Fried Twinkies, Buckle Bunnies, & Bull Riders

by Josh Peter

  Inside the sports medicine room, 11 riders were receiving treatment for assorted injuries. That didn’t include Cory Melton, who had withdrawn from competition earlier in the week with two cracked vertebrae, or bullfighter Rob Smets, who’d aggravated his twice-broken neck, or Justin McBride, who was sitting in a shower stall in the locker room and straining to pull a boot over his broken right ankle.

  Someone asked McBride how he felt. “Like a dump truck just fell off the Empire State Building and landed on me,” he said. “My ankle, my leg, my back, my head—I don’t know which hurts worse.”

  In another locker room down the hall, Lee stood alone. He was brushing caked rosin off his bull rope when Bobby “Jinx” Clower, the gateman, poked his head into the room.

  “Time to get the quarter,” Clower said.

  Lee allowed a thin smile.

  Through 28 weekends, Lee had yet to win a single event, but his consistent riding had kept him in contention for the championship. Since the season opener, Clower had greeted Lee with the same refrain: “Nickel-and-dime ’em all year, and get the quarter in the end.” To ensure he got the quarter—or in this case the $1 million bonus—Lee would need two bull rides as spectacular as the opening introductions.

  Two stuntmen attached to ropes dropped from the ceiling and into a large box. An explosion rocked the arena, and smoke curled from the bottom of the box. From opposite sides emerged Lee and Moraes, who then strode toward the center of the arena and clambered up portable stairs and atop a raised platform.

  The two top-ranked bull riders, with hands on hips and feet spread apart, stared each other down like gunslingers at the OK Corral. Some 16,500 fans thundered their approval.

  Moraes and Lee had survived a grueling 10 months, outlasting and outdueling the world’s best riders to get there: the Thomas & Mack Center on October 31, 2004, on the last day of the finals and the Professional Bull Riders season. Introductions over, the two riders descended the stairs and hustled toward one end of the arena, where fellow riders and bulls waited. When the chute gates swung open, the violent dance would begin.

  Starting with the seventh round, 43 riders dropped into the chutes and rode their bulls before the real showdown began. Mike Lee versus Adriano Moraes. On Slick Willy, Lee looked effortless, but the bull looked lifeless. The result was a score of 73.25 points and a reride option. Dangling his feet over the cliff’s ledge, Lee took the reride and risked disaster. Moraes climbed aboard Easy Money, and two Brazilians helped pull Moraes’s rope.He wrapped the slack underneath his gloved left hand and across his palm before closing his fingers and balling his hand into a fist. But something didn’t feel quite right, so Moraes unwrapped the rope. The two straining Brazilians pulled even harder and handed the slack to Moraes, who again wrapped the rope around his hand and made his fist. Twice, with his free hand, he pounded his left fist closed. He pushed down on the front of his black cowboy hat, rested his right arm atop the chute gate and . . .

  Easy Money reared up. The Brazilians uttered a frantic stream of Portuguese. Moraes held up his right hand, signaling he was okay. He resettled on the bull, then gave a quick nod. The gate swung open.

  Easy Money turned right and by the first jump had all fours off the ground. Moraes was sitting dead center. With his second buck, the bull made another turn, and Moraes slipped to the right. Jump three, another half turn and . . . it was only a matter of time. Easy Money, maybe the easiest bull of the round, dumped Moraes to the dirt.

  Reaching his feet, Moraes cocked his fist and stepped toward the chutes as if preparing to punch the metal covering. But his arm went limp, and he slowly spun in a circle, drifting to the side of the ring, where he crashed against a signage board and slumped to the ground.

  “Aarrgggh!”

  Yellow mouthpiece still jammed in his mouth, Moraes let out a primal scream. It lasted almost as long as his ride—2.8 seconds.

  But the round wasn’t over. Lee had wiped his score off the board by accepting the reride and now had to board Geronimo, who had been ridden six out of 10 attempts during the ’04 season. The way Lee was riding, they might as well have put him on a picture bull, because it was a picture-perfect ride. He scored 88.75 points to drive another nail in Moraes’s coffin.

  The $1 million. The gold buckle. Potential history. It would all come down to the eighth round, the championship round, featuring the 15 riders with the top cumulative scores through the first seven rounds. It was down to the final rides of the 2004 season.

