Game Changers

by Mike Lupica

  Way up in the distance, Ben could see Mr. O’Brien’s black SUV parked near the front doors.

  Ben knew that Shawn had two older sisters, one of them just a year older, so there were at least five of them living here. Yeah, Ben thought, and with enough extra room to maybe house our whole team.

  He pressed the button on the intercom, finally heard Mr. O’Brien say, “Who is it?”

  Ben gave his name, said he was here to see Shawn.

  The gates opened.

  Ben tried riding up the gravel driveway, gave up about halfway, walked his bike the rest of the way from there. When he got close he could see Coach O’Brien — he thought of him as his coach, even here — waving at him from the porch.

  “There’s a part of the Boston Marathon called Heartbreak Hill,” he said to Ben. “That’s what Shawn calls this driveway.” He smiled. “Of course that was when my boy was still communicating with the rest of the human race.”

  Ben said, “I didn’t get a chance to talk to him after the game. I was gonna run after him, but he didn’t look like he wanted any company.”

  Ben didn’t say anything about Shawn throwing his helmet. As soon as Shawn had yesterday, Ben turned around to see if his dad had seen, but Mr. O’Brien was talking to the Midvale coach.

  “I know you’ve got good moves on the field,” Coach said, “but that might have been your best one of the day.” He shook his head. “Guys I played with in the pros didn’t take losing that hard. It’s like by the end he couldn’t remember all those passes he completed to start the second half.”

  “We all played well in the second half,” Ben said, “except for one play.”

  “I tried to tell Shawn that the guy I played behind, Peyton Manning himself, once threw an interception like that against the Saints that cost my old team a Super Bowl.”

  “I just want to let Shawn know that we need him to get to where we want to go,” Ben said.

  “Have at it,” Coach said, showing him in. “Maybe he’ll listen to you, because he’s completely tuned me out for the time being.”

  “Is he in his room?”

  “Down on the field. C’mon, I’ll take you back there, it’s pretty cool.”

  Shawn’s dad took Ben through the house and out the back door and across a lawn that was about twice the size of McBain Field and then down a hill. And as soon as he saw the field, Ben knew that “cool” didn’t come close to describing it.

  Cool was playing the new Madden video game every season, or getting to stay up late to watch a game on television even on a school night.

  But the field behind Shawn O’Brien’s house was one of Coop Manley’s favorite expressions:

  Off the hook.

  It was a turf field, looking brand spanking new, with lines that looked like they’d just been painted with the brightest white paint possible. There were goalposts, and the end zone had the Colts’ logo on it, the same horseshoe you saw on their helmets.

  “Wow,” Ben said.

  Coach said, “I’ve heard about guys who built their own basketball courts, sometimes even inside their homes. And golf nuts who built their own putting greens, or even a few holes if they had the room. But I’m a football guy. When I built my dream house I decided to build my dream backyard, too, for me and my boy.”

  “Wow,” Ben said again, like he was stuck.

  “Sometimes,” his coach said, “I pretend I’m the eleven-year-old and sneak down and use that thing myself.”

  “That thing” was a remote-controlled pass receiver, like a little robot on wheels, moving from side to side across the field. Like a golf cart with a net on top instead of a roof. Shawn had a bunch of balls at his feet, and Ben could see the remote on the ground in front of him, too.

  When he was ready, he pointed the remote at the robot, took a snap from an imaginary center, dropped back, and tried to lead the machine just right as it moved across the field, and deliver the ball into the net.

  He just missed the net, maybe by a foot, shook his head, pointed the remote to stop the machine. Got another ball. Pointed again. Threw a strike into the net this time.

  “If you’re a quarterback,” Coach O’Brien said, “you’ve got to be able to hit what you aim at.”

  “That was a good-looking throw.”

  Shawn’s dad said in a quiet voice, “My kid got reminded yesterday that it’s a little harder when you’ve got a bunch of big guys running at you. But he’ll figure it out.”

