The Underdogs

by Mike Lupica

“You mean you want to kick some?” he said.

  “I want to play,” Hannah Grayson said.

  She picked up her ball and motioned toward the end zone where Will’s ball had come to a rest, said to him, “Go long.”

  Will nodded and took off, getting up to full speed almost right away—he also had a first gear other guys didn’t—and taking it right down the middle of the field, wanting more than anything to out-run the ball she was going to throw him, out-run her arm, be too far down the field for the ball to reach him.

  “Ball!” she yelled as he crossed the twenty.

  Will turned and looked up and saw the ball sailing over his head, landing at least ten yards ahead of him.

  “I can see now you’re not much of a kicker,” Hannah said. “But I sort of did think you could run.”

  I got nothing, Will thought. She airmailed me. So he just picked up both balls, brought them back to midfield. “Seriously?” he said. “Are you always this full of yourself?”

  “Why, ’cause I bust on you a little bit?” she said. “You know what my dad likes to say? Everybody thinks it’s funny till it’s about them.”

  “I give up,” he said. “If this is a trash-talking competition, you win.”

  “Is it a competition?”

  “Seems like it to me,” Will said. “Or should I say, sounds like it?”

  “Okay,” she said, “I’ll try to play nice.”

  They played.

  Will passing to her, Hannah passing to him. They had kicking competitions, punting mostly. Hannah won easily. The girl could kick like a madman. Or madgirl. They had some running races. Will won. Will the Thrill totally thrilled that he’d beaten her, thinking he would have had to take his ball and go home if he hadn’t.

  Especially since she’d said this to him when they were taking their marks: “Listen, if I beat you, it will be our secret.” Grinned and said, “Well, it will be between you and me and every other student at Forbes Middle.”

  “Keep chirping.”

  She held up a finger. One more thing. “And everybody who reads the Dispatch.”

  “Not happening,” Will said. “’Cause you’re not beating me.”

  She didn’t. But Will had to admit, she hadn’t come up short in any of the other skill competitions. The girl was more than a kicker; Will had seen that with his own eyes now.

  It killed him to admit this, too:

  She was as good as she said she was.

  Will knew it was getting close to dinner. He’d only come over here to work up a sweat and kill some time. But now he was in no hurry to leave, even though he knew he should.

  One last thing he would never admit: he liked being with her. Here. Now.

  It was when they took a rest finally, both of them stretched out in the grass in front of the bleachers, that she said, “I can play.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I mean,” Hannah Grayson said, “I can play on your team.”

  “You want to play . . . on my team?”

  “Is there an echo?” she said, whipping her head around.

  “No, I’m just surprised is all. I mean, you kick like a champion . . .”

  “Don’t give me that, Mr. Thrill. You know I can do a lot more than that. I am, as guys like to say, a playa. And you need players, unless you’ve added a whole bunch since school ended on Friday. You’re still sitting on ten and even a soccer girl knows you need eleven.”

  “But you are a soccer player.”

  “Bored with it. Been there, done that. But football with you guys? That would be a challenge. Big-time.”

  Now Will wanted to go home.

  “Hey,” he said, “even if I thought it was a good idea, which I’m not saying I do, my friends would never go for it. Neither would my coach.”

  “Thought you didn’t have a coach.”

  “I’m wondering when you have time for school, being this much of a private detective.”

  She was smiling again. One more thing about her that made him feel like he was backing up. “Who’s your coach? Maybe I should ask him myself.”

  “My dad. And don’t bother. He’s so old-school when it comes to football it’s like he was around when they were building the school.”

  “Good one, Thrill. But how does he know he doesn’t want me if he’s never seen me play?”

  Will said, “Why are we talking about this? You couldn’t play on our team even if I . . . if we wanted you.”

  “Wrong,” she said. “I looked it up. Nothing stopping me in the rules of the powerhouse West River league.”

  “You looked it up?”

