by Mike Lupica
The Cardinals didn’t panic on offense, didn’t try to come back all at once with long passes, played as if they had plenty of time—which they did.
Jarrod threw short passes when he wasn’t handing the ball off to Kevin Fallon, Charlie sure Kevin was over a hundred rushing yards for the day now. With four minutes and forty seconds left, the Cardinals faced a third-and-four at the Vikings’ seventeen-yard line. Jarrod ran an option with Kevin that had been working for them since the Cardinals’ first series of the game, decided to keep the ball this time, was just about to turn the corner, plenty of open space in front of him, when the Palos Verdes safety came flying in from the side, launched himself at Jarrod, put his helmet on the ball and knocked it loose.
Fumble, scramble, big pileup.
When the refs sorted it all out, it was the Vikings’ ball with time running out. A turnover might seal the win.
Coach Dayley and Coach Fallon quickly gathered the defense around them.
“We need a stop, boys,” he said. “Or we need the ball. Somebody make a play for us.”
The Vikings ran the ball twice for only three yards, but then Graham scrambled for nine yards and a first down.
Three minutes left.
Charlie wondering when Coach was going to call one of the two time-outs he had left, watching the clock run, maybe running out on their season.
Graham kept it on first down, an option play, Shota Matsumoto coming up and making the play on him, a big hit that knocked Graham’s right shoulder pad out of his jersey. But when everybody got up after the play, Shota stayed down, holding his shoulder. He didn’t get to his feet until Coach Dayley and Coach Fallon pulled him up and started to walk him off the field.
When they all got to the sideline Coach said, “Get in there for Shota, Charlie. Don’t need just your eyes now. Make a play.”
The Vikings ran the ball again on second down, and Coach used his first time-out, right before the two-minute warning stopped the clock.
Third-and-long for the Vikings.
If they got another first down, the game would be over, unless the Vikings somehow turned the ball over. Game over. Season over. The Vikings—champs.
The offense broke the huddle.
As they did, the fullback started to take his normal position.
Then Graham Yost moved him to his right.
Charlie’s eyes on him as he did.
Moved him the way he had in the second quarter on the screen pass Charlie had batted down.
Charlie also saw that the other running back had moved into the slot to help spread out the defense, no weak-side blocking to Graham’s left if Charlie came with a blitz.
A blitz he was calling for himself now. A backup linebacker who’d spent most of the year thinking that was his position. Backup, not linebacker.
Make a play, Coach had said.
Too late to tell anybody else—he didn’t want to tip off Graham. But Charlie was sure he was going to try to throw the screen, get the first down, and close out the Cardinals right here and now.
Graham took the snap from center, Charlie so anxious he nearly jumped the count. But he was coming hard from Graham’s left, nobody paying any attention to him. It was why there was suddenly all this green between Charlie and the Palos Verdes quarterback.
Jack Sutton had once said all quarterbacks, no matter how good they were, had the same chance when they didn’t know you were coming.
No chance.
Charlie saw Graham Yost’s arm coming up now. But he never got it moving forward.
Charlie was on him.
Making sure not to come in too high or lead with his helmet, he knew the rules about that, knew them the way his coaches did.
He kept his helmet down and lowered his shoulder and drove it into Graham’s side, feeling the air come out of Graham.
The ball came loose.
Both Charlie and Graham Yost were facing the same way on the ground, right next to each other, facing the Palos Verdes end zone.
The ball was right there in front of them, maybe a yard out of their reach.
But Charlie had spotted it before Graham did and started scrambling after it like a sand crab on the beach, not wanting to waste time even trying to get to his knees.
Coach Dayley always talked about how you had to want it more than the other guy in football. Charlie wanted the football now, more than he ever wanted anything in a game he was playing and not watching.
He could see Graham out of the corner of his eye trying to get up and get to the ball, as if he had time to do both and still beat Charlie to it. Only he didn’t.
Somehow in the same motion, Charlie managed to push himself up as he put his hands on the football.
He felt Graham reaching for his legs. Too late. Charlie was upright now, ball in his hands, moving, starting to run.
Running with the ball for the first time as a Culver City Cardinal.
He never even peered over his shoulder, his eyes focused only on the end zone in front of him. Never even saw all the Viking jerseys chasing him.
Not sure where he was on the field exactly, not sure if it was the twenty-yard line or the fifteen. Just seeing the end zone in front of him. Telling himself that if he was ever going to be fast, now would be as good a time as any.
He tucked the ball firmly between his elbow and shoulder, pressing it to him as hard as he could. Charlie had watched enough football in his life to have seen enough balls get knocked loose by a defender coming up from behind, the guy with the ball not expecting the hit.
The hit came when he got to the five, Charlie hearing the Palos Verdes guy yell with the effort it must have taken to catch up with him and jump on his back before it was too late.
Charlie felt the guy on him reaching for the ball. Charlie started to lose his balance and go down, knowing that even if he didn’t score, he could at least put the Cardinals at the one or two, just as long as he didn’t fumble and ruin the greatest play he was probably ever going to make in his life.
