Fantasy League

by Mike Lupica

  Then he let it go, the way he always had to let it go. One more truth in his life that he couldn’t run from. So he just waved at his mom, telling himself to be happy with what he had today: her, the game, first place on the line.

  First place on the line.

  He turned around one last time. That’s when he saw the old man sitting in the far corner of the bleachers.

  Thirty

  THE STANDS WERE COMPLETELY empty, except for Joe Warren, by the time Charlie got to the Palos Verdes side of Memorial. Nobody ever wanted to stay around long when you lost, especially if you were the visiting team.

  Mr. Warren was still in his seat, top row, corner. When Charlie got close he saw the old man was wearing a heavy Bulldogs windbreaker with leather sleeves. What was called a “throwback” jacket on their website and in the team store at the stadium, even though there was no “throwback” era for the Bulldogs because they hadn’t been around long enough.

  It just looked like the kind of throwback jacket you could get from the Giants and Bears and Packers and Steelers—teams that actually had a history.

  “You came,” Charlie said when he’d made his way to the top of the aluminum bleachers, even his rubber spikes making a lot of noise on the way up.

  “Told you I’d show up one of these Saturdays,” Joe Warren said, pulling down his sunglasses and giving him a wink.

  Then he had both hands inside the side pockets of the jacket again like he was cold, even though this was one of those perfect L.A. mornings, Charlie’s mom always telling him that L.A. was the world capital of mornings like this.

  “Well,” Charlie said, sitting down next to him, “at least you saw a good game.”

  “You were in on a couple of tackles when you were in there,” Joe Warren said. “First guy in on one of them, that sweep near the end of the first half.”

  By now he knew the old man didn’t miss very much in the game he was watching.

  “You’re the one always telling me that even a blind squirrel finds the acorn once in a while,” Charlie said.

  “I think in the modern world you might be obligated to say the nearsighted squirrel, now that I think of it,” the old man said.

  He smiled now at Charlie, pointed a trembling finger across the field.

  “Aren’t you holding up your mom?”

  “I told her I was coming over to see you. She’s still over there hanging with the other moms.” There was just a slight pause before he added, “And dads.”

  “What did you tell your coach just before the fourth quarter?” Joe Warren asked. “That the other quarterback was going back to that side of the field on the interception? It was, wasn’t it?”

  “I just thought I saw something,” Charlie said.

  “You thought you saw something.”

  “Actually, Mr. Warren, I remembered something Tom Pinkett told me the day we were watching film together.”

  Charlie told him about what Tom had said when he walked up to the screen, how the defensive back knew what Tom was going to do.

  “So you trusted that the other team’s quarterback would go back to his favorite receiver with the game on the line,” Joe Warren said.

  “I did,” Charlie said. “Tom said veteran QBs don’t do it all the time. But I figured that didn’t apply to a kid my age. I figured he’d trust his go-to guy.”

  “Wonderful thing, that kind of trust,” the old man said, staring out at all the green in front of him, hunching his shoulders a little, like he wasn’t just wearing his throwback jacket, but using it like a blanket.

  “Bit like faith, the whole trust thing,” Joe Warren said. “Sometimes you gotta believe in what you can’t see. Or haven’t seen yet. Might not ever see.”

  Sometimes, Charlie knew, you just had to let Joe Warren go. Eventually he’d get to his point. You just never knew how long it would take him. And sometimes half the fun was listening to him get there.

  “Don’t you stop trusting yourself because we’re not seeing the results we want right now,” the old man said. “Don’t you stop. I haven’t.”

  Charlie looked across the field at his friends, some still on the field, some hanging around in front of the Cardinals’ bench, like they were fine with the game being over but not this best part of their day, Charlie wondering if any of them even noticed him over here. Or had any idea who the old man with him was.

  Mr. Fallon would have known, but he wasn’t with the Cardinals today. He was at the radio station, hosting pregame and halftime and postgame shows for the UCLA-Washington game.

  “Jack Sutton was a terrible idea,” Charlie said. “I wish my mom hadn’t even taken me to see them shoot the movie that day. We would’ve all been better off.”

  “He did a dumb thing with that penalty, no question,” Joe Warren said. “Cost us that game all by himself. But I’m not giving up on him any more than I’m giving up on you. He still shows flashes of the player he once was.” He turned now, and faced Charlie. Then he smiled and said, “It’s why I’ve decided not to cut either one of you.”

  “Bet Matt wants you to cut us both,” Charlie said.

  “No, sir, he does not.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding, Mr. Warren.”

  “Well, even though I am quite a kidder, Charlie, I’m not pulling your leg on this, mad as he was that day after the out-of-bounds penalty. My son looks at the same game film our coaches do. And what he tells me is, Sack Sutton is starting to get his groove back.”

  “Too late,” Charlie said.

  “Well, if one of us is going to worry about it getting late, it’s me,” Joe Warren said. “Only I’m not. Anytime I start to feel a little too old and a little too sick, you know what keeps me going, Charlie?”

