Nothing was said about the party scare. Not yet. And everything was put on hold again the next day when we got a phone call from Sarah telling us that she'd been hit in the face with a softball bat during an intra-squad scrimmage at Harvard. She'd caught a foul pop while catching and was struck in the eye socket by the on-deck hitter when she went to retrieve her mask after the play. Six hours later, seven of us took stitched-up Sarah to our neighborhood steak restaurant, the Stockyard. The poor kid was devastated. She's been told there was a crack in her orbital bone, and it looked as if she was going on the disabled list just as her season was about to begin. Sarah was third-string catcher and had only a couple of at-bats in her first two years with the Crimson, but she'd been working hard and hoped to get more playing time in 2006. Now it looked like her junior season was going to be a wash. It reminded us all of the fragile nature of this sports business. You're always just one unlucky break away from a season on the shelf, something I know would have made Sam deeply depressed and probably would have put me into therapy, too.
We all agreed that the most amazing component of Sarah's injury was that she'd been struck by someone swinging a bat...and it was not her brother! On the day Sarah was injured, I counted twenty-eight of Sam's bats in Kate's room.
Two days after I got home, the day after Sarah's injury, Marilou and I took Sam to lunch on Charles Street in downtown Boston. Again, decidedly new school. Not only was Sam not getting punished, but we were also buying him lunch, for God's sake. Congratulating him on having the wisdom not to drink and drive; we were practically giving him a parade. As long as we were kissing ass, why not just give him a couple cases of beer and a hundred bucks for his next five cab rides? Yeesh.
Ever modern and sensitive, we resisted the urge to blast his behavior. Instead, we told him we'd made mistakes. We reminded him of how close he'd come to blowing everything—losing his place at Boston College and possibly losing his high school baseball season. He admitted, "I went a little overboard," but there wasn't much contrition. Teens in 2006 are not easily embarrassed. These are teenagers who don't bother to put feet back on the floor and straighten out their clothes if you walk in on them when they are draped all over one another while watching TV.
We were all stuck with the ever-popular notion that everybody was doing it and let's just try to get to graduation without a tragic episode. Sam said in some ways it was better that he and his friends were learning about drugs and alcohol now, because they'd be less likely to go wild when presented with the ultimate freedoms that greet every freshman in every dorm in America each September. I was less than satisfied with the session but kept telling myself that there wasn't much parenting left to do. At this point, the kids are pretty much formed. They're soon to be on their own. They're going to have to live with the choices they make.
I was reminded of Chazz Palminteri's brilliant A Bronx Tale, in which the teenage Calogero Anello says, "Remember, the saddest thing in life is wasted talent and the choices that you make will shape your life forever." I'd made Sam watch the 1993 coming-of-age flick when we were together in Florida during his junior year, and he'd made it must viewing for some of his friends. Now those celluloid lessons were hitting him headfirst, like the barrel of a metal bat into the orbital socket.
Meanwhile, as we lurched toward March, the Newton North boys' basketball team—the one Sam wasn't on—continued to steamroll every team in eastern Massachusetts. They won their last home game to improve to 18-0 in early February. The final home game features a nice tradition: each senior is introduced by the head coach, then crosses the court to embrace his parents and present his mom with flowers. The 2005–2006 team had seven of Sam's classmates. Alexis's mom and dad were both on hand for the occasion. I hadn't seen them in the same place together since a Saturday morning soccer game when the boys were about 8 years old.
We had some good news on Alexis: he was accepted by Emmanuel College during the February break. He also made his first career start—no small event for a kid who'd been buried on the bench behind Corey and Anthony.
I first saw Corey Lowe when Sam was playing on a fourth-grade travel team. In those days, Corey was the best player on the team, the best player on the court in just about every game. A couple of years later, Sam was teammates with Anthony Gurley, who was equally spectacular. It fascinates me to see these young men, six years later, dominating our entire region. I've been going to basketball games for over forty-five years and like to think I know something about talent. So why was I so dismissive of these kids when they were little? Sure, they were good, I reasoned, but every team has one kid who is better than the others. Kids like that are all over the place and as the years unfold, those kids find out there are better players in other towns. They fall back to the pack. Not this time. Anthony and Corey were just as overpowering in high school as they were on those sixth-grade travel teams. I wondered if they'd be able to keep it up when they moved to the next level. I spoke with Chris Paul when the New Orleans Hornets came to the Garden and the soon-to-be-named NBA Rookie of the Year assured me that young Anthony was ready to play for the Deacons. "Tell him we need him right away," said the NBA star. Heady stuff for a high school kid.
