The Throwback Special

by Chris Bachelder

  The ball there in Trent’s hand, held above his head. The quiet of the room. That chintzy projector, projecting far more than the board. Well, and of course the angry black man would select the frightening black man. And now look, the entire group of men would be made uncomfortably aware of the racial dynamics of reenactment, which was good because white people needed to be far more aware of the subtext of race. Which was terrible, because they were all here to have fun. Derek, too. This was one of his favorite events of the year, even if the other men tended to come on a bit strong. He liked being part of the group, studying film, wearing the uniform. He liked the collective pursuit, each man doing his job so that that play could be successfully catastrophic. So why was he doing this? What was his problem? Why did he insist on turning something fun into a grave American ordeal? What kind of pathology seeks to diminish pleasure and play? Oh, and Derek just knew how it would look if he chose Taylor. Here he had been, playing along for years, lying in wait, biding his time patiently, yearning for his opportunity to play Taylor, to (re)enact, symbolically, racial vengeance not just upon Theismann and the Redskins—good Lord, they were named the Redskins—but upon the man playing Theismann, and upon the whole group of men, and really upon all white people everywhere. It was so obvious that Derek would choose Taylor, for at heart he was just an angry black man. Which he wasn’t, because he would not be reduced like that. Which he was, because who wouldn’t be? Selecting Taylor—it was so clear—would not be an opportunity for racial healing and gentle instruction, but an outright act of hostility and aggression. He, Derek, would not control the meaning and significance of Lawrence Taylor’s sack. Centuries of American history would control the meaning and significance of Taylor’s sack. It was the worst kind of soft, sentimental thinking to imagine that an individual by force of will and conviction might provide . . . Plus, Jesus, he detested the thought that such a vexed decision would be regarded as such an obvious decision. And never mind the profound rhetorical challenge of actually uttering his selection of Taylor, of speaking it to the group in a hotel room. If he said it forthrightly, confidently, he would create discomfort and fear. If he shucked and jived to comfort his peers, he would activate his dormant self-hatred. And there were other variations—should he pause, appear to be uncertain—each of them fundamentally dishonest. So okay, over the years it had become pretty clear to Derek that he could not choose Lawrence Taylor, lest he convert the Throwback Special forevermore into a charged racial allegory (which it really already was!), and convert himself from one of the guys to type and ambassador (which he really already was!). But Derek knew that not choosing Taylor was also a decision laden with significance. If he selected another player, he would not be primarily choosing that player; he would first and foremost be not choosing Taylor. He would in essence be renouncing Taylor and all that Taylor represents. It would be an evasion, a denial. A betrayal? The not-choice would resound as a choice, and quite possibly as deficiency or fear. And whom would he choose instead? He had worked it out many times. He could be black Giants safety Kenny Hill. Yes, he could station himself as far as possible from ball and bones, could in fact move away from the collapsing pocket, far beyond the camera’s eye. He could excise himself from the historical record. That would be a forceful racial statement indeed. Or he could be black Giants linebacker Harry Carson. He could charge with Taylor, swell the progress. He could get to Theismann first, make him step up in the pocket, prepare him for comminution. But that would look to all like Derek wanted to be involved, but could not handle the heavy symbolic burden of Taylor. Or hell, he could go white! This was his way out of the conundrum. This was the escape hatch. He could be Didier! He could be the Redskins second tight end, a beefy Caucasian named Clint. That would show them all! It was devastatingly clever. It was Derek as trickster, subverting the group and the performance through ironic appropriation. Or something. But Derek was not convinced that choosing Clint Didier or any of the other seven white Redskins would actually expose or undermine the system in any meaningful way. It would probably just look odd, and perhaps even cowardly. It might look like he was trying to pass. It might arouse pity. It might appear to be another instance of racial self-loathing. Or it might after all actually be another instance of racial self-loathing. With the first pick—there was no way around this—you were either Lawrence Taylor or you were not Lawrence Taylor, and both choices were fraught. There was no other option. Derek wanted to take a large drink from his beer, but he worried his hand would shake. He was relatively certain that none of the other men, not even Charles, had ever considered the racial dimensions of the lottery, and he knew they would not unless and until the year that Derek’s name was called first. No, not even then. It would not be until Derek spoke, until he chose, at which point Derek would be guilty of introducing an ugly topic into a fun and friendly tradition. He was desperate for the ball in Trent’s raised hand to be his ball, and also for the ball not to be his ball.

