Million-Dollar Throw

by Mike Lupica

  Then Gil Santos motioned for Nate to come forward.

  “Are you possibly ready for this, Nate?” Gil said when Nate was standing next to him.

  Nate swallowed and said, “I better be.”

  The crowd cheered.

  “Then we are just about ready to get this party started,” Gil Santos said. “But before we do, you probably want to warm up, right?”

  “Yes, sir,” Nate said, and was about to tell him that’s why he’d brought his friend Malcolm with him, give Malcolm a shout-out to the crowd.

  But before he could, Gil Santos said, “Well, if you’re going to warm up, you probably want to do that with your quarterback coach, don’t you, Nate?”

  “My coach . . . ?” Nate said.

  Then Gil was shouting into his microphone and over the Gillette Stadium sound system, “Tom Brady, why don’t you come over here and give Nate some last-minute advice!”

  There was another cheer then, louder than before, louder than anything, as the Patriots’ No. 12 came running out of the tunnel.

  CHAPTER 32

  He was bigger than Nate had thought, just like the stadium had been.

  He didn’t have his helmet with him, and his hair was all over the place, looking as it usually did, as if the best quarterback in the world had cut his hair himself.

  “Nice to meet you, Nate,” he said, putting out his right hand.

  And Nate was so flustered, so excited to be actually shaking Brady’s hand—with his hands shaking the way they were—that he forgot he was holding his football and promptly dropped it.

  Brady laughed. Somehow so did Nate, feeling as if he’d used up all the available air in his body. “They told me you’re a QB yourself, right?” Brady said. Nate nodded. “Then you know,” Tom Brady said. “Never put the ball on the ground.”

  Before Nate could reach down to pick the ball up, Brady beat him to it. As he did, he looked at the signature and smiled.

  “This yours?” he said to Nate.

  “Bought it with my own money.”

  “And you’re using this one to make the throw?”

  “Yeah,” Nate said.

  “Wow, now the pressure’s on me, too,” Brady said. “I’ve got to come through for you.”

  Then Nate said what he’d said upstairs, told Tom Brady he was welcome to make the throw for him, and Brady said, “Nah, Nate. Right now you’re the man out here. Now let me see the arm.”

  Like it was the two of them out at Coppo. Brady was the one who ran up the field, turned around, motioned for Nate to throw him the ball. Nate did. It wobbled a little, but got there. Him and Tom Brady, having a game of catch at Gillette. The crowd roared. Brady threw the ball back, making it look as easy as he had in the first half. The crowd roared again.

  Somehow, even knowing what was about to happen, Nate didn’t want this part of the night to end.

  They threw it back and forth to each other a few more times, Brady acting as if he had all the time in the world. Finally Brady walked back to Nate, put his arm around his shoulders.

  “That first Super Bowl,” he said, “nobody—and I mean nobody—thought I could take our team down the field. But it didn’t matter. Because I believed. So you believe, okay?”

  “Okay,” Nate said. “But you couldn’t have been as scared in the Superdome as I am right now.”

  “But, see, that’s the beauty of sports,” Tom Brady said. “I still get scared. But I never stop believing. The way I never stopped believing I would come back and play this way again after my knee surgeries.” Then he said something Nate couldn’t believe, as if he’d gotten inside Nate’s head. “Now go make this movie come out the way you want it to.”

  Brady handed the ball back to him, went over and stood with Nate’s parents, and Abby, and Malcolm.

  Now Gil Santos said, “So this is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. And you’ve been waiting for, Nate Brodie. Let’s see you try to win a million dollars.”

  In that moment, Nate didn’t just hear the noise of Gillette Stadium, he felt it. Then, just as suddenly, it got quiet, at least for him, the way it got quiet at the end of a game.

  Nate walked toward the SportStuff logo, the small one they’d made for him at the 30-yard line. His mark. When he got there, he took one last look back, looking at Abby, saw her pat her heart twice.

  Believe, the great Tom Brady had said.

  And in that moment, Nate did.

  He believed as he thought about all the times he’d made this throw behind the house, all the times he’d told himself that he was threading the needle over the middle to Bradley, or Pete, or Eric, or Ben. Ball, target. His dad had told him that from the time the two of them had first gone into the backyard with a football about half the size of the one he held in his right hand now.

  The Brady ball, on Brady’s field.

  With Brady himself a few yards away, watching.

  Why not? Nate asked himself, for the very last time.

  He didn’t wait, didn’t hesitate. He had waited long enough. He stepped toward the target, fingers on the laces, like he was stepping up in the pocket.

  And released the ball.

  High.

  That’s what he thought, what he was sure of, when he released it.

  Only he was wrong.

  Maybe because that’s not the way the story was supposed to end.

