Backfield Boys

by John Feinstein

  “So we need something else,” Jason said. “A smoking gun.”

  “How do we get it, though?” Anthony said.

  “It’s worth thinking about,” Tom said. “But for now, our next move is to figure out a way to meet with Teel and Robinson again, and see if they’ve found anything out.”

  “Well, they’re not coming to the game Friday night, and we aren’t allowed off campus without a good reason on Saturday and Sunday,” Billy Bob said. “So we need to come up with something.”

  “Think there’s any way to convince them to come Friday?” Jason asked.

  Tom shook his head. “If South Hill is as bad as they say and they show up, won’t the coaches want to know why?”

  “Maybe they want to see if Jason will be the hero again?” Billy Bob said.

  “If I am, the entire team will probably be on lockdown all weekend,” Jason said. “Coach will not be happy.”

  They all nodded. He was right.

  * * *

  Tom texted Teel anyway to tell him they needed to talk. He said nothing about their research, paranoid enough by now to think his phone might get confiscated at some point if they got much further with the investigation. No sense giving the coaches or the school any written evidence of what they were up to.

  “Of course, the fact that you’re texting with a reporter at all would probably convict you if it ever got to that,” Jason pointed out as they were walking off the practice field on Thursday.

  Tom knew Jason was right, but he wasn’t that concerned. Part of him wanted a confrontation of some kind with the coaches. As the week had gone on and he continued to get very few “reps”—as the coaches called plays—in practice, he’d found himself having more and more regret about not jumping at the chance to go home the previous Saturday.

  Another part of him, though, he had to admit, was being a little jealous about Jason’s new status with the team. Jason had gone from being as invisible as Tom, day in and day out, to being a full-fledged hero. When he’d walked into the locker room before practice on Monday, almost everyone in the room had stopped to clap for him, and then they’d crowded around to congratulate him and ask him how he was feeling.

  The answer was fine. Dr. Mazzocca had taken him into the training room for his concussion protocol test before he was allowed to join everyone else on the field. Soon after they finished stretching, Jason came jogging onto the field—in uniform.

  He reported to Dave Billingsley, the trainer, and Tom saw Mr. Billingsley pat him on the back, point him to where the quarterbacks were gathering, and then walk over to report to Coach Johnson.

  As Jason jogged past the circle of wide receivers he slowed for a second and said to Tom, “Passed with flying colors. My brain’s still intact.”

  “Still?” Tom couldn’t resist saying—earning him a glare from Coach Reilly, who couldn’t hear what was being said but clearly didn’t see any reason for any conversation at all.

  When they scrimmaged that day, Jason was the number three quarterback, even getting a few reps with the second-stringers. Billy Bob was still taking more snaps with the twos than with the ones, which annoyed him and confused everyone else.

  “Coach Johnson just doesn’t want to admit he was wrong starting Ronnie Thompson last week,” Billy Bob said on Wednesday when the depth chart for Friday’s game was posted in the locker room. Thompson was again listed as the starting quarterback.

  “You’re right,” Tom said. “He knows he can get away with playing Thompson this week. If, by some chance, they make it a game, you come to the rescue again.”

  Billy Bob gave Tom his Billy Bob grin. “And I can’t even claim race is involved, can I?”

  They both laughed—one of Tom’s few laughs during the week.

  On Thursday night, after he’d gotten into the relatively brief Thursday scrimmage—most of Thursday practice being devoted to special teams—for a grand total of two plays, Tom went to Juan and Jimmy’s room to keep his promise by explaining to them why he’d asked for the rooming list.

  “You’re kidding,” Juan said. “You didn’t have to go to all that trouble. All you had to do was ask us. You think there’s some secret reason why we’re roomies? You think there’s some secret reason why there’s always an even number of Hispanics on the baseball team?”

  Jimmy took it a step further. “We’ve got two Asians on the basketball team this year—one from China, one from Korea. The Chinese kid can really play—every big-time school out there is recruiting him. The Korean kid can barely dribble with one hand. But TGP recruited him…”

  “So that the Chinese kid would have an Asian roommate,” Juan finished.