  Trent lowered the ball to his eyes. “Gary,” he said.

  The men applauded and whistled. Several men nudged Charles in the arms and ribs, presumably because chance had now given way to psychology, Charles’s métier.

  Derek regarded the intricate patterns of the carpet.

  “Hmmm,” Gary said, rubbing his chin and gritting his teeth and staring up at the ceiling in a grotesque pantomime of indecision. The men laughed and told Gary to fuck off.

  “L.T.!” Gary shouted, beating his chest with his fists.

  OUT OF HABIT, Robert checked his watch, but failed to perceive the time. He looked up, squinting into the shabby light of Carl’s projector. How is one to live? When Robert helped his wife prepare a nice meal, he invariably thought of all the dishes they would have to wash later. When he loaded the car for his family’s summer vacation to the beach, he thought of how unpleasant it would be to unpack the car a week later. Even if the family vacation was “fun”—and often it did contain pleasurable moments for Robert—it would soon be over. While it was happening it was ending. As soon as the vacation began, it was eroding. How do you enjoy something that has, by virtue of beginning, commenced its ending? How, for instance, do you put up a Christmas tree? (All those fragile ornaments, wrapped in tissue.) There was in fact no beginning, or middle. It was all end. How silly, then, to load the car, to drive eleven hours for something that was just going to be gone. Wouldn’t it be easier to remain at home? That’s where they would end up a week later, with their sunburns and sandy towels and a thousand digital pictures of that time—which year was that?—that they went to the beach. Everything that had happened to Robert in his life was over, and the things that had not yet happened were on their way to being over. Some would be over sooner, others later. He often looked forward to watching a game on television, but when the game started, it was ending, and so he could not enjoy the game. Robert glanced at Charles, who was scratching his armpit. He wondered whether Charles was respected by peers. When Robert heard a song he liked, he was aware that the song was dissolving in time, second by second. I like this third verse, he would think. Here comes the third verse. Here it comes. Then the third verse just evaporated. What did it even mean to like a song? There was no song. The song wasn’t there. It was just like that cocktail in the screened-in porch after a day of hot sun at the beach, the happy pink children eating watermelon, the handsome and serious wife reading a frivolous magazine, her feet propped up, her toenail polish flaking, a breeze coming through. It wasn’t there, either. Anything good that would happen to Robert would be converted instantaneously to something good that had happened. And something good that had happened was, because it was already over, something somber.