  During a short intermission, Lori McBride, Justin’s mother, walked up to Flavia Moraes.With her son out of contention and only Adriano Moraes capable of catching Lee, Lori McBride left no doubt as to whom she was rooting for.

  “Flavia, it looks like a gladiator and a pussy,” she said, referring to Moraes and Lee.

  Flavia giggled nervously, squeezed Lori McBride’s hand, and glanced at the young woman sitting to her right.

  “Well, I’m Mike Lee’s wife, and I don’t appreciate you calling him that,” Jamie Lee huffed.

  “I am so sorry. That wasn’t meant for you to hear,” Lori McBride said.

  The two women exchanged frosty glares.

  It was time for the championship round.

  On the metal deck behind the chutes, Pastor Todd Pierce saw Lee tying and retying the laces of his boots. “You think those shoes are tied well enough yet?” Pierce asked.

  “I don’t know,” Lee answered. “I just can’t seem to get them comfortable.”

  No one on tour knew Lee better than Pierce did. Pierce had befriended and counseled the young rider since they had first met at the Tuff Hedeman Championship Challenge in 2002, and though Pierce was 12 years older than Lee, he saw a lot of himself in the young rider. The intensity. The fierceness. The struggle to quiet his mind. Now Pierce saw anxiety.

  While Lee said he couldn’t get his laces comfortable, Pierce knew it was Lee himself who couldn’t get comfortable. Lee was losing his focus.

  Pierce knelt on the metal deck, clasped hands with Lee, and prayed. Repeating after Pierce, Lee said, “Okay, Father, I’m feeling the pressure. I give it to you, and I’m just going to ride the bull like you created me to.”

  On the same metal deck, Moraes was pacing when Leah Garcia pulled him aside for an interview. “You know, I had the easiest bull of the whole event,” Moraes moaned.

  What now? Garcia asked, with Moraes just minutes away from climbing aboard Reindeer Dippin, the bull he’d drawn for the championship round. What would Moraes do? The dejection vanished from his face. He looked angry, determined.

  “I’m going to try to spur his guts out,” Moraes said.

  Only Moraes had a chance to catch Lee, and his chances depended on Lee’s getting bucked off for only the second time in eight rounds. Had the event ended after seven rounds, with the bonus points distributed, the standings would’ve looked like this: (1) Lee, 11,694.5 points; (2) Moraes, 10,018 points; (3) White, 9,405.25 points; (4) McBride, 8,927.5. If Lee bucked off, he was guaranteed a score of at least 10,994 points by virtue of his having secured no worse than a fifth-place finish in the cumulative standings. To catch him, Moraes would have to ride his bull and jump in the cumulative standings from his current spot of 12th to seventh. And then the championship round commenced.

  Down went Dan Henricks and down went Ross Coleman before Greg Potter survived Sling Blade for 90 points. The score scarcely distracted the crowd for the moment of truth: Moraes versus Reindeer Dippin.

  As soon as the chute gate opened, Moraes knew he was in for an unusual ride. Reindeer Dippin looked more like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Instead of his quick spins and powerful bucks, the bull almost loped around the arena. Moraes made the buzzer and earned a score of 79.75 points but also got a reride option. Decision time. The score would’ve moved Moraes into seventh place in the cumulative standings, good enough to win the championship if Lee bucked off Mossy Oak Mudslinger, the 2003 runner-up for Bull of the Year. Ty Murray, before retiring, had failed t
o ride the bull in his only attempt. So had stars like Michael Gaffney and Troy Dunn, while Shivers had failed in his only two attempts. Lee had failed in his own attempt, that coming in 2002 and Lee’s rookie year. During the 2004 season, the bull had been ridden four times in 15 attempts—twice by Moraes and twice by McBride. And at the 2004 finals, he’d already bucked off Adam Carrillo and Lee Akin.