  “Went to the league’s website. It’s not rocket science. The rules say you have to be twelve, you have to have medical clearance to play, blah blah blah. Nothing that, uh, discriminates that I saw.”

  She turned discriminates into a hundred-yard word the way she dragged it out.

  “I gotta get going soon,” he said. “My dad is expecting me.”

  “Chicken.”

  “Because my dad’s cooking dinner for us?”

  “Because you’re too chicken to ask your dorky friends about me or ask Coach Dad if he’ll at least give me a tryout. And so you know? Any kid who wants to try out in a town is supposed to get the chance.”

  Will felt his shoulders drop, felt the air come out of him. “They would all think I’ve lost my mind.”

  “Does that mean you think I can’t play? I thought you just told me I could.”

  “Hannah,” he said.

  First time he’d said her name out loud.

  “It’s tackle football,” he said.

  “You seem to have survived so far, little guy.”

  “I’m big enough.”

  “If you say so.” Made a time-out sign with her hands. “I was just kidding with the last part. But you know you get by on speed and talent. So would I.”

  Will didn’t know what to say. He did what felt natural to him. Stood up, picked up his ball. This girl had the ability to keep turning him around until he felt dizzy, almost. First he’d wanted to stay as long as he could with her. Now he wanted to get away as quickly as possible.

  He knew he was the only one here acting flustered. She was just staring at him with this calm face.

  “Before you go, just honestly answer one question for me,” she said. “Do you, Will the Thrill, think I’m good enough to make the team?”

  Even though it was just the two of them, nobody else in sight, Will gave a quick look around. “Yeah,” he said. “I think you’d be good enough.”

  “So why can’t I play on a team that needs players?”

  “You’re gonna make me come out and say it, right?” Will said.

  She nodded.

  “You can’t play because you’re a girl.”

  Now Hannah Grayson stood up, close to him, up in his space, maybe to show him she really was taller. Then she casually reached out and knocked his ball out of his hands.

  As she walked away, she looked over her shoulder and said, “You’re the girl.”

  CHAPTER 13

  They got together as a team for the first time the next Saturday afternoon at Shea.

  No game jerseys yet, just the mesh practice jerseys New Balance had sent with the New Balance logo on the front, pads, pants, cleats. And helmets.

  The boxes had arrived at the Tyler house on Friday, and the guys had all come by on Saturday morning to try stuff on. By the time they were in the living room, boxes ripped open, packing paper scattered everywhere, it reminded Will Tyler a little bit of Christmas morning.

  Just bigger and louder and busier than any Christmas Will could remember. Most of the Christmases he’d ever experienced—not counting the one he’d spent in Florida with his mom’s parents, his only living grandparents—had been him and his dad.

  “So this is what new equipment feels like when you get to take it home from the store,” Tim said, his helmet already on his head. “Not just feels like, but smells like.”

&nb
sp; “I thought that was just your body wash,” Will said.

  Tim said, “You know, I’ve always heard there’s a cruel side to great athletes.”

  Will put his own helmet on. “I just save it for you.”

  “Lucky me,” Tim said.

  “No,” Chris Aiello said. “Lucky us.”

  They had passed the gear around, loving every minute of it, laughing and posing and even banging pads just for the fun of it. Like they really had found it under a tree.

  When they were done, Will noticed that there were four extra sets, of everything.

  When the guys were gone, Mr. Tyler having told them when to meet at Shea later, Will said to his dad, “Who’s going to wear the extra gear, our ghost players?”

  “Listen,” his dad said, “the only one on this team with ghosts to worry about is me, and I’m gonna do my best to keep them under control. Or maybe get rid of them completely, if I’m the lucky one, by the end of the season.”

  “Be nice to fill out these uniforms,” Will said. “Because we still can’t field a team.”

  “How about we just do this today?” Joe Tyler said. “How about we just get on that field as a team and go from there?”

  So now they were doing just that.

