Fantasy League

by Mike Lupica

  Mr. Warren’s son. Anna’s uncle.

  And the guy most local sports fans, at least the loudest ones, thought was responsible for the team being as bad as it had been since its first season, whether they’d just won the first game of this season or not.

  “Charlie,” Matt Warren said, coming around his dad’s desk to shake Charlie’s hand. “Good to see you.”

  They’d met briefly in Mr. Warren’s suite during the Panthers preseason game, Matt just stopping in for a few minutes.

  “Nice to see you again, Mr. Warren.”

  “Call me Matt. My dad’s the Mr. Warren in the family.”

  “See how they treat you when you’re as old as Sunset Boulevard?” Joe Warren said.

  His son said, “We’re just standing here wondering if the team we’re looking at can get to 2–0 against the Ravens.”

  “We’ve never done that,” Charlie said. “Started 2–0.”

  Matt Warren raised his eyebrows and said, “You weren’t joking about this kid. He knows his stuff.”

  “I do believe I might have mentioned that in passing,” Joe Warren said, winking at Charlie.

  “Tell me about it,” Matt said. “Charlie, my dad spends more time these days talking football with you than he actually does talking football with me.”

  “I guess I’m as lucky as you are,” Charlie said. “Getting to talk football with him, I mean.”

  “Young people make old people feel less old,” Joe Warren said. “Sometimes the younger the better.”

  Joe Warren motioned Charlie to come around the desk and stand with them at the windows. There were players and coaches all over the field, the players in full pads, offense scrimmaging against the defense, Matt Warren explaining to Charlie how they’d changed the rules in the last few years, the NFL reducing the number of full-contact practices. A lot of it had to do with the attention brought to concussions and brain injuries, but the players’ association had bargained for it, Matt Warren said, thinking it might lengthen careers.

  All of which Charlie knew, but he wasn’t going to tell Matt Warren that.

  On the field Tom Pinkett threw a bullet pass over the middle, then floated a deep ball just over the hands of defensive back Ray Milner—Charlie knew who it was before he saw the number—and into the hands of the best wide receiver out of all the ones Matt Warren had drafted, Harrison Mays.

  “I have to admit,” Matt Warren said, “I never thought the old guy would throw like he did last Sunday ever again, at least not in a real game.” Shook his head and said, “Most yards he’s thrown for in ten years.”

  This time, Charlie couldn’t help himself, didn’t hold back what he already knew.

  “Actually,” he said to Matt Warren, “he had that one game three years ago when he came off the bench for the Titans and went crazy and ended up throwing for more than that.”

  Matt Warren turned and smiled at Charlie. The kind of smile you got from your parents—or your parent—when they were trying to be patient with you without coming out and telling you that you’d just said something that was dumber than hamsters.

  “Not for three-fifty,” Matt said.

  “Three ninety-two,” Charlie said.

  He was a guest here, even if he wasn’t Matt Warren’s guest. But this was football. And in football the numbers mattered. Maybe more to Charlie Gaines than to anybody.

  So even though he knew he should have dropped it, he hadn’t. He turned and saw Joe Warren smiling at his son the same way Matt Warren had just smiled at Charlie, Charlie thinking the old man’s eyes were full of mischief as he said to his son, “Why don’t you check on that fancy phone of yours.”

  “Really, Dad?”

  “Just for the fun of it.”

  Matt Warren sighed, knowing he had no choice in the matter, not in front of Charlie. He pulled his iPhone out of his back pocket, moving his thumbs across the keys on the screen like he was sending a fast text.

  Then he put the phone away and shrugged. “Turns out you were right, Charlie. Titans against the Colts. In Indy. Twenty-four out of thirty-eight, for three hundred ninety-two yards. Three TDs and a pick. Guy bounced around so much, I lost track of him.”

  “Well,” Charlie said, not wanting this whole scene to get any more awkward than it already was, “we were both sort of right. Tom hadn’t thrown that way in a while.”

  “Charlie boy’s a fantasy whiz, I probably mentioned that, too,” Joe Warren said. “In passing.”

  On the field, they’d moved the offense back to its own twenty-yard line and Tom Pinkett threw another long ball, this one to Maurice James, another one of the Bulldogs’ high-draft-choice wideouts from two years ago. He was the biggest talker on the team, constantly complaining that nobody would toss him the rock, as he put it, at least not often enough to keep him happy.

  But Matt Warren barely seemed to notice, turning to his father and saying, “You’ve been talking about Charlie and fantasy football so much lately I think I need to get you into a league.”

  “Me? With a team in a fantasy league?” Joe Warren said with a wink. “Well, that’s just the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m busy enough just owning one team.”

  Charlie grinned, knowing Joe Warren was playing a bit of a game with the two of them.

  “Speaking of our beloved Bulldogs, isn’t there something you’d like to say to Charlie boy, Matt?”

  Matt Warren sighed and Charlie thought his face started to redden. Yet his voice sounded sincere. “I had my doubts. Yet if Tom Pinkett keeps playing the way he did against the 49ers, he really could be more than a one-game changer. So if I haven’t officially thanked you, I’m doing that now.”

