There Will Be No Miracles Here

by Casey Gerald

  If I had known all this in November 2008, I would have played in The Game and moved on with my life. But I didn’t know. So when the crisis began on November 6, I believed, enough to tell it to the New Haven Register, that this honestly would be the most difficult decision that I have ever made in my life.

  But then I did not have to make a decision at all. That’s where we find the lesson of this parable.

  I sought, starting in the early hours of November 7, advice from at least two dozen men and women—aside from coaches and friends, there was a Heisman Trophy winner, an Emmy Award winner, an All-American, a former mayor, and at least nine Rhodes Scholars including Chesa Boudin, who, as the son of convicted domestic terrorists, inspired a professor to tell the New York Times on the day he was selected: Cecil Rhodes . . . would be horrified.

  Out of these varied advisors, two camps had emerged by the morning of November 11: one camp felt that I should forego the Rhodes and play in The Game. It was small, and led by me. The other camp felt that the Rhodes was too important, so I should miss The Game instead. Its leader was, surprisingly, the Yale athletic director, Tom Beckett, a man who in another time might have been a US senator—that coif of silver hair, that booming velvet voice, that ability to please everyone he met by saying exactly what they wanted to hear. He asked me to meet him at Ray Tompkins House on the afternoon of November 11. We sat face-to-face in blue high-backed chairs, in silence, until he spoke.

  Casey . . . I know how much Yale football means to you. How much the men of Yale football mean to you. I know—Well, I have to be honest, I don’t know. I can’t know. But I certainly can imagine how agonizing this must be. I’ve talked to Penny. I’ve talked to Tony and Jack (the head coach). I’ve thought long and hard about it. I really have. He sighed. Casey, you have to go to Houston. You have to go to Houston and when you go there . . . and you sit in that room with those judges . . . and you interview for the Rhodes Scholarship—Casey, you have to know that the men of Yale football are right there with you. As you, your spirit, will be with us on the field against Harvard.

  Tears ran down his face and mine by the time he stopped speaking. Okay? he asked. Okay. We hugged and I left Ray Tompkins House, walked back across the street, past the Grove Street Cemetery, to my room, resolved.

  But by evening, missing The Game felt like the wrong thing to do. I went to sleep still torn. Then, as the morning of November 12 began, a third, tiny, seemingly delusional camp came to the fore: those who believed that I should in fact do both, and who had been working clandestinely to make that which seemed implausible, feasible. I am not sure who its leader was, but its voice was Chesa, the revolutionary son. He had written to me: i’m totally happy to email the secretary to the rhodes trust in the usa . . . he is in charge of the whole selection process for the US . . . organizes the committees etc.

  The secretary was not a friend of his. Chesa simply figured that he would understand the dilemma, not only due to his long service to the Rhodes Trust but for a more pertinent reason: the secretary had gone to Harvard College and then to Yale Law School. The Game had to mean something to him.

  you’ll get the rhodes, the game, and the girl, Chesa wrote to me.

  As you can guess, I did not get the girl. And not long after I wiped the matter from my eyes on the morning of November 12, it was also clear that, despite Chesa’s valiant effort, I would not get the Rhodes and The Game with the secretary alone. Before nine a.m., I wrote to my boss from Lehman Brothers, who had become one of my third-camp advisors, since he was a Yale alum (college and law school), a former varsity lacrosse captain, and the least sympathetic son of a bitch I’ve ever worked for. It also helped that he was not new to crises.

  Brian,

  People in Yale’s administration have tried to work something out, but there’s nothing more they can do. It’s a pretty tough spot, but I’ve talked to the coaches and they seem to support whatever I decide.

  Thanks,

  Casey

  Hope wheezed its last few heavy breaths.

  But then, sometime between noon and two p.m., a ram appeared in the bush—in the form of an old Texan who, when I finally met him in person, carried a briefcase made of raw-honey-colored ostrich leather, to match his boots. This man was a federal judge in Houston. He was the head of my Rhodes interview committee. Most important: he was an alum of Harvard College and Yale Law School, just like the secretary. His remedy: grant me a special dispensation to interview for the Rhodes on Friday and play in The Game on Saturday.

  I wrote to Brian again at 2:19 p.m. Update . . . talked to the judge that’s over my region (Harvard ugrad/Yale law) and he said I should play in the game . . . so I’m going to do both, thankfully.

  He responded at 2:42: Good luck with the interview, and with the Harvard game—by the way, you just witnessed one of the intangible benefits of a Yale degree . . . .which will be with you the rest of your life.

  There would not be many witnesses for this miracle, of course. The official word, given to the New Haven Register on November 15, was simply: Casey’s problem has been solved.

  The crisis was over.

  But a crisis loses much of its power if it is seen only as a single event, as a string of this-and-that-happeneds, with narrow causes and personal effects. If it is not also seen as a symbol. For however dangerous they may be, symbols—as it has been since the caves—help us to explain ourselves and our world, allow a mortal boy to reach his hand into the distant future and deliver a message: This is what I saw, what I learned, what you’ve got to know.

