Fantasy League

by Mike Lupica

  “My quarterback?” Charlie said.

  “Tom Pinkett.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “While there are many in the Los Angeles area who believe our entire quarterbacking situation is a joke,” the old man said, “I am certainly not joking. Your man Pinkett is under center tomorrow afternoon at one.”

  Chase Sisk, as all Bulldogs fans knew by then, had sprained his shoulder the previous Saturday night against the Saints after taking a hard sack. Officially he was listed as doubtful for the season opener, but everyone knew there was no way the team was going to risk losing him for the season by rushing him back.

  Charlie felt bad for the guy. He’d been allowed to go down to the locker room for a few minutes after the Rams game, and Chase had been as nice as any of the players he’d been introduced to. But Charlie the football guy, Brain, knew Sisk’s injury wasn’t a bad thing for the Bulldogs, just because he never thought Chase Sisk was ever going to be anything more than a big arm with a much smaller football brain.

  Not that he ever would have said that to Anna’s grandfather.

  But once Chase was gone, Charlie had just assumed that JJ Guerrero, his backup, would move up and be given a chance to show what he could do. Charlie and everybody else in town. Until now.

  Joe Warren picked up his glass, Charlie noticing the tremor in his hand, afraid he was going to spill some of his drink. But he just gestured for Charlie to pick up his.

  They touched glasses.

  “Cheers,” Joe Warren said. “And thanks, kiddo.”

  “For what?”

  He took a sip of his iced tea. Maria’s was way better than Snapple.

  “We never would have signed him if you hadn’t said something to me that night,” Joe Warren said.

  Then he winked at Charlie, smiled and said, “True story.”

  • • •

  When lunch was over Anna said she was going inside to watch some of the USC game on television. They were playing one of the early-season college football games against Florida.

  “You’re even watching college football now?” her grandfather said.

  “She thinks the Trojans’ sophomore quarterback is cuter than all of her boy bands put together,” Charlie said.

  “See you in a few,” she said to Joe Warren, kissing him on the cheek. “And you shut up, Charlie Gaines.”

  When she was gone, Joe Warren said to Charlie, “C’mon, I’ll show you my really quiet place.”

  It took some effort for him to get out of his chair, and Charlie almost jumped up to give him a hand. But the old man made it, and pointed down to the end of the lawn.

  “Down there,” Joe Warren said, and began walking slowly down the hill, in that careful walk you saw from old people, making sure not to shuffle his feet, picking them up and placing them on the grass in front of him, as if the next step he was going to take might be the one that put him down.

  Anna had told Charlie on the way over that her grandfather refused to use a cane, even though the rest of the family thought he needed one.

  The lawn went slightly downhill, down toward the last clump of trees. But then there was a path through them, and they walked into this beautiful, tiny garden, Charlie and Joe Warren standing in the middle of all these bright, amazing colors.

  Joe Warren, Charlie could see, was so tired it was as if he had just walked up a hill, face red, out of breath.

  “Sorry it took so long to get here,” Joe Warren said. “But my late friend Red Auerbach, who built the Boston Celtics, once gave me just two words of advice about growing older. Would you like to know what those two words are?”

  “I would.”

  “Don’t fall,” Joe Warren said, and then lowered himself into one of the two cushioned chairs positioned perfectly to catch the sun at this time of day.

  He smiled at Charlie now. “An old actress friend of mine once said that getting old ain’t for sissies. But you have to get as old as I am to find out how true that really is.”

  Then he told Charlie how he and his wife used to come out here at the end of the day, sometimes before dinner and sometimes afterward. And how he still liked to come down here when the sun was setting and talk to her for a few minutes the way he always had before she was gone.

  “I even used to put on some music and dance with her down here, Charlie. Sometimes I still do that, too.” He smiled at Charlie. “I keep telling myself that one of these days I might kick up my heels and dance at the stadium if this team of mine ever makes it into the playoffs.”

  “She sounds pretty special,” Charlie said. “Mrs. Warren, I mean.”

  “She was the one who always told me the truth,” Joe Warren said. “Still does, as a matter of fact.”

  Charlie thought it was weird, the idea of talking to dead people. But the old man looked happy just talking about it.

  “She was never afraid to tell me the truth,” he said. “Never afraid to tell me things she thought I needed to hear even if I didn’t want to hear them sometimes.”

  He paused, put his head back to take in some sun.

  “Now I seem to have surrounded myself with people who won’t tell me the truth. Or just give a version they think the poor old guy can handle.”

  He turned and looked hard at Charlie, Charlie thinking Joe Warren’s blue eyes were the youngest part of him. The brightest.

  “You’re a smart kid, Charlie,” he said. “You must know where I’m going with this.”

  “It’s about your team.”

  “I love my son, don’t get me wrong,” Joe Warren said. “And he loves me. And we’re going to build the Bulldogs into a champion together, I believe that in my heart. In the process, we were also going to finally have the father-son time we didn’t nearly have enough of when he was growing up.”

  Whatever it was, it was more than I had, Charlie thought.

