you do, Timmy. You keep your head. Be a good teammate. Be yourself. He’ll come around.”

  Maybe, I thought. But I’m not so sure.

  I tried to be friendly.

 
; “Good luck, Tony,” I might say before a game.

  “Have a good game,” I’d offer.

  If he responded at all, it was always a quick thanks muttered in a low voice. More often than not, though, I got no response at all. Not a word, not a glance, not a nod. Just Tony, slapping on his gloves and walking away as if I hadn’t said a thing.

  A good attacking player will gladly hit a hundred shots in a row at you if you let them. So Tab Ramos and I stayed on the field as everyone else headed to the locker room. At first, many of his balls whizzed past my head.

  After a while, I got better at stopping his shots.

  Then we did it some more, and I began to save the majority of them.

  I hyperfocused, like I did when I was a kid. I measured myself against Tony, and I saw the gap between us closing.

  I marked off my progress. I dove. I reached, I stretched. Whether I saved it or watched it billow the net, I got up and walked back to my line, ready to do the whole thing again.

  Keepers can shine when their team is losing . . . and the MetroStars gave Tony plenty of opportunities to excel.

  In August, though, Tony argued a little too vehemently with a referee late in a match against the Miami Fusion. He was fined $1,500 for “major misconduct” and slapped with a one-game suspension. Until then, he had played every minute of the season’s previous 24 games. Now he’d be missing the home match in Giants Stadium against the Colorado Rapids. The MetroStars would have to rely on the number two goalkeeper to save the day.

  I was that guy.

  When I get nervous or excited, my tics go wild. In the moments leading up to the game, I probably cleared my throat about five hundred times.

  Then, in the locker room, on my stool, was a handwritten note:

  YOU’RE GOING TO DO GREAT TODAY. TONY

  There’s pretty much a single moment I remember from that game. It was the 63rd minute, and the MetroStars were ahead when Jamaican striker Wolde Harris, one of the top MLS scorers back then, came racing toward me. He was yards from the goal when he fired a hard shot a few feet to my right. It’s almost impossible for a striker to miss from that close in, but Tony had been launching rockets at me for five months. My reflexes were sharp. I reached out my right hand and stopped that thing, dead.

  All these years later, that was the one. That was the singular moment: my hand touching the ball, and knowing that I’d blocked a point-blank shot in my MLS debut.

  A half hour later, we walked off the field, victorious. Tony stood in the tunnel, dressed in street clothes. He ran toward me and wrapped his arms around me. It was like getting hugged by a grizzly bear.

  “You did good, Tim,” he said. His voice was so animated, so happy—so unlike the Tony who’d been giving me one-word answers. “You did really, really good.”

  From then on, Tony became like a big brother—always tough, always direct, but also always looking out for me. When we were on the road, we’d go out to dinner and dissect every one of Tony’s saves, every angle of play, from whatever game the MetroStars had just played. At the end of the meal, he always reached for the check.

  “Keep your money,” he’d say, waving away my cash with a bulging arm. “I’ve got this one.”

  The MetroStars slumped badly as the season progressed. We led the league in ejections, with nine, and we ranked third in yellow cards.

  Then our head coach, Alfonso Mondelo, was abruptly fired and replaced by Bora Milutinovic, who may have led four countries into the second round of the World Cup—Mexico in ’86, Costa Rica in ’90, the U.S. in ’94, and Nigeria in ’98—but had no idea what awaited him in Jersey.

  Bora had his work cut out for him.

  Before the next season started, Bora gave the MetroStars a makeover. He traded Tony and Alexi to Kansas City. Tony was replaced with Mike Ammann, an irreverent guy, beloved in the locker room for his off-the-cuff imitations and attempts to wind up Tab.

  But Bora’s efforts were no more successful than any other coach’s had been. By June 1999, our record was 4–9, and we were dead last in the Eastern Conference.

  On June 20, we played the Kansas City Wizards; with a record of 3–10, they were the bottom team in the Western Conference. This was the polar opposite of a championship match; we were battling it out to see which of us was the worst of the worst.

  They embarrassed us, 6–0.

  Ordinarily, after a thrashing like that, we’d tuck our tails between our legs and try to move on. But there was something about this particular humiliation. Something that said we were a club that couldn’t get it right.

  We had hours to kill before our flight home from Kansas City. “Get food,” advised Bora. “Go shopping.”

  The bus dropped us off in downtown Kansas City. Bora and Mulch went off to Barnes & Noble. Tab went shopping alone.

  The rest of us piled into an Irish pub called O’Dowd’s. There, we drank.