  They both nodded.

  “If that’s the case, then it isn’t just Coach Johnson—it’s the entire school,” Tom said.

  “It’s not the entire school,” Jimmy said. “It only takes a few bad apples. Especially when they are big apples.”

  “You’ve researched Coach Johnson’s background, right?” Juan said as Tom nodded. “Have you googled our beloved founder, Mr. Gatch, at all?”

  They hadn’t. It had never occurred to Tom or to his other three friends that the issue might go beyond the football team. They knew Mr. Gatch was from the South—he didn’t have a deep accent, but you could hear it when he spoke—but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Billy Bob was as Southern as they came, and so were a lot of the other kids he’d met at TGP who clearly couldn’t care less about skin color. One of the things Tom had figured out growing up as an athlete was that race pretty much disappeared when you were playing ball. Not always. But most of the time.

  He remembered a quote from the great basketball coach Red Auerbach, who was the first coach in professional sports to start an all-black lineup back in the 1960s.

  “I can’t stand black players,” Auerbach had said. “I also can’t stand white players, red players, or green players—if they can’t play. They all look the same to me until they get on the court. Then I decide who I like and who I don’t like.”

  Tom’s father had given him a book about Auerbach to read a couple of years earlier. Reading it, he had learned that Auerbach had made Bill Russell the first black coach of a major professional sports team when he’d handed the Celtics over to him in 1966. It was hard to believe that more than fifty years later, race could still be a factor in who got coaching jobs—or who played quarterback.

  Or who roomed with whom.

  “So what am I missing about Mr. Gatch?” he asked Juan.

  “He’s from Louisiana,” Jimmy said.

  “So?”

  “There’s more,” Jimmy said. “Go and google Gatch; then we’ll talk again.”

  “Why so mysterious?” Tom asked.

  “Not being mysterious,” Jimmy said. “But it’s easier for you to read about it than for me to try to explain it.”

  Tom sighed. Every time he thought they had answered a question, new ones popped up. He headed back to his room to look into Mr. Thomas A. Gatch.

  * * *

  There really wasn’t anything shocking—at least that Tom could find—in the biography of Mr. Gatch.

  His Wikipedia page was brief and had obviously been written by the school’s communications department. It was glowing, talking about his career as a teacher, then as an administrator, and then as a “player management representative” (in English that meant he’d been a sports agent) before his “groundbreaking decision” to found TGP. In truth, Tom thought, it was hardly groundbreaking: IMG Academy and others had already fostered the concept—for better or worse.

  Remembering what Jimmy had said about Mr. Gatch coming from Louisiana, Tom started looking at websites from there for more information. There appeared to be nothing. Finally, having gone to the website of the state’s largest newspaper, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Tom found something. It was a one-paragraph mention, buried deep within a story headlined PREP SCHOOL PERSONNEL. The seventh item in the story, after mentions of football coach hirings and
firings in the area and a couple of paragraphs about new department heads, came under the heading “Metairie Christian Names New Head-of-School”:

  Thomas A. Gatch, 35, has been named to replace Harold D. Samples as head-of-school at Metairie Christian School. Gatch is the headmaster of the Louisiana Boys School in Baton Rouge and was formerly head of the English department there.

  The date was August 1, 1985. Tom quickly did the math in his head and was a little surprised to learn that Mr. Gatch was sixty-seven years old. He’d have guessed closer to sixty.

  A few minutes later, Tom found Mr. Gatch mentioned in a second clip. This one was considerably longer and bore the headline HIGH SCHOOL HEAD-OF-SCHOOL DEFENDS DUKE INVITATION.

  The story was dated December 2, 1989. It only took a couple of paragraphs to figure out what Jimmy and Juan had been talking about:

  Thomas A. Gatch, the head of Metairie Christian School, said yesterday he will not back away from the invitation he has extended to former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David E. Duke—now a member of the Louisiana State Legislature—to come and speak at the school.