  In the seven days it took to resolve this crisis, and in the nine years after that time, I heard and watched and learned a great deal from the people who turn, or try to turn, the axis of the world. What a wonder it was to behold. To see past their fights in political ads, in boardrooms, in history books—to witness how often they, in fact, want the same things, how they view the world through like-colored lenses, are shaped by schools and jobs and clubs that are the same or nearly, how well they work together to play in a game, to win a fellowship or get into a school, to make a billion and protect those billions, to run a country or save it or ruin it or claim it as their own. I am not complaining, necessarily. Just trying to tell you what I’ve seen.

  And I will also tell you that I am not convinced the world should not operate this way—that these happy few should stop coordinating, stop making ways out of no way for one another. All I am saying is that it sure would have been nice to know as a child, down in my forgotten world, that this kind of support was not only possible, not only normal, but expected. I might have—we all might have—asked for a lot more help and had a lot less trouble. That’s all.

  In any event, I got the help I needed and I was on my way to Houston.

  The Hartford Courant, which seemed to be in something of a rivalry with its New Haven counterpart during this time, set the scene on the morning of November 22:

  He has a chance today to win a Rhodes Scholarship and a football game at Harvard. For a Yale man, these are hours of no greater possibility.

  Casey Gerald left campus late Thursday [November 20] afternoon for Bradley Airport and a 7:10 p.m. flight through Charlotte that got him into Houston at midnight. There was a luncheon Friday followed by a 25-minute interview with the Rhodes committee that forever could change his life. There was a cocktail reception at 5 p.m., a taxi to the airport for a Houston departure at 8:45 and arrival in Newark at 1 a.m. If all went well, a town car rushed him into Boston about 4:30 this morning.

  All went well, through four thirty a.m. There was a knock at my hotel room around seven that morning. I don’t remember getting up to answer, but I can still see, in my mind, a man standing in the doorway. Can hear what he said: Case, let’s go. It’s time to play.

  Coach Reno had allowed me to sleep past the mandatory wake-up time and through the team breakfast. That was as far as this leeway could go,
so here he was, on his maybe sixth cup of coffee, with a Styrofoam container in his hands. Brought you some waffles. Probably fucking cold by now. You can eat ’em on the bus . . . C’mon.

  The three team buses were already full, waiting for me and Coach Reno in the hotel parking lot, ready to take us on the twenty-minute ride from the outskirts of Boston where the team had spent the night, to Harvard Stadium, for the last time. He and I sat in the front two seats of the bus—me leaning my shoulder on the window, resting the Styrofoam container on the bar that kept us from falling into the entry stairs, scraping dry syrup onto the cardboard waffles. The sun was bright—the light of the sun, that is. I did not see the sun itself. It was hard to believe that light came from a burning star, as cold as it was outside. Hadn’t even reached the day’s high of ten degrees. For some reason, the light and the cold are the things I remember most about that day—not the rest of the bus ride, or what happened when we arrived at the stadium, or the game itself.

  I do remember one television commercial break. It was so cold that I tried to warm myself by jumping in place for thirty seconds. An official walked over to me, a mask covering his face. Hey, pal . . . you might as well stop. That’s not gonna work. He laughed and walked away.

  It did not work.

  Nothing seemed to work for the Yale Bulldogs that afternoon, except our defense, which, though it was still one of the best in the country, was made up of many boys like me, who had led the coup as freshmen and had paid the price to keep the land we conquered: achy swollen joints, tingly nerves, headaches, loose tendons, unhealed cracks in bones. We had enjoyed greatly; we had suffered greatly. And here we were, twenty-one years old, most of us. We had reached that holy moment that comes one day, in the second half of your last game, when you stand on the field and slowly turn around and squint out and up at twenty, thirty thousand bodies smashed together in the stands of Harvard Stadium, those stands that tower over you like their Greek inspiration—when what was once a dean, a senator, your freshman roommate, your mother, is now a blot in a great sea of blues and tweeds and fur and crimson. When the noise is so loud and varied that the twenty thousand voices become one voice, a voice you seem to have heard your whole life, a voice you don’t pay much attention to anymore; when the cold wind blows across from the Charles River to make your joints ache even more, and the 120 practices and 300 hours of film and 3,000 plays have turned eleven boys into one body, the body of a much older man who looks at himself in the mirror and asks What am I about to do? and may not know the answer, and is okay with that. We twelve had reached that moment in this final football game. We were tired. And we knew we were about to lose, which we did. 10–0.

  If the internet had not reminded me recently, I would not have thought to mention that this was the 125th edition of the Harvard-Yale game, or that the Crimson, led by one of the Bishop twins, won its second straight Ivy League championship. I did not care much about this at that time. I care even less now.