  Charlie, smiling back, said, “You’re welcome.”

  Matt said, “I know everybody, starting with my dad, is stuck on the subject of Tom Pinkett right now. But I think we’ve all got to take a deep breath and remember he can’t be a one-man team.”

  “I’m not stuck on him,” Joe Warren said. “Unless the definition of stuck means being pleasantly surprised.”

  “What else have we been talking about for the past week,” Matt said. “How you think the Dodgers are going to do down the stretch against the Giants?”

  Still smiling, even though Charlie didn’t think he meant it all that much at the moment.

  “Anyway,” Matt said, “one of my jobs around here right now is to keep reminding everybody it really did count for just one win from Charlie’s quarterback. And I need to keep thinking of other ways to improve our team.”

  “For which your father is constantly grateful, if I haven’t mentioned that to you lately.”

  Matt started to say something, kept it inside instead. Then he told Charlie he’d see him around, told his dad he’d talk to him later, turned and left, Charlie feeling in that moment as if a whole lot of tension had left the room with him.

  “Sometimes he thinks I’m putting more pressure on him than I really am,” Joe Warren said finally. “It’s not as easy as it looks to run a team.”

  He sat down now, pulled back the middle drawer of his desk, took out a small pill bottle, popped one into his mouth, drank it down with water. Saw Charlie watching him.

  “Don’t worry,” Joe Warren said. “Pill taking is as much a part of being old as forgetting where you put your reading glasses.” He smiled. Small one. “Or getting stuck on things and annoying your children.”

  He slapped his palms on the desk, stood up, said to Charlie, “Okay: Do we watch practice from up here, or down on the field?”

  “No-brainer,” the boy known as Brain said. “Field.”

  “Thought so,” Joe Warren said. “Let’s go down there and remind ourselves that football is still supposed to be fun.” He smiled again. “For football fans old and young.”

  • • •

  They took the elevator down and w
alked through a tunnel and then up a runway and then everything in front of Charlie was green grass and blue sky.

  He was on the practice field with his team.

  Not Joe Warren’s team in that moment.

  His.

  As soon as one of the equipment managers saw Joe Warren on the field, Charlie saw him running toward another runway, one closer to the Bulldogs’ locker room. What felt like a minute later, he came riding out on the field with a golf cart that had a roof on it, drove it right over to where the old man and Charlie were standing, at the end of the home team’s bench.

  The old man said to Charlie, “They need to bring me my own shade.”

  The two of them sat down in the cart and Joe Warren took the wheel, promising Charlie he’d let him have a turn later. Charlie said that he was totally down with that.

  Then they watched as Tom Pinkett and the offense kept scrimmaging right in front of them, like football was finally close enough for Charlie to wrap his arms around it, Charlie hearing the grunts and the thud of contact, not to mention some of the most colorful and creative swearing he’d ever heard in his life.

  “When you get home later and your mother asks how your day went,” Joe Warren said, “please leave out the part about the salty language.”

  “My mom says you can never shock her with bad words. Part of her job requires saying no to agents.”

  The old man laughed. A good sound, Charlie thought.

  Practice went on. Neither one of them spoke, Charlie concentrating, trying to take in everything at once. Observating, Anna would call it. At one point Charlie took a couple of pictures with his phone, just to have something to show Kevin Fallon tomorrow at his own practice.

  They had been there about half an hour when Joe Warren said, “Let’s play a little game.”

  “Don’t make it a hard one,” Charlie said. “I’m having too good a time.”

  “As am I, Charlie boy. As am I.”

  “I don’t know why this feels even way cooler than getting to come to games, but it does,” Charlie said.

  “Maybe it’s because the stands are empty,” the old man said. “It feels like the sport belongs just to us.”

  Nailed it on the head, Charlie thought.

  “So what’s the game, Mr. Warren?”

  “A game of pretend,” he said. “Think of it as a different kind of fantasy football.”

  “Okaaaaay.”

  “Every football fan’s fantasy is to own their own team, right? Let’s pretend for the next little while that the Bulldogs are really yours, and not mine.”

  Wait for it, as Anna liked to say.

  “Tell me what you’d do if it was your team to make it better.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Hardly ever say anything I don’t, son,” Joe Warren said. “Thought you knew that already.”

  Charlie took in some air. Then he swallowed. Just buying himself a little bit of time.

  Then he said, “We’re as good as a lot of contenders on both lines, especially on defense. But if we don’t improve our linebackers and secondary, we’re never going to beat anybody.”

  He kept going from there.

  Charlie Gaines talking football with someone listening to every word he said. Yeah. A whole different kind of fantasy football.

  Twelve

  AFTER HIS OWN PRACTICE THAT night with the Cardinals, Charlie told Kevin Fallon some of what had happened with Mr. Warren, but not all of it, saving the best parts for when he met up with Anna later at Cold Stone.

  Kevin and him lying in the grass a little after six o’clock, away from the other guys, Charlie waiting for his mom to pick him up.

  “You know,” Kevin said, “if it were me that had gone to practice with the owner of the team . . .”

  “Which it wasn’t,” Charlie said.