Corey had grown up in Newton, while Anthony came to us via the Metco program from the heart of Boston, Roxbury. Unlike Corey, Anthony had crashed regularly in our home. Another brother for Sarah, Kate, and Sam. He wasn't a weekly presence like Alexis, but in the years before they all got their driver's licenses, Anthony slept in every bed on the second floor. Sam and the girls called him "Ant." He'd announce himself in the kitchen with "That sure smells good, Marilou." We've watched him grow up. Literally. Last time he was in the kitchen, I made him take off his shoes and look me in the eye, and I conceded that he is finally taller than me. A legitimate six foot three and still growing, Anthony is an explosive scorer who can create his shot off the dribble as well as any high schooler I've seen. Prep scouting publications ranked him the twenty-sixth-best recruit in the country in 2006. His mom drives for the MBTA and his dad runs a car detail shop in Boston. Big Tony Gurley tells me he'll be seeing a lot of games at Wake in the next few years—he's planning to rent an apartment in Winston-Salem. The Globe ran a lengthy profile of Anthony just before the state tournament, and it was predictably gushing. The feature included a photo of Anthony getting on a bus before 7 A.M. By any measure, Anthony was one of the best high school players in the history of our state.
In my world, you see thousands of kids playing ball through the years and many of them think they'll be in the NBA someday. It is the Great Myth. According to the National Alliance of Youth Sports, only one out of every 30,000 high school basketball players ever makes it to the NBA. But I was beginning to wonder if maybe Anthony was going to be that one in 30,000. In any case, I looked forward to watching him on television in the next few years. I knew I'd see him at the foul line in his Wake jersey and think of him making pancakes in our kitchen.
"I wish he was going to BC," said Sam. "We could have been roommates and that would have been so much fun."
Winning close games against good teams, the Tigers were 22-0 at the end of February and ranked first in eastern Massachusetts. This was about the same time I got a canceled check that I'd written out to the Newton North athletic department. It was check for $125 dated November 28—Sam's basketball user fee. I knew this was a mistake. Sam had only been at tryouts for two days. I called Athletic Director T. J. Williams, and he said we could apply the fee toward Sam's baseball season. He explained that there was no user fee if a player quit during tryouts or was cut from the team. I told T. J. that Sam neither quit nor was cut. He was "run off" encouraged not to try out for the team. Big difference, and I was still bitter, still stinging a little, as the North team stormed toward another state championship and another appearance at the Boston Garden. Sam, of course, had long since made his peace with that situation and was happy to sit in the stands and yell his head off with his classmates.
Anthony,
Alexis, Sam, and Nick Wolfe, one of the starting pitchers on the baseball team, were all at the house when I came home on the last night of February. I congratulated Anthony on the Globe article and Lex on his admission to Emmanuel. Sam placed a whopping order with Wings Express, and we all sat around the TV room eating steak tips and chicken wings before making the short drive to Boston College, where the Wake Forest Deacons were playing the Boston College Eagles. It reminded me of the old days when we'd pile a bunch of sixth graders into our old Volvo wagon for a trip to a travel team basketball game. In 2006, I was carrying more than a thousand pounds of humanity in my Camry and Anthony was too tall for the back seat.
Universal tip to all parents: if you want to learn what's going on with your kids, put your child in a car loaded with his peers, then shut up and drive. You will hear more truths than you'll get in a month of those dinner conversations where you ask, "How'd things go at school today?" In the car, toting kids to games, you might as well be Patrick Swayze in Ghost. You are invisible. Fortunately, this doesn't change even when they are seniors in high school.
On the drive over to BC, Nick said, "Sam, tomorrow's the first day of March. What do you say? Breakfast, lunch, and dinner?"
"I couldn't do that," said Sam. "Maybe lunchtime."
Turns out they had given up fast food for the month of February. Nice idea. Four weeks had passed and of course I never noticed.
I bumped into NBC's Tim Russert at the BC-Wake game. His son, Luke, was a student at Boston College, and I knew Tim had found it difficult to watch his only son go off to college after eighteen years at home.
"It was the most difficult six weeks of my life," said Russert. "For eighteen years I'm screaming about wet towels on the bathroom floor. All of a sudden, there are no more wet towels and you want wet towels on the floor."
March
The Red Sox played their annual spring training game against Boston College in the first week of March. Ace pitcher Curt Schilling, the big blowhard himself, got the nod for the start against the college kids and mowed them down, allowing no runs on one hit in four breezy innings. BC's first baseman, Dave Preziosi, a fifth-year senior, got Schill's attention right out of the gate when he took a Reggie Jacksonesque cut at a first-pitch fastball and fouled it back to the screen. The kid later admitted that he was going for a home run and had no problem when Schill buzzed him, up and in, on the next pitch. It occurred to me that with a little luck, Sam could be in that situation in another year. I doubt big Curt would show any mercy pitching to freshman Sam Shaughnessy.
Schilling hit a young player in the head the first time he faced major league batters a week later. The twenty-five-year-old Pirates outfielder Chris Duffy sustained a minor concussion when Schilling's 90-mile-per-hour fastball knocked the helmet off his head on an 0-2 pitch. After the game, Schilling said, "That ball should not have hit him. You've got to be able to get out of the way of that ... there's just no way that they shouldn't be able to get out of the way of that pitch. If they're not comfortable in the box, the body will get out of the way."
It was appalling—somewhat like friends of Dick Cheney blaming Cheney's hunting pal for not getting his face out of the way of the vice president's shotgun blast. The Pirates were not pleased when informed of Schilling's remarks.