  To remain in seventh place, Moraes would need each of the next six riders to buck off, and Moraes wanted things in his own hands. He accepted the reride on a tantalizingly named Big Bucks. Moraes watched the next five riders fail to make the buzzer before Michael Gaffney boarded Little Yellow Jacket, the three-time Bull of the Year. If Gaffney bucked off, Moraes had taken a needless gamble, so maybe it was relief that prompted him to join the crowd’s roar when Gaffney, at 35 the oldest rider competing in the finals, rode Little Yellow Jacket and earned 93.75 points, the highest score yet during the finals. Zack Brown, who’d already clinched Rookie of the Year honors, followed with a 93.25-point ride on Night Life.

  In the chutes, Moraes boarded Big Bucks. His face looked drained. Wrapping the bull rope around his fist, he settled in, then unwrapped the rope and climbed out of the chute. He wasn’t ready. Not for the biggest ride of the year. Not yet. Realizing Moraes would be delayed, the officials moved to Cody Whitney and Kid Rock. Whitney got rocked, all right, slammed to the dirt, and the athletic trainers ran to his aid and helped him off.

  Now there was no more waiting. No more stalling. No more need to crunch numbers for Adriano Moraes. To jump to sixth in the cumulative standings, which if Lee bucked off would give Moraes the championship,Moraes needed a 90-point ride.

  For a shot at the title, Moraes had to ride his bull, Big Bucks, unridden in five trips on the BFTS tour. Rope wrapped around his left hand, right hand pushing down on the cowboy hat before resting on the top of the chute, a quick nod, and there they went.

  Big Bucks dropped his head toward the ground and bucked his hind hooves skyward. Moraes slid forward. A hard jump to the left, two more fearsome bucks, and Moraes jerked forward too far. He tumbled off the right side of the bull and hit the ground. Getting back on his feet, Moraes walked to a corner of the arena and dropped onto his right knee. He looked up at the overhead video replay board. “Over,” he mouthed.

  With the world championship clinched, Lee still had the finals title and another $225,000 bonus within reach. He settled onto Mossy Oak Mudslinger with the same eerie composure he’d shown in the chutes throughout the 10-day finals.

  Ready to die.

  Free.

  Mossy Oak Mudslinger blasted out of the chutes, bucking and spinning with fury. Yet Lee looked like he was riding a sedated steer. Maintaining his body control, Lee made it to the buzzer and scored 93.75 points, matching Gaffney’s score on Little Yellow Jacket and winning the $225,000 bonus for the finals victory, the $1 million bonus for the season championship, and the gold buckle.

  In the stands, Flavia hugged Jamie Lee. And the first rider off the chutes and into the arena was Moraes, who grabbed Lee’s bull rope from the gateman and handed it to the new champion. Moraes stuck his right fist in Lee’s chest. “Great job,” he said.

  The two riders bumped fists.

  Then Moraes knelt down and greeted two of his sons, 6-year-old Jeremias and 4-year-old Antonio. Jeremias was crying, and Moraes tried to soothe him with a kiss on the forehead. He scooped up the boys into his massive arms and marched out of the arena, clearing the stage for the new PBR champion.

  Standing between Randy Bernard and Leah Garcia, Lee stared at the army of photographers and cameramen as if suddenly realizing that his victory came with a price—the blinding spotlight.

  Bernard leaned over to Jamie Lee, standing beside her husband. “So, have you spent the money yet?” he joked about the $1 million.

  She broke into a weary grin. “Mike gets upset if I buy three shirts,” she said.

  Bernard’s last-minute plan was for the winner and his family to shake up champagne bottles and pour the bubbly over one another’s head. But as soon as Lee clinched the title, he’d sent away the champagne. He knew Lee, a teetotaler, was as apt to drink alcohol as he was to drink rat poison.

  Lee celebrated his victory with a can of root beer.

  Packing up his equipment back in the locker room, Moraes knew nothing could wash the bitter taste out of his mouth. Not champagne, not root beer, nothing.

  Bernard, standing near the oversize $1 million check to be presented to Lee, looked nervous and distracted. The fans inside Thomas & Mack had missed the TV fiasco. With the PBR championship still undecided but with NBC rushed for time after its NASCAR coverage ran long, the network cut away from the finals and sent the broadcast back to OLN with Moraes and Lee yet to make their final rides. Now Bernard looked as if he were about to walk the plank.

  “I’m going to have to change my name,” he joked.