  Duke, who was once a member of the Nazi Party, won a special election earlier this year, running as a Republican. Gatch insisted again yesterday that Duke’s invitation to speak to the 335 students at Metairie was not an endorsement of his politics.

  “He’s an elected official who has a political point of view that the students can learn from—regardless of how they feel about that point of view,” Gatch said. “You don’t always learn by listening to people whose views are inside the box. I’ve known Mr. Duke for a long time. I don’t have to agree with his views to respect him as a communicator.”

  The story went on to mention that Gatch and Duke had been at Louisiana State University together.

  There were no more specifics.

  Tom found another clip—from two days later—announcing that Gatch had reversed himself and withdrawn the invitation to Duke “under pressure from the school’s board of trustees.”

  Tom found one more clip, dated a month later, announcing that Gatch was resigning from his job at Metairie Christian to “pursue other opportunities.”

  The trail ended there. Tom sat back in his chair. Anthony was asleep, snoring softly.

  The man who had founded TGP had apparently known a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard who was also a onetime member of the Nazi Party. And he had apparently been fired for inviting him to come speak to his students at the school where he was head-of-school.

  “Wow,” he said softly to himself. “What now?”

  17

  Tom didn’t really have a chance to share his newfound information with the others until after classes on Friday. The day just started too early for any sort of group talk, and he wasn’t going to bring it up with people nearby in the dining hall or in the classroom.

  As they were sitting down at breakfast, Jimmy Gomez did ask him if he’d found anything, and Tom said he had. Jimmy just smiled. Tom had questions for him and for Juan del Potro, too, as in: Why hadn’t they said something earlier?

  For the first time since Tom and Jason had arrived at school, TGP had been hit that morning with a real rainstorm, the all-day kind—no thunder or lightning, just relentless, miserable rain. Once he and Anthony were back in their room after their last class, Tom texted Jason, asking that he and Billy Bob come up to their room. He did the same with Juan, but Juan texted back that he and Jimmy were “blowing out of here” for the weekend. Tom remembered that Juan was dating a freshman at UVA and had mentioned going to see her this weekend. Since he was a senior, he could have a car to make the short drive to Charlottesville.

  Juan did briefly mention Mr. Gatch—indirectly—in his return text:

  Jimmy says we can talk more when we get back Sunday. About 5.

  Tom wasn’t a hundred percent sure he could wait until then, but he had no choice. Teel and Robinson had both texted that they couldn’t get over to the school for the game that night or Saturday but maybe could figure something out for Sunday.

  When Jason and Billy Bob arrived, Tom filled everyone in on what he’d found in his Google search on Mr. Gatch.

  “I can’t believe that Teel and Robinson wouldn’t mention it to us,” Tom said after summing up his findings. “I mean, that’s a huge piece of the puzzle, isn’t it?”

  “It could be,” Billy Bob said. “But it’s also entirely possible they don’t know about Mr. Gatch’s past.”

  “It was in the New Orleans newspaper,” Tom said, slightly exasperated.

  “More than twenty-five years ago,” Jason pointed out. “I mean, honestly, I’ve never heard of this Duke guy. Have you?”

  “I have,” Anthony said. “When Trump was running for president, the guy endorsed him.”

  Billy Bob snapped his fingers. “Yeah, I remember now. Duke said Trump was the best candidate; Trump said he wasn’t sure he wanted an endorsement from Duke. Something like that.”

  Tom felt like they were getting off-topic. “Look, doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Mr. Gatch was associated in some way with a guy who was once a self-declared Nazi and later was a KKK big shot. I mean, my God!”

  “Slow down, Tom,” Jason said. “You might be jumping at shadows here. The article you found says they went to college together and knew each other. That doesn’t mean they have the same beliefs, does it?”

  “What about Gatch inviting Duke to speak at his school?” Anthony said.

  “That’s disturbing—maybe,” Jason said. “But I’m sure Mr. Gatch can make the case that it’s good for kids to hear all viewpoints.”