  “But now the whole thing is a mess, despite my best intentions. And his . . .” His voice trailed off, running out of steam. “When I made the suggestion to him about Tom Pinkett, he acted as if I didn’t trust his judgment anymore. Said that I had installed him as general manager so he could make football decisions. Then I got my back up a little and said that in addition to being the owner of the team, I was also team president last time I checked.”

  Charlie waited.

  “He said that any time I wanted to replace him, I should go ahead. I told him that I had done a little research and felt that Tom Pinkett might be a better backup than JJ, might even turn out to be our best option at quarterback this season. And lo and behold? Our coach ended up agreeing with me.”

  Charlie didn’t know what to say, so they sat there in silence for a few minutes, Joe Warren tipping his head back again to let the sun hit his face.

  Finally he said, “You want to talk some football, Charlie?”

  “I always want to talk football.”

  That is what they did, the old man even pulling a piece of paper and a pen out of his back pocket, taking a few notes to himself as they went position by position, going through the strengths and weaknesses of the Bulldogs.

  At one point Joe Warren said, “You won’t ever lie to me, will you, Charlie? Or just tell me what you think I want to hear?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good.”

  But he looked more than tired in that moment, he looked sad, Charlie wanting in the worst way to take the sad look off his face in the middle of what felt like such a great day. He wanted to do something right now to justify the old man’s confidence in him, his trust, his friendship.

  “I never talk much about my dad, Mr. Warren,” Charlie said, “not with anybody except my mom, and even her not so much. He left when I was little and never came back and I don’t think he’s ever going to come back. He doesn’t ever talk to my mom and he doesn’t ever talk to me.”

&
nbsp; “Anna told me about him,” the old man said. “Or as much as she knows about him.”

  “I’m not telling you that because I want you to feel sorry for me, Mr. Warren,” Charlie said. “I’m telling you because I just think that no matter how bad things might seem sometimes between you and Matt, well, it just seems to me those aren’t such bad problems to have.”

  Joe Warren smiled then, smiled like he meant it, reached over and squeezed Charlie’s hand.

  “Charlie, my boy, I’m awfully glad of something.”

  “What’s that?” Charlie said.

  “You’re not just my football friend,” he said. “You’re my friend, period.”

  They went back to talking football after that until Anna came out of the trees looking for them, saying that her mom was here and it was time to go.

  • • •

  The next day thirty-eight-year-old Tom Pinkett threw three touchdown passes and no interceptions as Charlie watched with Anna and her grandfather from his suite.

  And the Bulldogs went to 1–0, upsetting the 49ers.

  Ten

  TWO THINGS HAPPENED THE NEXT week, both huge in Charlie’s universe.

  First: Finding out that Kevin Fallon’s dad was going to play Charlie’s fantasy picks from The Charlie Show on his nightly radio show. Kevin and his dad had listened to the podcast and Mr. Fallon thought his listeners would get a kick out of a twelve-year-old being this informed about pro football, especially a kid from his own Pop Warner team. So he said that if Charlie was willing they’d give it a shot, see how the audience reacted, think about making it a regular segment.

  Charlie “Brain” Gaines on E-S-P-N radio.

  Second huge deal: Joe Warren invited Charlie to watch practice with him on Thursday, telling him that he’d asked Anna to come along, too, but was reminded she had a piano lesson that couldn’t be moved. It was her mother’s idea, Anna learning a musical instrument, a fact that Anna was constantly reminding Charlie of, telling him her mother thought music would make her more of a lady.

  She always put air quotes around “lady.”

  “I’m wondering,” Anna said to him one time, “if Mom wants me to be the kind of musical lady that somebody like Lady Gaga is. Or that other famous lady, Miley Cyrus.”

  But of course she had gotten really good at piano really fast, despite her constant grumbling that it was taking her away from sports, and Charlie knew she actually looked forward to her lessons. Just not tomorrow, because she would rather have been at Bulldogs practice with Charlie and her gramps.

  On Wednesday night, Charlie and Anna were at her house, up in her room, waiting for the last fifteen minutes of Mr. Fallon’s show . . . and for Charlie’s debut on ESPN radio.

  They’d finished the second Charlie Show that afternoon over at Charlie’s house, then gone to the Anna’s for dinner, Charlie’s mom having another late night at the studio.

  Now they waited through the calls and guests on Mr. Fallon’s show. To Charlie the show usually felt like one more place on the dial you could go to for nonstop Bulldogs bashing. Yet not this week, not after the way Tom Pinkett and the whole team had played in the opener. Even Steve Fallon—normally one of the bashing kings of L.A. radio—was being nice tonight, though what he was mostly doing was telling listeners to enjoy the team’s victory while they could, before this week’s princes turned into next week’s frogs.

  “These are the two hours of the day when I don’t like Kevin’s dad very much,” Anna said. “He’s mean even when he’s trying to sound nice.”

  “I don’t think he means it,” Charlie said. “Most guys on the radio, and you know how much I listen to the radio, say stuff just to draw attention to themselves. And usually think they’re funnier than they actually are.”

  “Mean is still mean.”

  “How about all the mean things you say about your own family’s team?”

  “To you,” she said. “I say them to you. You never hear me do it in front of other kids. Not even Kevin.”

  “But you do mean your mean things.”