  They were kneeling in one of the end zones in front of Will’s dad, his dad wearing an old Forbes High School cap with a falcon on the front, gray sweatpants, an old Steelers sweatshirt.

  And, Will noticed, not sure that any of the other guys did, his dad was also wearing an old pair of black, high-top Forbes Flyers football cleats.

  With the wings.

  Will didn’t even know he still owned a pair. Didn’t know anybody still owned a pair, in Forbes or anywhere else.

  “Now Will knows this better than anyone,” his dad was saying. “I’m not much for making speeches. Not much of a talker, period. When I do talk to you guys, I’m gonna try to do it without shouting, because when I was a player, I didn’t want my coach shouting at me.”

  He moved slowly up and down in front of them as he spoke. No limp today.

  “You guys don’t need me to tell you how much we’ve overcome already, and how much we’re going to have to overcome,” he said. “Starting with the fact that we obviously need players. But one thing an old coach of mine did use to tell me was that you can only coach the players you have. So let’s start there. Let’s not worry today about what we don’t have. Let’s see what we do have. Okay?”

  As if on cue the players in front of Joe Tyler said, “Okay!”

  Shouting at the coach who said he wasn’t going to, shouting like they meant it.

  “In case anybody has any doubts, we are gonna play this season,” he said. “And if that means lining up ten guys in our first game, then that’s what we’re gonna do. It may sound crazy, but I checked with the league and there’s no rule written down that says we have to play eleven. In basketball, if you foul out a bunch of guys, you play with four.”

  Tim raised his hand. It was the first time Will could ever remember him asking for permission to speak.

  “So we’re going to let the rest of the league be on like a power play in hockey?”

  “Until we get reinforcements.”

  “But what if we don’t?” Will said. “Get reinforcements, I mean.”

  “If we don’t, we’re just gonna have to play bigger than we are. Which is what we’re gonna have to do whether we get reinforcements or not. What we will do. To my way of thinking, it’s still one of the best things about sports: you take a bunch of guys, different talents, egos, attitudes, different love for the game. And sometimes, if you really are lucky, they all get on the same page and do something greater than they ever thought they could.”

  He looked at every face in front of him now, one by one. Will. Tim. Chris. Jeremiah. Wes Blabey. Johnny Callahan. Gerry Dennis. Matt Connors. Ernie Accorsi. Jake Cantor.

  “We’re gonna be that kind of team,” Joe Tyler said, “no matter how shorthanded we are.”

  He clapped his hands together.

  “Okay,” he said, “the meet and greet is over. We’ll just do some basic stuff today. Blocking fundamentals, tackling fundamentals. Got a couple of drills that won’t be too boring. Then we’ll walk through some basic plays on offense, just to see what we’ve got. And run some pass routes, see who’s got enough arm to be our quarterback, because Will told me about Bobby leaving town. So let’s get to it. This team might not have the most practice time in the world this season, but the time we do have together, we’re gonna make it count.”

  Watching his dad walk and talk and make his points and get his message across, Will thought: Not bad for a non-talker.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Joe Tyler said, “one more thing before we get to work, and I’m wide open to suggestions: what do we call ourselves?”

  Right away, guys were shouting out various nicknames. Johnny Callahan actually did say, “Forbes Flyers!” But Chris came right back at him, saying, “We may be shorthanded, but that sounds too much like a hockey team.” Jeremiah, a Yankees fan, threw “Yankees” out there but got hooted down.

  It went on this way for a few minutes, Giants being rejected and Lions, for the Penn State Nittany Lions, until Will stood up, grinning.

  “Are we done here?” he said. “Because if we are, I’ve been holding back the perfect name.”

  Now he was the one looking at his teammates, saying, “We call ourselves the Bulldogs.”

  “Like the Georgia Bulldogs?” Tim said.