  “Might be interesting to find out who else he had speak at the school while he was there,” Billy Bob said.

  “Remember, though, that Mr. Gatch backed down and Duke never actually spoke,” Jason said. “But Billy Bob’s right.”

  “So what’s next?” Tom asked.

  They all looked at one another.

  Tom finally sighed. “I guess there’s not much more we can do until Sunday,” he said. “I feel like we’re running in sand. Every time we think we’ve figured something out, we don’t seem to have made much progress.”

  “Not entirely,” Jason said. “We may not know what we’re onto right now, but it does feel as if we’re onto something.”

  Billy Bob stood up. “I gotta go lie down for a little bit,” he said. “We do have a game to play tonight.”

  Tom had almost forgotten. Which, he thought, was understandable. Billy Bob would certainly play tonight, as would Anthony. Even Jason would get in on special teams; he’d been designated as the outside rusher on all kicks—field goals, extra points, and punts—after his heroics the week before. Meanwhile, Tom would almost certainly watch from the sidelines.

  Which would give him even more time to stew about the mysteries of Thomas Gatch Prep.

  * * *

  The rain had stopped by kickoff, although the air was muggy—and buggy—on the sidelines. Standing there with nothing to do but watch, Tom almost wished it was still raining, if only to cool things off a little bit.

  The crowd was sparse compared to a week earlier, when the ten-thousand-seat stadium had been almost sold out. Tom wasn’t sure if it was the weather or the opponent—he figured both—but the stadium was half full at best.

  It turned out that Teel and Robinson had been right about South Hill High School. The Hilltoppers were smaller, slower, and weaker than TGP at just about every position. They had one big-time player, a wide receiver named Freddy Johnston, who ended up with seventeen catches for the night and provided his team with just about all of its offense.

  TGP’s offensive line dominated the game, pushing the South Hill defense backward on almost every play. Given all sorts of time and space, Ronnie Thompson suddenly became a star quarterback. He threw the ball only on occasion, usually after the Patriots had ripped off five straight solid runs and South Hill crowded the line of scrimmage.

  By halftime, the offense had put together three long scorin
g drives and had scored on two short drives set up by South Hill turnovers. The score was 35–10 and, as he walked to the locker room, having not yet put a foot on the field, Tom could see that some of the crowd was clearly heading to their cars already. He wished he could leave, too.

  In spite of the big lead, Coach Johnson was hardly upbeat at halftime.

  “Honestly, fellas, we should score on just about every play against these guys,” he said, pacing up and down in front of his players. “I’m not really concerned about scoring this second half; I’m concerned about execution.” He paused. “O-line, I know you guys will think picking up eight, nine, ten yards each play means you’re doing your job. But if you can’t hold your blocks longer than that against this defense, what happens next week when we play Culpeper at their place? Those eight-yard gains will be two-yard gains, if we’re lucky.

  “Defense, I understand that Johnston is really, really tough to defend. I’m going to get together with the coaches right now to come up with a way to at least slow him down. But we’ve got to do that. We’re going to face a lot of good receivers in conference play.”

  He went on with a few more details. As Tom listened, it occurred to him that every point was right on target. Bobo Johnson could coach. Of that there was no doubt.

  The one starter who didn’t get singled out for any criticism was Ronnie Thompson. There hadn’t been anything wrong with Thompson’s play, but if the O-line should have been opening bigger holes, Thompson probably should have been picking up more yardage, given the holes they had created. It was pretty clear—at least to Tom—that Thompson was Coach Johnson’s guy. He wondered why.

  The second half wasn’t much different from the first. Coach Johnson began to play second- and third-stringers late in the third quarter when the margin was extended to 49–10. Anthony, who had been alternating series at right tackle with starter Wyatt Wilson, was told at the end of the third quarter that his night was over.

  On the next series, Billy Bob finally got into the game, playing with second- and third-stringers and with orders to keep the ball strictly on the ground. He settled for fullback handoffs and the occasional pitch to a slotback. Even at that, TGP still tacked on another touchdown.