  By the time Bernard reached his suite at Mandalay Bay, he checked his computer and found 275 e-mails—a slew of them, he was sure, from fans angry about NBC’s aborted coverage. A half hour later, sipping a Jack Daniel’s with a splash of water, Bernard rechecked the e-mails. The count was up to 318.

  Already late for the awards ceremony, Bernard grabbed his drink and, wife in tow, headed for the South Pacific Ballroom. There was Justin McBride, who, despite another heartbreaking finish, looked oddly content as he sat next to Jill Ericksen, McBride’s former schoolmate. Their relationship had taken off since McBride’s breakup with Michelle Beadle.

  The Brazilians sat at a table in the back with one empty chair. Adriano Moraes was missing.

  Suddenly, he reappeared.

  “Two hundred thousand dollars a year,” he said. “It’s done.”

  In the works for weeks, an endorsement deal with a national company was all but finalized. It would be the most lucrative sponsorship deal Moraes had landed in his career—and a testament to his popularity, considering that Lee’s agent was fielding no six-figure offers.

  But Moraes’s smile looked forced. Sitting next to his wife, he still felt a lump in his throat or whatever it was keeping down the emotion. His wife said she wished he could cry, but Moraes had no intention of doing so. Certainly not at the awards banquet.

  Actually, Moraes told Flavia that something strange had happened in the past 10 minutes. For the first time since he’d fallen off his last bull of the season, he felt more determined than devastated. He still had to decide whether to have tendon-reattachment surgery that Freeman said would keep him out for 6 months. But between spoonfuls of vanilla ice cream and peach cobbler, Moraes predicted he’d win the 2005 championship.

  “The lazy guy died tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow I will start working on my championship. If no one wants to go to the gym with me, I’ll go alone. I know how much I love bull riding, but I don’t know how much time I have left. So I’ve got to get it done.”

  Flavia kissed him on the cheek.

  “One thing. I beat the odds,” Moraes continued. “No one thought I could come back. . . . I’m still the greatest that ever lived.”

  In the front of the ballroom, where Lee’s mother, brother, and agent sat, there were two empty chairs—the ones belonging to Mike Lee and his wife. Mike and Jamie were on the dance floor. The PBR’s new champion wore a black blazer his wife had talked him into buying Saturday rather than letting him wear the brown one he’d bought at a thrift shop a couple of years earlier. She wore a shiny, opalescent dress.

  Locked in an embrace, the two swayed as Alison Krauss, the Grammy Award–winning singer, performed the song “When You Say Nothing at All.”

  “Our song,” Jamie Lee called it.

  She had first heard it before she and Mike got married, and she thought the lyrics were perfect. So often her husband failed to find words to express himself. But when Jamie looked into Mike’s eyes and studied his face, she could see the most important thing—that Mike loved her.

  During Lee’s acceptance speech—when m
ost riders heard him speak more than he had over the past three seasons—Lee thanked “my beautiful, beautiful wife.”

  Jamie beamed.

  In the next half hour, the twelve hundred or so people at the awards banquet began trickling out in small pockets, with the crowning of the new champion and the 2004 season complete. The PBR had survived a political assault from Tuff Hedeman. Little Yellow Jacket had won his third straight Bull of the Year. Adriano Moraes had rebounded from his worst season ever. Justin McBride had proved again to be among the toughest and most determined riders in the world. And Mike Lee, in paying tribute to his wife after winning the championship, had at last found the right words.

  FINAL STANDINGS

  1 Mike Lee $1,417,592 12,138.25 points

  2 Adriano Moraes $253,921 10,018 points

  3 Mike White $307,921 8,905.25 points

  4 Justin McBride $278,427 8,669.5 points

  5 Greg Potter $148,132 7,586.75 points

  6 Zack Brown $288,447 6,601 points

  7 Ross Coleman $139,279 6,358 points

  8 Brendon Clark $138,976 6,241.75 points

  9 Jody Newberry $121,712 6,078.75 points

  10 Michael Gaffney $145,354 5,942 points

  Mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities in this book does not imply endorsement by the author or publisher, nor does mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities imply that they endorse this book, its author, or the publisher.

  Internet addresses and telephone numbers given in this book were accurate at the time it went to press.

  © 2005 by Josh Peter

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