  Tommy, who seemed to have withdrawn behind his mustache, was on the clock for the second pick of the lottery. The men waited, while Tommy rubbed his temple and squinted at the unfocused list of players projected on the wallpaper. There were, it should be said, different “schools of thought” regarding a post-Taylor selection. This was what the
men said. They conceived of “schools of thought,” so that their decisions would be attributed not to their own deeply rooted and wholly individual fears and psychoses, but to an established external system. These schools of thought only very slightly resembled the real categories. Some men, for instance, just did not want to be on the offensive team. To be a Redskin, even a blameless wide receiver, was, for these men, to don the tainted uniform, to participate willingly in a campaign of spectacular demise. They would rather be the most insignificant player on a pillaging defense (e.g., Terry Kinard) than a Redskins player who was essential to the calamity. Other men, those who had taken drama in high school, or those who danced willingly at weddings and office parties, found a kind of tragic nobility in ruinous failure, and they were inclined to spend high lottery picks on Redskins players in the pocket, close to ground zero, even or especially those players who do their jobs poorly. Members of another group, who willingly allowed themselves to be mistaken for members of the previous group, were drawn to Redskins players out of a keen, if unrecognized, identification with disappointment and culpability and bumbling malfunction. Some other men were simply averse to periphery. These men did not care what uniform they wore. They wanted a central role, and they tended to select the most prominent and involved player remaining on the board, Redskin or Giant. There was of course a shadow group, whose members craved the familiar comfort of anonymity and insignificance—and feared responsibility and centrality—and yet tended to overcompensate for this shameful desire by choosing the most significant player available, and thus appeared to crave centrality and import. A couple of men, those with large contributions to their 401(k) plans, almost every year made an unexciting pick in preparation for next year’s selection. A final group, which consisted only of Steven, was composed of the dilettantes and aesthetes, men who chose players based on very specific and idiosyncratic qualities of uniform (tape, towel, wristband, face mask, cleats) or stance or movement. For these men, the play was not the thing; the play was not essentially communal, nor was it tragic or allegorical or even violent. The significance of the play was that it provided an opportunity to approach perfection by matching one’s own appearance and movement to a historical model. The small white towel tucked into Perry Williams’s pants, his crouch as he lines up across from Art Monk wide left, the strange jiggling dance he performs while waiting for the ball to be snapped . . .

  The bland optimism, high ceiling, and corporate sterility of the conference room would probably have mitigated the effects of Tommy’s facial hair, but here in the hot and crowded hotel room, his mustache acted as a pernicious depressant. A few men’s thoughts returned unpleasantly to the complicated and contentious eleventh-hour custodial negotiations that had allowed them to come this weekend. Without looking directly at Tommy, the men waited for him to make the second pick.

  “Take your time, Tommy,” Trent said not unkindly, looking at the curtains. Trent’s comment had the effect not of putting Tommy at ease, but of making him more anxious. The toilet flushed, and the inordinately brief span between the flush and Gary’s emergence from the bathroom suggested that he had not washed his hands.

  Tommy, overcompensating for a shameful desire to be insignificant, chose Redskins running back John Riggins, whom Jeff had once called “the vice president of the disaster.”

  “Riggo!” Gil shouted.

  “The veep!” Nate shouted.

  “The Diesel!” Chad shouted.

  “Well, yes and no,” Steven said. “The Diesel at age thirty-six, in his final year in the league. His yardage was way down.”

  Riggins, along with center Rick Donnalley and Theismann, was a toucher. The Throwback Special was a flea flicker: Theismann handed to Riggins, who then pitched back to Theismann, who was then supposed to throw a forward pass but instead was broken into pieces by Taylor. Tommy, who this evening had already spilled two beers and a piece of pizza, had not considered that he would be handling the ball.

  Trent picked Gil’s ping-pong ball from the pillowcase, and Gil, who had not been on the Redskins line in the past four years, was compelled by rule to select a lineman. Scowling, Gil chose right tackle Mark May, whom he considered not a good selection but the least terrible selection, given his options. Bald Michael, who had been Mark May three times, and Andy, who had been Mark May last year, made eye contact across the room. Gil was disappointed now, but he wouldn’t be for long. Once you had played May, you understood.

  With the fourth pick, Nate chose Giants linebacker and South Carolina native Harry Carson, whose chinstrap Robert had mended carefully and now did not want to relinquish. Then Bald Michael and George, perhaps in an attempt to bask in reflected glory or perhaps because they wanted to share a room with Gary and Nate in the Fracture Compound, chose the other two Giants linebackers, Gary Reasons and Byron Hunt, respectively.

  “Borrowed plumage,” Robert muttered to Derek, whom he generally tried to avoid out of respect.

  Derek, uncertain how to respond, raised his empty cup to his mouth.

  There was some rowdy chatter about the Big Blue Wrecking Crew, as well as the Crunch Bunch. Steven, acting quickly, was able to douse the enthusiasm with historical fact.