  “Nope,” he said. “The Forbes Bulldogs. We all know we’re going to be underdogs this season, probably in every game we play. I say we go with it. My dad has always talked about the toughest people being bulldog tough. That’s us. Because who’s gonna be tougher than us this season?”

  “Nobody!” his teammates yelled, even louder than before.

  One team, one voice.

  “Then Bulldogs it is,” Joe Tyler said. “Okay, you bad dogs. Let’s get after it.”

  As they walked up the field, Will said to his dad, “I was worried you were going to tell us the one about how it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. That’s always been one of your favorites.”

  “Decided not to overplay my hand,” the coach of the Bulldogs said.

  They practiced until it was almost too dark to keep going.

  But the thing was? Nobody wanted to leave the field. Nobody wanted the first practice to end, ten guys on the field or not. Nobody seemed to get tired, even though Will’s dad worked them pretty hard at times. Chris did the best in the passing drills, and when they were over, Joe Tyler said, “Boys, meet your new QB.”

  He said to Chris, “Can you handle it?”

  “To be honest, Mr. T.?” Chris said. “I don’t know if I can or not.”

  Will knew what was coming next.

  His dad said, “If you don’t think you can, you can’t.”

  “Then I can,” Chris said.

  “What I’m talking about,” Joe Tyler said. He grinned at the rest of them and said, “Hope all you guys pick up on my system that fast.”

  “Wait, you’ve got a system?” Tim said.

  “Yes,” Will’s dad said. “And it often involves running laps during practice for players who don’t know when to zip it.”

  Tim said, “Zippering it right now, Coach.”

  The best they could do was five-on-five, no running plays, passes only, but tackling allowed, Will’s dad stressing that they were going to play clean, never leading with their fancy helmets. Yet when they had the chance to put somebody down, they should put them down hard.

  “This is going to be a team of hitters,” he said. “Quick hits on offense, hard hits on D.”

  On the last play of the night, it was just Chris and Will in the backfield, Chris snapping the ball to himself, three blockers in front of Chris, a simple swing pass to Will in the flat, what would be a screen pass when they were able to line up eleven.


  Chris threw it to Will. Some daylight in front of him, but not much. Ernie and Jake were closest to him, but Tim was coming hard behind them along with Matt Connors, the fastest linebacker they had. Even in a game of five-on-five, this side of Shea had gotten very crowded all of a sudden.

  But Will wasn’t going to end their first practice with a nogainer, whether they had the numbers on him or not. So as Tim closed on him, he planted his right foot and reversed his field. As he came the other way, running hard to his left now, he picked up Chris as a blocker, who laid out Matt.

  Tim, not giving up on the play, seeing Will head to the left sideline, tried to get over there and cut down the angle, force him to the inside.

  Will reversed his field again, but instead of running back to his right, he did take the inside, a sharp cut at full speed. Into that extra gear.

  And then he knew he was gone and the guys on D knew he was gone and for that moment, even in what should have felt like a pickup game, a step up from the touch games they all played on this field, this felt like real football to Will, felt like the season was really starting.

  Catch me if you can.

  He knew no one could.

  He ran through the end zone and right through the goalposts and as he did, he thought he saw somebody else running up ahead of him, into the woods behind the bleachers.

  He wondered if it might be Hannah, watching again but not wanting to be seen.

  Or maybe—and even better—Toby Keenan.

  But Will wasn’t going to chase after whoever it was, not after a run like he’d just made, after everybody had been chasing him. So he took one more hard turn and came back up the field to where his teammates were waiting for him. Practice officially over. His dad waving them into a circle, putting his hand out, the guys putting theirs on top of it.

  “Bulldogs,” Joe Tyler said.

  “Bulldogs,” they all said.

  And then all you heard in the near darkness at Shea was this crazy barking from them, Will amazed that ten guys could make that much noise.

  CHAPTER 14

  Hannah Grayson had taken to ignoring him at school. The one time he had tried to talk to her—after she’d called him a girl—was a jam-up, to say the least.