Same here. As a parent of a ballplayer who soon was going to be playing at a fairly high level, I was beginning to view things a little differently. I was suddenly sympathetic to young players struggling just to get one day in the big leagues. Someday my own son might be one of the faceless minions we ignore at the minor league complex every year at spring training.
Seeing a batter take one off the helmet had new meaning, too. Sam had been hit quite a few times in his career but never on the head. It's not something you talk about. I presume trapeze performers don't have many discussions about falling off the high wire. Cops don't talk about the prospect of getting shot on the job. It's something that's always there, but it's bad luck to talk about it in advance. I knew Sam would have his moment of truth and there was no way to know how he'd react. A good hitter who digs in at home plate is going to be drilled sooner or later. Pitchers need to take back the inside of the plate and fear is part of their arsenal. That's what Schilling was talking about.
While I was in Florida watching the Red Sox, the Newton North basketball team kept winning. I checked in with Sam on a regular basis and was happy to hear that Alexis was getting more playing time and even drilled a couple of three-pointers in a state tourney semifinal. Anthony and Corey were still dominating, but Sam's Metco brother was making some big shots under a lot of pressure—and a lot of college coaches were watching. It was Alexis's dream to play basketball in college and I was beginning to think he might be able to pull it off.
Newton North's class of '06 returned to the Boston Garden. Playing in front of 10,000 fans, they topped Lawrence Central, and the seniors had some great things to say after the victory.
"This is our senior year, so we're all thinking when we come out here that this could be our last game," said Corey after raining twenty-five points through the Garden nets. "Everybody's going to go out there and play as hard as we can, and so far we've won every game, so it's working."
Jason Riffe, another senior shooter and one of the football studs, said, "It's still nice to come to the Garden because you don't get too many chances to come here. A lot of kids don't get to come here once and now it's twice for us. We still wanted to soak it up."
Soak it up. Here was a kid after my own heart.
In 1969, in anticipation of Groton High's best basketball team in years, I wrote a diary/book on our season and called it Throw Up for Glory. I can't really take credit for that title because I stole it from Bill Russell's seminal sports tome, Go Up for Glory. I'd checked Russell's book out of the high school library when I was a sophomore (in 2004, I found that same book on the shelf of the new Groton-Dunstable Regional High School library and my sign-out card was still tucked into the sleeve inside the back cover) and figured Big Bill wouldn't mind if I appropriated his title. A modern examination of my never-published work reveals this passage written in the winter of 1969–70: "It's all starting to kind of scare me—10-1, seven in a row, league leaders, Boston newspapers, and the aura of the Boston Garden. We could really go there."
We did not make it to the Boston Garden. Clinton High beat us in the central Mass. quarterfinals. That didn't stop me from sending Sports Illustrated a sample chapter of Throw Up for Glory, generously offering them first-serial rights. A few weeks later, I got a letter (which I still have, of course) from an associate editor politely informing me that the magazine was not in the business of publishing the diaries of high school basketball players. Their loss. Throw Up for Glory could have been A Season on the Brink or a Friday Night Lights. The movie soundtrack would have featured Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky."
I did not write a book about our senior hoop season at Groton, but I did cover our high school teams in a weekly column for local newspaper the Public Spirit. Covering five or six towns, the Spirit is one of those classic rags featuring lots of photos of guys shaking hands at the Rotary Club, alongside birth and wedding announcements, and news of when it will be okay to burn leaves on the curb in front of your house. In the 1970s, the best part of the Public Spirit was the weekly "police news" featuring reports of cats in trees and "suspicious" vehicles parked on quiet streets. It was fun to see who got busted for drunk driving, and in the 1970s, there seemed to be a lot of reports of young people caught with "a controlled substance, to wit: marijuana."
I was paid fifteen cents per inch for my sports reports. This meant an extra twenty to thirty bucks a month, plus I could get my friends' names in the paper. I could exaggerate the victories and make the losses go away. Since I was playing in many of the games, I used a pseudonym, "Lancer," which I selected because that was John F. Kennedy's code name with the secret service. Doubt many other 17-year-old kids knew that in 1970.
Intrepid "Lancer" found himself in a bind early in our basketball season, when I choked on a couple of free throws and almost cost us a game. We were playing on a Friday night in Littleton and, per usual, I was on the bench for just about the entire game. With about a minute left, our best player was injured as he was fouled. We didn't have any timeouts left, which meant that a benchwarmer would have to take the free throws after the brief delay. Coach Fahey sent me to the line. I could make twenty-four out of twenty-five free throws in practice. But this was different. I was cold and nervous. And I cared too much. I was not clutch. We were down by a point and I was going to the line for two and the gym was packed. My first attempt rimmed out. It was a good miss, but still a miss. Naturally, I choked on the second one, heaving a brick that barely drew iron. That was it for me. Back to the bench. When play resumed, our star was back on the floor and another teammate, Dave Bond, saved my ass with a put-back at the buzzer. Lancer's subsequent game story featured all the bloody details, including Dan Shaughnessy choking on a couple of free throws, but Coach Fahey got hold of the unedited copy and had my embarrassing performance expunged.
Senior Year Page 14