With one final effort, Charlie gripped the ball tight and launched himself, just trying to fall forward. He did, falling just far enough to reach the white line of the end zone.
Touchdown.
26–25 Cardinals.
• • •
The rest of the guys on defense mobbed him in the end zone.
Before they got back to the sideline Sean Barkley banged helmets with Charlie and yelled, “Brain, using his!”
The Cardinals missed the conversion. On the kickoff, the Vikings’ returner took the kick back to the forty and nearly broke it for more than that, scaring Charlie and his teammates half to death.
But the Cardinals’ defense held up as Graham Yost threw four straight incompletions. The Cardinals took over on downs and Jarrod knelt to run out the clock.
Game over. Cardinals the champs, by a point.
Charlie stayed on the field with his teammates, all of them waiting for the trophy presentation. Before it started, Charlie jogged over to where his mom and Anna were standing behind the Cardinals’ bench.
His mom hugged him, pulled back and said, “I grew up around here. And when I was a little girl, Kirk Gibson hit this home run to win a World Series game when he was so hurt he could barely walk, and when he did the announcer said, ‘I don’t believe what I just saw.’ Well, I’m not sure I believe what I just saw.”
“Same,” Charlie said.
Anna hit him with a high five that was so hard Charlie thought his right hand might have gone numb on him.
“I’m never calling you Brain again,” she said.
“Finally.”
“Only because your new nickname is Sack.”
“I’ll take it,” he said. Then jerked his head at the bleachers and said, “Your gramps didn’t make it?”
Anna smiled. “No, h
e made it, all right. About one minute before Sack Gaines did all kinds of bad things to the other team’s quarterback.”
Then she pointed toward a clump of trees beyond the bleachers, right before you got to the parking lot. Joe Warren was sitting in what looked to be some kind of fancy lawn chair, Carlos standing next to him, across from the end zone where Charlie had scored his touchdown.
Charlie ran over to Coach, asked him how long before the trophy presentation. Coach told him he still had about five minutes, they were waiting for the photographer to get here.
“Go say hi to the owner,” Coach said.
“You know he’s here?”
“We always know when he’s here, Charlie.”
Mr. Warren made no move to get out of the chair when Charlie got to him. Charlie could see why; the old man looked as tired as he had ever seen him.
But still smiling through it.
“You saw?” Charlie said. “Anna said you got here in time to see.”
“I saw, Charlie boy,” the old man said. “Saw as good a defensive play as I’ve seen all season, is what I saw. Even better than the one our friend Sack Sutton made the other game.”
“We both saw,” Carlos said.
“Well,” the owner of the L.A. Bulldogs said, “now you’ve got one more football title than I do.”
“For now,” Charlie said. “Who’s the one always telling me how much football there is left to be played? Help me out here.”
“Some old fart,” the old man said. “A real tired one.”
Even his voice sounding weak today.
Joe Warren put his arm out now, pointing out at the field, the league championship trophy on a table at midfield, Coach Dayley and Coach Fallon already out there, along with most of the players, Charlie knowing he had to get out there himself.
“I’m also the one always telling you to enjoy all our Sundays, Charlie,” Mr. Warren said. “But I forget to tell you the same goes for these Saturdays of yours, too. Because someday you’re going to look back on them and think you’d give everything you own to just get one of them back.” He took a deep breath, as if he were the one who’d just run for the winning score. “Now go get your trophy.”
Charlie leaned down next to him and said, “Today wouldn’t have been nearly as great if you hadn’t seen that play.”
“Great for both of us,” Mr. Warren said. Then gave him a little shove and said, “Now git.”
Carlos helped him out of his chair. When he was standing he said to Carlos, “I believe I can take it from here.”
Carlos smiled at Charlie. “Yes, sir,” he said.
Carlos walked a few yards toward the field with Charlie, saying, “We were late because we had to stop at the hospital.”
Charlie looked up at him. “Is he okay?”
“Now he is,” Carlos said.
Charlie ran the rest of the way toward the field. Before he got to where his teammates were standing, he took one last look over his shoulder, saw Joe Warren smiling at him, waving.
And for that one moment he didn’t look old or sick or tired, just as happy as Charlie felt.
Maybe that wasn’t better than a championship, or a championship trophy, or even being called Sack Gaines on this day.
But it was close enough.
Thirty-Five
CHARLIE WASN’T EVEN SURE IF he understood it—he just assumed there were things you never understood about yourself, no matter how old you were—but he felt less alone now, even when he was by himself. More a part of something than he’d ever been before.
Like a large family.
It was like football had taken him in as much as Mr. Warren and his team had.
Charlie Gaines had never thought of himself as some sad, lonely kid because he didn’t have a dad in his life, even if he’d always been a little jealous of kids who did have dads. And he’d always known how lucky he was to have a mom like his, one who didn’t try too hard to be both mom and dad, just wanted to be the best mom she could be for Charlie: cool and smart and loving and somehow always there for him when he needed her, even though she had a full-time job.