  Charlie didn’t answer him right away. The old man had never put that word into play before.

  Sick.

  “Do you, Charlie?” Joe Warren said.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I remind myself how much I love these games, how young they make me feel while they’re happening, how I can’t wait for the next one soon as the one we just played is over.”

  “Even when we lose?”

  “Even then.”

  “And you still think we’ve got a legitimate shot at the playoffs?”

  “It’s what keeps me going,” the old man said.

  The two of them sat there, quiet now. There were two little kids, Jarrod Benedict’s twin brothers, on the field, one of them with the ball, the other chasing.

  Finally Charlie asked Joe Warren if he and Carlos could give him a ride home. The old man said absolutely they could. Charlie went back down the bleachers, helmet in his hand, ran across the field, asked his mom if that was okay with her. She said fine with her, she’d go over to Santa Monica, do some shopping and see him at home.

  “It’s a good thing,” she said, nodding across the field.

  “What?”

  “Him,” she said. “Being here. For you.”

  He ran to the car, left his jersey and helmet and pads in there, took off his football pants and put on a pair of jeans and sneakers that his mom had brought with her and a Clippers T-shirt. Sprinted back across the field and back to the top row, out of breath as he said, “You never said anything about being sick before, Mr. Warren. Are you? Sick, I mean?”

  “As a matter of fact, Charlie boy, I am.”

  He stood up. It took some time, and some effort. Then he told Charlie to put out his arm so he could grab it like a railing, that railings were an old person’s best friend, even if they were attached to a young friend of his.

  Put a death grip on Charlie’s forearm. The two of them made their way slowly down through the bleachers.

  “Take a walk?” Joe Warren said.

  “Whatever you want,” Charlie said. “I have no place I need to be except with you.”<
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  “Got another true story for you,” the old man said. “This one about me.”

  Thirty-One

  THE TWO OF THEM WALKED—SLOWLY—AROUND the field at Memorial.

  Every so often, without warning, the old man would stop, put his head back, let the sun hit him full in the face. Almost like he was taking a drink of it.

  Then they would start up again.

  “You know how our defense has been the past month, Charlie?” he was saying now. “That’s what you start to feel like when you’re as old as I am.”

  “You don’t act old,” Charlie said. “You don’t think old. The way I look at it, that means you aren’t old.”

  “But I am,” Joe Warren said. “And when you are, you feel like no matter what you do, you never have enough defense to stop it. Age, I mean. It’s like a game you know you can’t win, no matter how hard you try.”

  They had made their way to the end zone, walking in front of the goalposts.

  “You can try to come up with the best game plan,” Joe Warren continued. “Diet and exercise and getting the proper rest and drinking so much water you feel like you’ve got an ocean inside you. Taking all the damn pills they want you to take. But no matter how much you do, you still know that eventually you’re going get hit and go down and stay down.”

  “That better be some hit, Mr. Warren, to put you down.”

  He put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder then, Charlie not sure if he was trying to steady himself, or just make a point.

  “That brings me to what you asked me right before we started our walk,” the old man said. “About being sick.”

  “Okay,” Charlie said.

  “You ever hear of a guy named Hodgkin, Charlie?”

  Charlie said he hadn’t, and the old man laughed.

  “’Course you haven’t,” he said. “Because this Hodgkin guy never played football. They did, however, name a disease after him. Hodgkin’s disease. They’ve even got one that they call non-Hodgkin’s, though I’ve often thought they should have given that one to some other fella. Anyway, Charlie, that’s what I’m sick with. The fancy name is non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I didn’t think I should keep it from a friend like you any longer.”

  He didn’t break stride, kept his slow normal pace as he added, “It’s a form of cancer, Charlie.”

  Charlie swallowed.

  “Oh,” he said.

  Looked over at Joe Warren, talking about cancer in the same way he’d been talking about the Cardinals beating Palos Verdes.

  “Oh,” he said again, not knowing what else to say.

  “I tell you all the time about telling the truth,” Joe Warren said. “So this is my big truth, Charlie. And stop looking like you’re afraid I might go down and stay down before we make it to the other end of the field. Because my doctors—and I’ve got enough to fill out an NFL roster, with practice squad—tell me that if I’m lucky, I will live out my days with this Hodgkin’s. Even if it does give me some bad days from time to time.”

  He pointed at Charlie, no shake to his hand now, and said, “This day not being one of them.”

  They were passing the Cardinals’ bench, all of the players and parents and coaches gone, the whole area cleaned up after snack, because the last person to police the area was always Coach Dayley. Like it was a crime scene.

  Charlie knew everybody called him Brain. But he didn’t think he was smart enough—or old enough himself—to know what he was supposed to say, how he was supposed to be responding to the news Mr. Warren had just given him.

  He did come up with a question.

  “Does Anna know?”

  “She does,” the old man said. “And has been as good at keeping it a secret from you as you were keeping the secret from her about Sack Sutton.”

  “She didn’t like that very much.”

  “I heard,” Joe Warren said. “Oh, did I ever hear.”