  “But if it were me,” Kevin continued, “I’d already have the pictures up on Facebook, and right now I’d be telling the whole team.”

  “But I’m not you,” Charlie said.

  They were good friends, as different as they were. Starting with what different players they were, how good Kevin was at football, and how Charlie would have given anything to be that good. To be Kevin out on that field. Be that kind of star running back.

  Off the field, though, Kevin struggled sometimes—or Charlie struggled with having him as a friend—mostly because Kevin thought everything that had ever happened to him in his life was the most interesting thing that had ever happened to anybody.

  And couldn’t wait to broadcast it. Like he was the real broadcaster in his family and not his dad.

  Charlie was used to it by now, and tried not to let it bother him too much, just because he knew there was so much more good than bad to Kevin Fallon, the two not even close if he was listing all the good things. Big mouth, but a big heart, too. Charlie knew how generous Kevin was, and how every year at Father’s Night at school Kevin would have his dad pick Charlie up so they could all go together. Wouldn’t ever let Charlie skip the event. He knew how hard Kevin had worked in the summer trying to get Charlie to be a better football player, working with him on his agility, showing him how to be better in pass coverage, telling him all the time, “If you can even come close to staying with me, you can stay with anybody, dude.”

  Still: There was no way on earth that Charlie was telling Kevin about things getting a little tense between Mr. Warren and Matt Warren in that office. Or Mr. Warren quizzing Charlie about the Bulldogs’ roster when they were on the field in the golf cart, Mr. Warren treating Charlie like he was his new scouting director.

  On the field now with Kevin, Charlie said, “This stays between us, right? Like, really between us?”

  Charlie had pulled his cell phone out of his gym bag because he’d promised Kevin he’d show him a few of the pictures he’d taken. “I don’t want Mr. Warren thinking that I’ve got a big mouth.”

  It got a grin out of Kevin. “You mean like mine.”

  “You said it, not me. But we’ve got a deal, right?”

  “Yes. Now show me the pictures before I have to beat you.”

  Charlie did. Kevin not believing how close Charlie had been to the action, even if it was practice and not a game. Kevin scrolled through the pictures and then did it again, commenting on every one, like he was giving some sort of slide-show presentation. Then Charlie told him about what a cool guy Carlos was, the guy who’d driven him to practice. How he’d met Coach Fiore, even congratulated him on the team’s big win over the 49ers, and how Coach had said:

  “I’ll tell you what I told the team before practice today, Charlie. If we don’t make it happen again next week, it will be as if last week didn’t happen. And people will think we’re the same old Dogs.”

  “You get to talk to any of the players?” Kevin asked.

  “I wish.”

  “Who would you most want to talk to?”

  Charlie didn’t even have to think about it. “Tom Pinkett.” There was no way he was telling Kevin why, though.

  “Yeah, well, good luck with that one,” Kevin said. “Even my dad has never gotten a one-on-one with Tom Pinkett no matter how hard he’s tried.”

  “Can’t tell your dad about any of this.”

  “Our deal applies to my father?”

  “Especially to your father.”

  Kevin’s mom called to him from behind the bench, telling him it was time to go. Kevin asked Charlie if he needed a ride and Charlie said, no, he was good, his mom would be here any minute.

  “Some day for you,” Kevin said.

  “You have no idea,” Charlie said.

  Knowing he had left out plenty, not just about the scene between father and son before he went down to the field, and not just about all the talking about the team he’d done with Mr. Warren in that golf cart.

  Joe Warren
had also told Charlie before he left that he could come to practice at least once a week.

  More than that, if he could manage with his football and school schedule.

  “Think of it as your new after-school job,” the old man had said.

  Then he’d winked at Charlie again, like that was a way for the two of them to seal the deal.

  Thirteen

  “GRAMPS SAID THAT?” ANNA SAID. “For real? He called it an after-school job?”

  They had gotten their ice cream at Cold Stone, brought it with them to their favorite bench in Media Park, not so far from Sony Studios.

  “He said he wants me to be his other set of eyes,” Charlie said, “as often as I can.”

  “That is so crisp,” Anna said.

  One of her favorite expressions. The progression, as far as Charlie could tell, was cool to fresh to crisp.

  Crisp was as good as it got.

  She ate more ice cream out of a big cup. Chocolate Devotion was her favorite flavor, smothered in chocolate sauce and chocolate sprinkles. Charlie knew that if Anna were forced to choose between chocolate and football, she would have to give some serious thought to that.

  “It’s weird,” Charlie said. “Your grandfather has really only known me for a week, and he acts as if he’s known me as long as he’s known you.”

  “You’re kind of easy to get to know,” she said

  “He’s a very cool guy, your Gramps,” Charlie said. “I can see it when he’s with you.”

  “He’d like it more if I were a boy,” she said. “He’s still hoping that when Matt gets married, his wife has a boy.”

  “He’s not going to love any grandson more than he loves you,” Charlie said. “Trust me on that one.”

  “Really?” she said. “Old guys like Gramps still think that sports is more of a guy thing. Like, he’d never ever think of me running the Bulldogs when I grow up.”

  “Women have owned teams,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah,” Anna said, “when their husband who owned the team before them up and died.”