  In a much louder voice now he called out to Shawn, saying, “Hey, pal. Somebody here to see you.”

  Shawn looked over, gave Ben a wave, then put up a finger that meant one more. Pointed the remote again, took a three-step drop, waited until the machine was in the middle of the field — he must have been able to speed the thing up, because it seemed to be moving faster this time — and buried another perfect strike into the net.

  Ben went down and joined him on the field, the fake grass feeling even better than real grass under the Reeboks he had on, the ones with the Packers logo on the sides.

  Ben said, “Lookin’ good.”

  “Easy when you’re by yourself.”

  “Easy for everybody.”

  “I didn’t know you even knew where I lived,” Shawn said.

  “I think people in foreign countries know about this house,” Ben said. He grinned and said, “Needed to see the field, and couldn’t wait anymore for you to invite me. You must have guys here all the time.”

  Shawn said, “Mostly me and my dad.”

  Then: “Please tell me you really aren’t here to tell me to keep my head up, or whatever.”

  “Nah,” Ben said, still grinning, “I figure I’ve got my whole life to start sounding like my parents.”

  “So no talking about the game?”

  “Not unless you want to,” Ben said. Reached down and picked up a ball and flipped it to Shawn. “Let’s just throw it around a little. But I’m warning you: I’m a lot trickier than Chad Ochocinco on Wheels.”

  “The thing I like best about him,” Shawn said, nodding at the robot receiver, “is that he doesn’t talk. Or tell me how to get better.”

  Ben took off down the field, feeling even faster on turf, made a sharp cut. Shawn hit him in the hands with a perfect spiral.

  “Let me warm up my arm before I send you out,” Ben said, and so the two of them soft-tossed for a few minutes before Ben’s arm was loose.

  And then for the next half hour or so they both turned it loose, long throws and short ones, buttonhooks and post patterns and fly patterns down the sideline, sometimes dropping back to throw, sometimes throwing on the run, both of them making the occasional diving catch.

  “You really don’t have guys lining up to come over here?” Ben said.

  “Like I said, mostly Dad and me. He calls this my classroom.”

  Ben said, “Listen, if this is a classroom, I want to sign up for the course right now.”

  “Then you could be his prize pupil,” Shawn said.

  They went for a few more minutes. But even here, Ben could see Shawn straining to make every throw perfect, see him talking to himself up the field when he’d miss, one time yelling, “Idiot!” when he led Ben too much on a crossing pattern.

  It was the same as in the game: No matter how many good throws he’d make, a bad one would make him lose his mind.

  Finally they finished, at least for now, both of them out of breath and sweating. Shawn asked Ben if he wanted a drink and Ben said he was fine, Shawn didn’t have to go up to the house. But Shawn said he didn’t have to go up to the house, walked over behind the bench — underneath the small electronic scoreboard — and took two Gatorades out of a fridge Ben hadn’t even noticed at first.

  Ben took a swig and said, “The only thing missing, maybe over on the other side of the field, is one of those giant TV screens like they have in real stadiums.”

  “Don’t give my dad any ideas.”

  “It must be amazing, having a dad who played QB in
the pros.”

  “Yeah,” Shawn said. “You have no idea.”

  Shawn stretched out on the bench, Ben on the turf, hands behind heads, staring up into the blue sky, and talked football. Just not Pop Warner football. Not Rockwell vs. Midvale. Shawn wanted to know why Ben ended up a Packers fan and Ben told him he started rooting for Aaron Rodgers after Brett Favre left the Packers, how he felt like Rodgers was an under-dog having to follow Favre in Green Bay, and he’d always rooted for underdogs, maybe because he was small.

  “But Rodgers isn’t small,” Shawn said.

  “Maybe he just seemed smaller when he was starting out, because Favre had been so big for so long,” Ben said.

  Shawn said, “I watched all his interviews after the Packers won the Super Bowl last year. The guy always believed that things were gonna work out for him, that he was gonna justify the faith the Packers had in him. And I thought, What’s up with that? The guy had nothing to go on when he first got the job.”