  The last few yards the spiral he’d thrown at the SportStuff target looked like an arrow finding a bull’s-eye as it sailed cleanly through the hole.

  Money.

  All the money in the world.

  Everything that happened next seemed to happen at once—the explosion of noise that seemed to come crashing down on Nate, the flashing lights all over the stadium, even the fireworks that appeared in the sky.

  Nate turned then. And before he looked to Abby, before he looked to his parents, Nate found himself staring right at Tom Brady, smiling at him. Brady smiled back, pumping his fist at him, then pointing as if to say, You did it.

  So this is what it feels like, Nate wanted to say to him.

  This is what it’s like to be you.

  He’d have to watch the tape later to remember what he’d said into the microphone when it was over. He did remember his mom crying and hugging him. And his dad hugging him and yelling into his ear, “The only kid who could have made that throw just made it.”

  Then they were bringing out one of those huge fake checks you saw golfers and tennis players get after they won tournaments, the check with “Nate Brodie” on it and “$1,000,000” on the line where the amount was, the check so long that Nate imagined it stretching all the way to the other end zone.

  Then Malcolm was on him, lifting him into the air, slapping him one high five after another when he put him down, slapping him so hard it should have made Nate’s right hand start hurting again, but Nate was feeling no pain tonight at Gillette Stadium.

  “Dude!” Malcolm said. “That was sick. Like, one of those plagues we read about in history sick.”

  Nate took a step back, like a fighter covering up, and said, “Dude? Easy on the throwing hand. We’ve still got one game left to play, remember?”

  Malcolm said, “If you can make a throw like that, no way we’re losing to Blair.”

  Nate saw Abby then, hanging back, still standing where she’d been before Nate made the throw. She was crying again, he could see, but Nate knew these were happy tears this time. He could see it in those eyes. He walked straight for her, not knowing if the TV cameras were still tracking him or not, not caring. Then he hugged Abby McCall in front of the whole stadium and maybe the whole country. She hugged him back, for all she was worth.

  “Did you . . . could you see it go through, Abs?” he said.

  She shook her head, and in that moment must have seen the look that started to come across Nate’s face like a cloud passing over all the lights of Gillette.

  “But don’t worry,” she said. “It was only because I was watching you the whol
e time.”

  “I couldn’t have made it without you, Abs,” he said.

  Now there were no tears, just a huge smile. “Like I don’t know that,” she said.

  They were starting to clear the field now. Nate could hear the public address announcer saying that the second half would be starting shortly.

  All of a sudden he and Abby were alone at the 30-yard line, the two of them standing right on top of the SportStuff logo.

  “So I’ve got to ask, Brodie,” she said, still calling him that. “What are you going to do with all that money?”

  Finally, the end of the movie.

  “I’m giving it to you,” he said. “I found a way for you to see.”

  CHAPTER 33

  You’re going to do what with all that money?” his mom said.

  Friday morning at their house. Thanksgiving with the Brodies, at least as soon as his dad got back. Even on what felt like an instant national sports holiday, his dad was showing two houses this morning, in his new job with Johnson Moriarty, the biggest real estate company in Valley. The job offer had been one of what felt like a hundred messages on their phone when they’d finally gotten home from Foxboro the night before.

  Nate thinking it was like one more cool scene, the kind they showed you sometimes when the credits were rolling and you were walking out of the theater.

  But for now it was Nate and his mom, bottom of the front stairs.

  He decided he’d tell her first, about the surgeon who’d saved the eyesight of a thirteen-year-old boy in London with the same kind of Leber’s disease Abby had. The surgeon and the surgery Nate had finally discovered after all those days and nights and searching on the web, sometimes checking every hour on the hour.

  He saw the story on Google the same day it showed up on another Web site he’d been going to every day for the last couple of months, run by the Foundation Fighting Blindness.

  Not an experimental trial this time, he told his mom, but the real deal, a real-live surgery that had restored the sight of a boy whose vision had started deteriorating at about the same age Abby’s had.

  His mom knew Nate had been looking into possible surgeries and cures. That’s why they’d gone to see Dr. Hunter at Children’s Hospital Boston. Yet she didn’t know there was a surgery that could give Abby her sight back.

  But Dr. Hunter had told him how expensive it was going to be, how much time Abby might have to spend in England.

  All that.

  Now he told his mom.

  “I don’t know if it will cost a million, Mom,” he said, talking fast. “But it’s going to cost a lot, and Abby’s dad lost his health insurance and . . . and I don’t care, as long as Abby can see again.”

  She didn’t say anything right away, just looked at him, shaking her head. Nate thought she might have some of those happy tears going. “Always leading with the heart,” she said.

  “Something like that,” Nate said. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while.”

  “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

  Then his mom said, “You’ve talked about this with Abby?”

  “Not till last night.”