  Anna laughed. “Soooooo much.”

  Steve Fallon had been taking calls for most of the last half hour, Charlie thinking the comments were mostly boneheaded, people acting as if they had no idea what they were watching when they watched the Bulldogs play. Mr. Fallon had begun the last hour of his show, which ran from seven to nine, interviewing one of the radio broadcasters from the Ravens, who Charlie thought sounded like just another caller, only with a deeper voice.

  Like he should have just identified himself as Bob from Baltimore.

  Finally—finally—with about eight minutes left in the show, Mr. Fallon introduced the clip with Charlie, explaining that he played on a team with his son, Kevin, that he was known as Brain to his teammates, and was practically like the pinball wizard of fantasy football.

  “What’s a pinball wizard?” Charlie said.

  “No clue,” Anna said.

  “By the way?” he said. “I pretty much could have gone the rest of my life without being called ‘Brain’ on the radio.”

  “Deal,” she said. Her way of telling him to deal with it.

  Then she was shushing him, even though she was the last one talking, because there was Charlie’s voice coming out of her radio, from the clip Mr. Fallon was using from The Charlie Show.

  He listened to himself make his picks, talking about the points he’d picked up in Week One, talking about a trade he’d made already, talking about how his kicker—from the Texans—had made three long field goals in Houston’s opener, getting him even more points from that position than he’d expected. Who to sit and who to watch and how his team defense, the Giants, had not only shut out the Eagles, but scored two defensive touchdowns and had six sacks.

  Charlie tried to act like it was no big deal, tried not to act excited in front of Anna.

  Knowing he was ridiculously excited.

  “You sounded like a pro,” Anna said when she shut off the radio.

  “I sounded like a small dog. I’m just glad I didn’t have to do it live.”

  “You could have.” Anna smiled. “Dog.”

  “Mr. Fallon said maybe down the road. For now if he just takes some of our show, he can play it whenever he wants in his show and I don’t have to sit around waiting for him to call me.”

  “You know I’d be all over you if it wasn’t any good,” she said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “But it was good. Really good. Really.”

  “I wonder if anybody was really listening.”

  “Just wait, Charlie Gaines,” she said. “Just wait for the reaction from people who really were listening, and are about to find out how much of a Brain you really are about football.”

  He didn’t mind when she said it.

  “If I’m so brilliant, how come you disagree with me so often?”

  She smiled right at him. Charlie wondering, and not for the first time when he was with her, how old you had to be to tell a girl how much you loved a smile like hers; if you had to wait until you were in high school.

  “Being a brain doesn’t mean always being right,” she said. Still smiling she added, “Deal with that, too.”

  Eleven

  MR. WARREN’S DRIVER, CARLOS, PICKED up Charlie at eleven sharp the next morning for the ride to practice. Charlie didn’t know a lot about cars or have much interest in them, even living in Los Angeles, but he knew enough to recognize that he was riding in the backseat of a shiny black Mercedes.

  Something else he didn’t know:

  Whether he was supposed to talk to the driver or not.

  But then it was Carlos who started talking about the Bulldogs, Charlie figuring out quickly that he knew his football, and loved his L.A. Bulldogs almost as much as he loved Joe Warren.

  “He deserves so much bette
r,” Carlos said. He had volunteered to Charlie that he had been born in Mexico, but had hardly any accent.

  Charlie said, “Maybe last week is the start of something, and they’re going to surprise us this season.”

  Looked up from the backseat, saw Carlos looking at him in the rearview mirror. Grinning.

  “De tus labios a los oídos de Dios,” he said.

  “I’m bad at Spanish.”

  Carlos said, “From your lips to God’s ears, young man.”

  When they got to Bulldogs Stadium they used the players’ entrance for cars, went down a long ramp, Charlie starting to think that the next stop for them might be the fifty-yard line. Eventually they parked in a space that Carlos said was only about fifty yards from the Bulldogs’ locker room. The sign on the wall in front of them said “Mr. Warren, Sr.”

  Next to them was a fancy red convertible, top down. The sign in front of that one said “Mr. Warren, Jr.”

  And on the other side of that, Carlos told him, was the Jeep Laredo belonging to the team’s head coach, Nick Fiore.

  Charlie and Anna had talked about Coach Fiore, whom they both liked. Everyone in the media seemed to agree that Nick Fiore’s job was on the line this season. For once, even Charlie and Anna agreed that it wasn’t fair to blame Coach Fiore, that you could only coach the players you had. Anna always adding, “The players my uncle drafted or traded for.”

  But even at the age of twelve, Charlie had figured out that nobody had ever passed a law saying sports had to be fair.

  Any more than life had to be.

  Carlos and Charlie rode up to Mr. Warren’s office in a private elevator, the office one level below his suite, a whole wall of windows behind his desk looking down at the field.

  There were two men standing at the windows with their backs to the office, watching practice.

  “Mr. Warren,” Carlos said, “your guest is here.”

  Joe Warren’s sweater was a light blue today, but other than that he looked the same as he had at the house the day before the opener. The younger guy standing next to him, Charlie knew right away, was Matt Warren, the Bulldogs’ general manager.