  “You gotta believe in yourself in sports,” Ben said.

  “That’s what my dad tells me, all the time.”

  “Oh, come on, you gotta know how good your arm is,” Ben said.

  “What I know is, there’s more to being a QB than just having an arm. Or making a few throws.”

  Ben rolled over so he was propping himself up on an elbow, looking at Shawn now. “I sort of did come over to talk about the game.”

  “Shocker,” Shawn said.

  Ben had thought about what he wanted to say to him the whole way over, like it was a talk he had to give in front of the class without any notes.

  He took a deep breath.

  “Listen,” he said. “My dad said something to me one time I never forgot. We were watching one of the pregame shows and some player said it was a ‘must-win’ game for his team. And my dad goes, ‘Okay, but what if you don’t win?’”

  Shawn was sitting up now, long legs crossed in front of him on the bench, his face serious, doing what Ben had asked him to do. Listening.

  Whether he was hearing or not was another story.

  Ben kept going.

  “When you’re the quarterback,” Ben said, “everybody’s looking at you. Because you’re the quarterback.”

  “And the coach’s son,” Shawn said. “Don’t forget that part.” He smiled but Ben didn’t think he meant it. “I never forget.”

  “You just gotta forget everything and play.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Shawn said.

  “We all want to win,” Ben said. “You just can’t let losing eat you up like it did yesterday.”

  Ben saw Shawn’s face start to redden, like he’d just missed with another pass, heard him say, “You don’t know me.”

  “Trying, dude. Trying.”

  Ben wished he had Lily with him, she always knew how to say the right things, even when she was busting on him, or Sam, or Coop. Plus, she had more common sense than any other kid he knew. But she wasn’t here, so Ben did the next best thing, tried to get her voice inside his own head, trying to find the right words.

  “I’m not saying you’re supposed to like losing, especially like that,” Ben said. “You just can’t let it show the way you did yesterday. I’m telling you as a friend.”

  Shawn gave him a long look and said, “Thanks.”

  “Just thought you needed to hear that.”

  “No,” Shawn said. “The part about us being friends.”

  Ben grinned. “It is what it is.”

  Shawn said, “You sure my dad didn’t put you up to this?”

  “Nah, I’m just a dope trying to get you to chill a little.”

  “You’re not,” Shawn said. “A dope, I mean. I know I’m the one who acts like one sometimes. I just can’t help myself, I guess.”

  Then he said, “I couldn’t help it after the game. I let everybody down.”

  Ben said, “Seriously? So what? You were trying to make a play. Trying to win us the game. Maybe if I’d been paying closer attention, I could have come to the ball better.”

  “Stop,” Shawn said, his voice louder than it had been. “Making excuses, I mean. My dad does enough of that for me.”

  Man, Ben thought, this guy was rough. Today he didn’t want you making excuses for him. The day before, he blew off Coop because of a bad snap that was as much his fault as Coop’s.

  Ben could see Shawn’s face getting red again.

  “I get scared in games,” Shawn said. “I want to do well so badly, as much for my dad as for me, that I try too hard. And then as soon as something goes wrong …”

  He put his hands out, like he was helpless to explain it to Ben any better than that.

  Just the two of them out here behind the house. But really trying to be friends now. Be boys. Doing what you did at their age, trying to understand stuff.

  Ben said, “So you get scared sometimes. It happens.”

  “All the time.”

  “No, it doesn’t. If it did, you’d be throwing picks or fumbling snaps on every play.”

  Shawn was the one taking a deep breath now, the air then coming out of him in a big blast, saying, “The bigger the play the smaller I play. Maybe you didn’t notice as much last year, because we won all those games at the end. But believe me, I noticed.”

  “Everybody gets scared out there,” Ben said. “Even pros get scared. I read one time that this guy Bill Russell, played for the Celtics about a hundred years ago, used to boot before every single game.”