  And if I had not asked one of the other Rhodes finalists to send a message once the selection was made (the Rhodes committee decides immediately after interviews are complete), then I would have headed right to the showers in the visitors’ locker room, still in the dark as to my fate. Instead, I went to my travel bag to fetch my phone. There was a message.

  Hey Casey, it’s Jordan from the Rhodes interview in Houston. Just wanted to let you know we didn’t get it. Sorry, man.

  I said nothing. Put the phone back in my bag and sat on an old wooden bench between two rows of lockers. For the last time, I cut the matted strips of dingy white tape from my cleats. Pulled down the long thick sweaty socks and threw them in the garbage. Peeled off my tattered neoprene sleeves. A little boy ran into the locker room. Hey, number 1! Can I have your gloves? They were already off, on the bench right next to me. Here you go, buddy. He skipped away with the gloves on his tiny hands. I unfastened my faded pants. Squeezed the too-tight pads up and over my sore shoulders. The domed crown helmet was already off, visor gone, stadium lights gone, fear gone, opponents gone.

  I walked, gingerly, to the showers. The Downing twins, Willy and Tommy, were still there. At least one other player was there, but I can’t remember who. We stood under the water, which washed their trickling tears down the drain. Remember that first day of practice? Tommy asked. That fucking fight we had? Jesus we were crazy . . . Seems so long ago. We all remembered and laughed, then just stood there, silent. It seemed that none of us wanted to leave, for many reasons, perhaps the same. But we had to—not to catch the bus, though; this was the last game, no more bus rides. We had to leave the showers because we were not those wild young boys that we had been. According to another reporter who chronicled the team that day: Tommy Downing was the Heart of this Yale program . . . Casey Gerald was its Voice. So we both had to leave the showers for a press conference, where we were joined by another of the twelve, Marvin Matthews, the greatest running back to wear Yale blue in many years. The same reporter said and Marvin Matthews was its Legs.

  We three sat at a short table, microphones in front of each, folding chairs lined all the way back from the table to the glass wall that overlooked the field. For twenty minutes, for the last time, we played the same old roles. Marvin sat there looking pretty, even with a fractured toe. Tommy began to answer a question, then broke down in tears. I offered an obvious statement—This is definitely not the way we wanted to end our careers—to the Boston Globe.

  Someone asked about the outcome of the Rhodes. It had not been announced yet.

  It’s been a crazy forty-eight hours, for sure. I should know something soon.

  I don’t know why I didn’t tell them that I lost, that I already knew. Just couldn’t say it yet. It seemed that everyone—these reporters, the coaches, my teammates, all of Yale, all of Oak Cliff, the brilliant boy from Baltimore, the revolutionary son, everybody—was eager to know, to rejoice. For all my faults, I’ve always hated letting people down, which is, in many ways, a fault itself. And I had done much more than let folks down. I had gone, in one afternoon, from one of the most celebrated student athletes in America to one of the biggest losers. So I figure I did not tell him or anybody else for hours because I was ashamed and numb and sad. But I cannot say that I was angry—not about losing this final game, and not about losing the Rhodes. I have the sport to thank for that.

  You see, I have witnessed or been a part of only one true meritocracy in my thirty years: the game of football. It all goes back to one afternoon at South Oak Cliff, when I walked into the locker room with a request for Coach Price: six senior football players wanted to attend tutoring for our math class—one day a week, we’d need to come late, only one hour late, to practice.

  Coach Price leaned back in his swivel chair. He crossed his legs at the ankle. Took off his glasses. Slid his tongue over his front teeth.

  Now lemme make sure I heard you right . . . You niggas wanna go to tutoring? Hmph. Okay. Okay. I thought, by his silence, that he supported our request. He sat there with his eyes closed. I stood there, waiting.

  Gone on! He shouted, jerking up in his chair, eyes bucked. He slammed a folded newspaper on the ground. Take your fucking asses to tutoring! One hour. I’ll be John Brown. One goddamn hour. Now here we are, six weeks away from the Lancaster game. Six weeks! You walk in my office and say you wanna give up one hour of practice a week. One hour of my practice. For tutoring! Okay. All right. But lemme ask you something. What in the hell do you think them niggas at Lancaster are gonna be doing in that hour, while you’re upstairs licking your math teacher’s ass? Huh? They ain’t gone be in tutoring, I’ll tell you that. The niggas are gonna be practicing! Putting in six more hours of practice than you niggas! And with those six extra hours, they gone step right on the field, and they gone drive they feet right up y’all’s motherfucking asses. That’s what’s gone happen. But yeah. Gone on to tutoring. Close my goddamn door.

  None of us went to math tuto
ring. We went to practice. And we defeated Lancaster, even if we did not drive our feet up their asses. We also, at least I did, came to believe—because we had seen it for ourselves—that you can only get out of the game what you’re willing to put into it. You don’t work, you don’t eat.