  And drank.

  It turns out people can drink a lot—a whole lot—in a few hours in Kansas City, especially after taking a thumping on the field. By the time we headed to the team bus, some of the players were stumbling drunk.

  As we stepped onto the bus, the song “Jack and Diane” by John Mellencamp was playing. As soon as Mike Ammann heard it, he started singing along. He tripped as he made his way to the back of the bus, but he didn’t stop singing.

  The rest of the O’Dowd’s crowd, following him, all joined in. By the time we were seated, we were all belting out the lyrics as if we were a bunch of middle school kids on a field trip.

  . . . let it rock, let it ro-oll . . .

  Let the Bible Belt come and save my soul . . .

  Bora turned around and looked at us. A bunch of the guys were rocking out the drum solo, waving invisible drumsticks in the air.

  You could see the exact moment Bora realized his players were plastered; his face went white, then turned red. He was livid.

  Behind him, Tab stared out the window, his jawline hard.

  When the next song came on, the drinking crew sang that one together, too—sloppy and loud.

  Tab whipped around and snapped, “Would you shut up?! We lost six–nothing.”

  But of course we knew that. We hadn’t simply lost. We’d proved that we weren’t just the worst team in the Eastern Conference. We were the worst team in the whole damned MLS.

  There was nothing to do but burst out laughing at Tab’s fury.

  It was like the bus was divided right down the middle. The boys in the back were obliterated, crooning and laughing. The front of the bus sat there stone-faced, pretending not to hear any of it.

  It was a moment that could have only happened in the MLS. It sure wouldn’t have been tolerated on any of the national teams where Bora had once coached. First of all, those teams would have traveled by private plane; they wouldn’t have had hours to kill in a bar in the first place. But beyond that, getting this hammered in public would have resulted in fines; we’d have lost a month’s salary easily.

  Fortunately, the MLS in those early days was like nowhere else in the world.

  GROWING UP

  Mike Ammann came and went, and by 2001, not long after I turned 22, I became the starting keeper for the MetroStars.

  That was the year I grew up—the year I became a man.

  By this point, it had been years since I’d sat in a classroom trying to hide my tics. I was tired of running from TS, tired of hiding my symptoms.

  I’d been thinking a lot recently about Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. It had genuinely helped knowing there was someone else out there with TS—a pro athlete at that, succeeding at the highest level in his field. But Abdul-Rauf had left the NBA in 1998, and I knew of no other athletes—no other public figure at all—with TS now. Who was out there to prove to today’s kids that TS didn’t have to hold a person back?

  I approached the MetroStars publicity director and said I wanted to come out publicly with TS. He did a double take, as if he didn’t understand what I was saying. My guess is that
he—like most people—thought of TS primarily as a “cursing disease.” Then I saw the lightbulb go off for him. Oh, that’s what’s going on. That’s why he’s always clearing his throat. That’s why he’s so damned twitchy.

  I told him something else, too: I told him I wanted to start working with kids in the community who had TS. I asked if he could help me find an organization that would be open to my involvement.

  He put me in touch with Faith Rice, a New Jersey native who was launching a new nonprofit aimed at assisting Jersey families affected by TS. Faith and I spoke first by phone. She told me that her own son, Kim, had TS, and that she’d spent two decades running herself ragged trying to help him.

  Kim was 27 years old now, finally settled in a job where he felt comfortable. But it had taken too long, Faith said, and there hadn’t been nearly enough support. She had big plans, a crummy basement office strewn with discarded office furniture, and not a whole lot else.

  But she was determined. “As you know, Tim, kids with TS are going to have to stand up for themselves every day for the rest of their lives.”

  We met for lunch—me, Faith, my mom, and Faith’s son Kim.

  Faith was an itty-bitty thing, but she charged into that restaurant like a miniature pit bull. I could tell from my first glimpse of her that she had plans for me as well as for herself—plans for the whole wide world, even.

  Kim’s symptoms were pronounced. He jerked his neck and shoulders dramatically. He grunted, and once in a while let out a loud yelp, as if he’d been kicked. The restaurant wasn’t crowded enough to be noisy; the few customers present couldn’t help but hear him. Strangers made eye contact with each other, as if to say, What’s up with that guy?

  Kim noticed and shrugged. “I’m used to it. Mom and I were at Costco recently; she could hear me from one end of the store to the other.”

  Although Kim’s symptoms started at age seven, he wasn’t diagnosed until 17. “I never knew it was an actual condition,” he said. “I just knew I was different. I asked friends sometimes if they ever had these urges. When they said no, I felt really, really alone.”