  Shawn tried to smile. “Whoa, I’m not that bad. I’m not booting.”

  “You’re not bad at all!” Ben said. “You gotta find a way to have fun. This is supposed to be fun.”

  “You’re not listening. It’s not fun for me.”

  Ben looked at him, this kid who seemed to have it all.

  “So we gotta figure out a way to make it fun,” Ben said.

  If Shawn heard, he didn’t let on, just got up off the bench and came over to where Ben was sitting.

  “You said we were friends now, right?” he said.

  Ben grinned, stretched out his arms, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Well, yeah.”

  “I’m not so good at being friends with guys. But when somebody is your friend, you can trust the guy, right?”

  “Right,” Ben said.

  “So if I tell you something and you swear you won’t tell anybody else, you won’t. Right?”

  “Swear,” Ben said. “Like they say in the movies, I don’t talk even if I’m caught behind enemy lines.”

  But Shawn wasn’t kidding and Ben could see he wasn’t kidding.

  “Swear on your heart?”

  Ben went along, kept his own voice serious, put his hand over his heart and said, “On my heart.”

  “I don’t want to play quarterback,” Shawn O’Brien said.

  Ben said, “Come on, man, you made one lousy pass.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Shawn O’Brien said. “I never wanted to play quarterback in the first place.”

  Ben stared at him, hoping he didn’t look as surprised as he felt. Knowing he’d heard right, but not quite believing. Shawn had never wanted to play quarterback.

  Really?

  “You ever tell your dad that?” Ben said.

  What came out of Shawn O’Brien now wasn’t much more than a whisper.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “You can’t?”

  “My dad always says this is his dream backyard,” Shawn said. “He tells everybody that. But his real dream is me. Not just me being a quarterback. Me being even a better quarterback than he was. It’s the most important thing in the world to him. No, no way I can tell him this. Ever.”

  Ben McBain liked to think he was pretty good, at least in sports, at anticipating what was going to happen next.

  Not this time.

  “That’s why you have to help me,” Shawn said.

  “Help you with what?” Ben said.

  Completely lost.

&n
bsp; Shawn said, “You have to help me be a quarterback.”

  Not fair.

  That was Ben’s first reaction once he was back on his bike. First reaction and second and third as he took the long way home, going through town, giving himself some time to cool down, trying to figure out what had just happened.

  But as fast as his bike was, it couldn’t outrun this:

  How totally unfair it was for him to be in this situation.

  Forget about the guy not loving football the way Ben did. Forget that. Forget that he didn’t love having a job that Ben would have given anything to have.

  A job, by the way, he practically got handed with a bow around it.

  Oh no, it was much better than that, he didn’t even want the job.

  Sweet.

  Ben McBain couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t wanted to play quarterback.

  And even that wasn’t even the craziest part. The really mad crazy part was that for Ben to be something that was even more important to him than being a quarterback — being a good teammate — now he had to be Shawn O’Brien’s quarterback coach.

  Forget about what Sam might do if he found out Shawn’s “secret.” Ben wanted to tackle the guy, too, even though he knew better, knew that wasn’t him, that he had to help the guy even though Shawn had put him in a bad spot by swearing him to secrecy.

  Talk about taking one for the team.

  Check it out: Ben couldn’t tell his parents what he knew about Shawn. Couldn’t tell Sam or Coop. Couldn’t tell Lily. She was the one worrying him the most. Trying to keep something from her was going to make Science seem like fun in comparison. Ben knew he was going to have to be careful around her, because if he wasn’t, Lily would get that radar of hers going and demand to know what was up. Then he’d be in an even worse spot than he already was, because he and Lily had made their own pact all the way back in third grade, Lily making him swear that he’d never keep any secrets from her.

  Ever.

  And never lie to her.

  Ben had never been much of a liar, anyway, lying had always seemed way too hard, no matter how hard telling the truth about something might seem.