She didn’t try to bluff her way through on sports stuff she didn’t know. She was just herself. Maybe that was the coolest thing about her. She was totally comfortable being herself.
Then Mr. Warren came along.
Somehow Joe Warren, without acting as if he wanted to be Charlie’s dad or even his granddad, had done about as much as anybody could have done to fill up that hole in his life. What he had always thought of as an empty room. The old man was there for Charlie because he wanted to be there. When Anna had asked Charlie that time how he liked being a member of the Warren family, she had just been trying to be funny, or snarky, or both.
But Charlie knew the answer now, knew that he liked it just fine. He liked being an honorary Warren, knowing that if he wasn’t related to Joe Warren he was connected to him in a way he’d never been connected to a grown-up man in his life.
Honorary Warren, honorary Bulldog. All one family now inside Charlie’s head. His team really becoming his in a way he never thought possible.
• • •
It was the Wednesday after Christmas. Bulldogs’ practice before the second-to-last game of the regular season. Both of their final games were at home, first against the Cowboys, and then against the Seahawks.
Fresh off of five straight victories, the Bulldogs were now 8-6, tied for first in the NFC West with the Seahawks.
If the Seahawks beat the Eagles on Saturday night and the Bulldogs beat the Cowboys on Sunday, the Bulldogs would be playing for their first division title, at home, eleven days from now.
The way the rest of the conference looked, neither the Bulldogs nor the Seahawks would get a wildcard at 9–7, so the winner of the game, if this weekend’s games played out right, would go to the playoffs and the loser would go home. If Seattle won on Saturday night, the Bulldogs would be playing knockout-tournament-like ball for two straight Sundays, like the playoffs were starting for them right then.
Considering where the team was when it was losing four in a row, when it looked to be going nowhere, a chance like this was the real dream.
He and Mr. Warren had watched practice from the field today, Jack Sutton coming over at one point and saying, “Hey, I heard somewhere that now you’ve turned into a bit of a sack artist yourself.”
Charlie looked at Mr. Warren, who said, “I can’t imagine where he would have heard something like that.”
“I don’t think one career sack makes you a sack artist exactly,” Charlie said.
“Whatever,” Jack said. “I just wanted to come over and say I owed you one. A big one.”
“Get me two more wins and we’ll call it even.”
When practice was over Mr. Warren said he wanted to talk to Coach Fiore in his office for a few minutes, but if Charlie was ready to go, he could have somebody find Carlos. Charlie said no, he was good, he’d just hang around until Mr. Warren finished his meeting.
“I like it down here,” Charlie said.
“I picked up on that,” the old man said, and then began his slow walk toward the tunnel.
Charlie went and sat on the bench. After all this time, he still couldn’t believe he was here, even with all the players and coaches now in the locker room . Like Charlie had the place to himself.
He was still on the bench when he heard a voice behind him say, “About time we had a talk.”
Turned around and saw that it was Matt Warren.
• • •
Even this far into the season, after everything that had happened—and as much as Charlie was around Bulldogs Stadium—he hardly had any kind of relationship with Matt Warren.
Oh, Matt would say hello and ask how he was doing when Charlie was on the field, or in his dad’s office, or when Matt would stop by
his dad’s suite during a home game, even though the Bulldogs had mostly been on the road lately. He would also be polite and try to act friendly. And, as Charlie would tell himself, there was absolutely no reason for him to do anything more than that, whether Charlie had gotten as close as he had to Joe Warren or not.
And maybe there would always be some weirdness between them, Matt being the general manager and the owner’s son and the future big boss of everything, and Charlie being this kid who’d stolen the headlines when he’d found the team a quarterback and a middle linebacker they so desperately needed.
Matt and Charlie both knowing, without ever having had a conversation about it, that the Bulldogs would probably have had no shot at making the playoffs without those guys.
Charlie hoping that Matt didn’t want to have that conversation now, the one he’d had plenty of times with Anna about her uncle.
Anna saying one time, “You know how when people avoid a subject and say there’s an elephant in the room? You and my uncle have, like, a whole circus.”
Now here they both were, just the two of them.
“Mind if I pull up a seat?” Matt Warren said, sitting down next to Charlie on the bench.
Dressed the way he was usually dressed—khakis and a button down shirt and Nike sneakers in Bulldog blue—when he was on the field for practice, walking around, all business, going from coach to coach, sometimes talking to players, like this was his real office, not the one upstairs.
“Kind of neat when the place is empty like this,” Matt said, “isn’t it?”
“Totally.”
They both sat staring straight ahead, Charlie feeling suddenly quite small.
“Can I tell you something, Charlie?”
“Sure, Mr. Warren.”
“Please . . . We went over this before. My dad is Mr. Warren. Call me Matt.”
“Sure . . . Matt.”
“At first,” Matt said, “I didn’t want you around.”
Here we go, Charlie thought.
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“Not really.”