  Randy, sitting glumly in the orange chair, selected Redskins tight end Donnie Warren with the seventh pick. He just said it, with no hesitation. Donnie Warren. His mind, apparently, had been made up. The men grew quiet. They could not recall Warren ever being selected in the top ten. Steven would have to check his notes. Warren’s job on the play is to help protect Theismann’s tibia and fibula from blindside pass-rushers. Though an eligible receiver, he remains at the line to help left tackle Russ Grimm handle Lawrence Taylor. But Taylor, as it turns out, deposits Warren on the grass in a biodegradable heap on his way to Theismann. Warren is the breach point. And his one-on-one battle with Taylor is not, it must be said, particularly noble or stirring. He is not elevated in defeat. It is difficult to locate the grandeur. Last year Randy had been left guard Jeff Bostic, and now here he was, voluntarily sliding two spots toward mayhem’s gate. Randy had, in the winter, lost his eyewear business, and he had sold the Bostic gear at Internet auction. Then he had claimed, in a largely incoherent, inconsistent, and self-pitying late-night email to Trent, that the gear was stolen from a storage unit near his home in Dover, Delaware, at which point Trent had reluctantly purchased new Bostic gear with the dues money. But now Randy seemed to be accepting culpability, albeit ceremonially, by choosing one of the players most culpable for Theismann’s monstrous injury. This was the only explanation for Randy’s pick. You didn’t have to be Charles to get it. Traditionally, the men made oinking and snorting noises when a Redskins down lineman was chosen, but the men were too surprised to snort, and the room remained quiet. From the hallway came the sound of ice spilling violently into a bucket.

  “Heavy is the head,” Andy whispered, even though it made no sense.

  “The pick don’t lie,” Vince whispered, more to the point.

  AS THE LOTTERY PROGRESSED, as his ball remained in the pillowcase, Derek began to consider the possibility that Trent would select his ball last. That would make things interesting indeed. What if Derek were Theismann? How would a black Theismann— But no, Trent pulled Derek’s ball from the case, giving Derek the sixteenth motherfucking pick. The men applauded. Why? Why were they clapping for Derek and his shitty pick? Were they relieved that he would not be Theismann? All that was left for Derek, of course, was a choice between some fleet-footed Negro in the Giants secondary and some grunting Redskins trench dweller who almost certainly enjoyed bow hunting in the off-season. Derek squinted drunkenly at the blurry board. There was Perry, Terry, Kenny. Or there was Rick, Clint, Ken.

  There was a knock on the door. A number of men flinched and grimaced at the sound, and several even seemed to duck or crouch furtively, as if in an attempt to conceal themselves in a small room containing more than twenty men. A couple of men reflexively put their index fingers to their lips. A couple of men
pressed themselves flat against a wall, and seemed to hold their breath. Myron found himself gripping the window curtain. A knock was bad.

  In loud falsetto Gary said, “Who is it?”

  “Guys, it’s me,” a voice said.

  “Hold on,” Gary said. “I have to locate my panties.”

  “Open up, Gary,” the voice said.

  Gary looked through the peephole. “It’s just Adam,” he said. “I didn’t see him leave.” Gary opened the door, and Adam entered the room.

  “Jesus, it’s hot in here,” he said. “Why aren’t we in the conference room? I went there first, and there was some other group in there.”

  The men stared at Adam, realizing for the first time that Adam had been missing all day. Now that they saw him here, it was obvious that he had not been here. Adam. Good old Adam. He looked good. Not very good, really, but the same. Not bad. Just like Adam, like himself. Medium build, dark bags beneath his eyes. It was nice to see that guy. Not nice, but normal, customary. Though, honestly, it was disconcerting for the men to realize that they had not previously noticed Adam’s absence, as it suggested to each man the possibility that his own absence might go unnoticed here. Far more seriously, they suffered a kind of retroactive anxiety about the missing man. He was here now, but he hadn’t been here. He very well might not have come, a fact they had not considered before but were forced to consider now, even though he was here. His arrival should have comforted them, but in fact made them more apprehensive. Several men began counting men.