  “Her secret about you was bigger,” Charlie said.

  “But I trusted her, the way I trust you.”

  Then he said, “How about we sit and rest for just a minute?”

  He sat down on the Cardinals’ bench and Charlie sat next to him. The old man leaned back and took in more sun.

  “Isn’t this just the best day?” he said.

  Charlie wasn’t so sure about that, having heard what he’d just heard, but said, “Yes.”

  “Do you think we should go for ice cream after this? I think we should skip lunch and go straight to ice cream.”

  Charlie grinned. “Only if you keep one more secret, from my mom.”

  The old man put out his hand. Charlie shook it. It felt cold on a warm day.

  “All my days are great ones now, Charlie, maybe because I am a little sick,” the old man said. “Everybody always fusses over me when we lose a game, like if we don’t start winning all the losing might kill me. And they don’t understand that win or lose, I am having myself a wonderful time.”

  “For real?”

  “We were talking about trust before? Well, I trust this team, Charlie, whether it’s in a slump right now or not. I love that your friend Tom Pinkett gives us a chance to win every single game. That’s never happened before with the Bulldogs, not like this.”

  He offered his fist to Charlie, grinning as he did. Charlie bumped him some.

  “And I loved making the play for Sack Sutton, rolling the dice that way and shocking the world. And even when he screws up, I love how much he loves being back in football. Did you see when he caused that fumble at the end of the Houston game? He was jumping around on the sidelines like a little kid.”

  “He knew he’d screwed up earlier,” Charlie said. “You could just see how much he wanted to make up for it, even if it was too late in that game.”

  “He’s not where he’s going to be, I believe that,” Joe Warren said. Grinned and said, “He’s better than what we had, but not as good as we’d hoped. Does that make sense?”

  “Perfect sense,” Charlie said.

  “Two bad plays, three good ones,” the old man said. “An awful play followed by a great play. And those great plays, they’ve got to give you hope.”

  That word again.

  Charlie said, “Do you and Matt really think he’s going to play better the rest of the way?”

  “I do!” Joe Warren said. “I think his preseason is officially over. I think his legs are all the way underneath him now. I think he’s figuring out middle linebacker a little more every week. And I think he’s going to help lead us into the playoffs for the first time.”

  “I want you to be right about that, Mr. Warren. You have no idea how much.”

  “Tell you what,” he said. “These doctors of mine are always telling me that having a good attitude is half the battle. I think it’s actually way more than half. And if I can have a good attitude about things, so can you.”

  Then he told Charlie to put his arm out one more time, help him up, he wanted to go have a look at that Cold Stone his granddaughter was always telling him about.

  “Trust me on this, Charlie,” the old man said. “Things are going to get better.”

  Thirty-Two

  THE LAST THING JOE WARREN said to Charlie, after ice cream at Cold Stone and right before Charlie got out of the car in front of his house:

  “I need you to at least try to make up with my hardheaded granddaughter.” Grinning as he added, “Just because it will make my life a lot easier.”

  “Been trying, Mr. Warren.”

  “Try harder,” he said. “Just to bring a little extra peace to an old man’s life.”

  “She thinks I was big-timing her with Jack Sutton,” Charlie said. “She said my ego got in the way.”

  “You think maybe it did, at least a little bit?”

  “You think I suggested Jack to you because I wanted to get more
attention than I was already getting?” Charlie said. “Because that is what Anna thinks.”

  “No, I think you did it because you thought it was the right thing for our team,” Mr. Warren said. “But if you weren’t a little cocky about this stuff, you wouldn’t have brought him to me in the first place.”

  “Is cocky a good thing or bad?”

  The old man grinned again and said, “Generally it’s a little bit of both.”

  Charlie took his hand off the door. “Can I ask you something?”

  “You can ask me anything,” Mr. Warren said, “except where I left my slippers when I can’t find them.”

  “Do you think I’ve changed?” Charlie said. “I mean, since we became friends?”

  “You mean since we became boys?”

  Charlie smiled. “Yes, sir. Since then.”

  “The answer, Charlie boy, is that you have changed. But not in the way my Anna—our Anna—seems to think. And maybe not even the way you think, if you’re asking the question. But, yes, I think you have not only changed, but for the better.”

  “How?”

  “You’re more confident,” Mr. Warren said. “You’re more than just the boy other kids call ‘Brain.’”

  Charlie guessed maybe he was right. So he nodded.

  Joe Warren said, “Being in the spotlight, the way you have been, that was part of it, of course. And getting knocked down a couple of pegs lately, that actually wasn’t such a bad thing, either, no matter how much it hurt sometimes.”

  He put out his fist for the last time on this day, so Charlie could gently pound it, and said, “And maybe making yourself a new friend was part of it, too.”

  “The best part.”

  “Now go inside and call your best friend,” the old man said. “And once you’ve got her on the line, do something that will never ever hurt you in your dealings with the women in your life.”

  “What’s that?” Charlie said.

  “Tell her she was right.”

  • • •