  “So this was your plan all along. Like one of your game plans.”

  “You helped by taking me to see Dr. Hunter. He’s been in contact with the London doctors ever since.” Nate grinned. “And it didn’t hurt that I won that little prize by making the throw.”

  “You’re sure about this,” his mom said.

  “Mom,” he said. “I have to do something. It’s like a game I can’t sit out. Her dad losing his job and the insurance just clinched it. They’re barely going to be able to send Abby to Perkins. And besides, we’re going to be fine now. I mean money-wise. Aren’t we?”

  She was smiling again. “We’re going to be fine. How could we not be?”

  Nate said, “You’re the one who’s always telling me that the most valuable thing in the world is a random act of kindness, right?”

  “Yeah, kiddo. I am.”

  “Well, now we know how valuable one of those acts can be.”

  “A million bucks,” Sue Brodie said.

  “Or as much of it as Abby needs.”

  His mom was staring again. After all the noise of the night before, the house seemed amazingly quiet right now. Finally she patted her heart twice and reached over so Nate could pound her some fist.

  “Well, then,” she said. “I guess it’s pretty much like your father said last night, right before we walked onto the field.”

  “What was that?” Nate said.

  “Let’s do this,” she said.

  CHAPTER 34

  It was just a matter of time now, even with hardly any time left on the clock.

  No need for Nate to look over to the sidelines. He already knew what the next play was and, if they didn’t score, the play after that.

  Nineteen seconds left, first down for Valley from the 42-yard line, down by four points.

  That close to the championship. And that far.

  He thought of Tom Brady on the field at Gillette, telling him how nobody thought he could do it in that first Super Bowl, when he was the same as a raw rookie.

  Maybe people thought that about me this season, Nate thought.

  But now he had taken his team down the field, and they were this close to pulling it off. Winning the title with a freshman quarterback.

  One year and four days since he’d made the million-dollar throw at Gillette. One year exactly since they’d beaten Blair in the eighth-grade championship game.

  Time really did fly.

  Just not now.

  Nate, Malcolm, Pete, LaDell, and the four other freshmen starting for varsity this season would be the youngest Valley team to ever win the league. But only if they could put the ball in the end zone.

  Nate did all the talking in the huddle, as usual, even surrounded by so many upperclassmen. Told them the snap count, told Pete not to turn too soon on the Hutchins-and-Go, just to trust it, trust that when he finally turned around, the ball was going to be there.

  Nate called the signals from out of the shotgun. He knew Dennison would be coming on the blitz, and they were. But LaDell picked up the outside linebacker. Malcolm seemed to clear out everybody else. Nate had time in the pocket as he watched it all develop, football making as much sense to him as it ever did.

  The way his world did now.

  As soon as Pete had an inside step on the cornerback, Nate pump-faked the sideline route. The cornerback bit, hard, then was caught flat-footed as Pete spun and sailed down the sideline.

  The ball was already on its way.

  Pete cradled it in his hands at the fifteen-yard line and sprinted the final steps into the end zone.

  The touchdown that gave the Valley Patriots the championship of the Berkshire League. But that wasn’t even the best part for Nate, even if he had to admit it was pretty darn good.

  The best part was that it wouldn’t be Nate’s last pass of the day.

  Because he’d promised. And you never made a promise, even with your heart, that you couldn’t keep.

  So after the celebration with his teammates, and after the trophy presentation, after they’d finally cleared the field of players and family and friends, Nate went and collected the game ball from Pete, who hadn’t given it up since he’d scored the winning touchdown, and asked if he could borrow it.

  Pete handed it over.

  Then Nate turned to Abby and said, “Okay, go long.”

  She was bouncing up and down on her toes, clapping her hands, like the happy kid that she was.

  “Got it,” she said.

  “And remember,” Nate said, “look the ball all the way into your hands so I don’t hit you in the head.”

  “Not happening,” she said. “Not anymore, Brady. Got me the best eyes money can buy now.”

  She took off down the field then, running on her long legs, long hair flying, Abby flying. Nate let the ball go, watched as she ran under it, watched it settle i
nto her hands, watched Abby press it to her chest and keep running, Nate knowing she wasn’t stopping until she got to the end zone.

  He ran after her then, ran down the open field, knowing nothing could stop either one of them, feeling as if both of them could see forever.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mike Lupica, over the span of his successful career as a sports columnist, has proven that he can write for sports fans of all ages and stripes. And as the author of multiple hit books for young readers, including Heat, Travel Team, Summer Ball, and The Big Field, Mr. Lupica has carved out a niche as the sporting world’s finest storyteller.

  Mr. Lupica, whose column for New York’s Daily News is syndicated nationally, lives in Connecticut with his wife and their four children. He can be seen weekly on ESPN’s The Sports Reporters.