The Extra Yard

by Mike Lupica

  Mike stepped in and intercepted the ball cleanly.

  “Gotta fight for that ball,” Coach Gilbert said. “Gotta want it, eighty-one.”

  Then he turned away, blew his whistle, and said, “Next.”

  Teddy put his head down, ran to the back of the line on the opposite side of the field, felt himself clenching and unclenching his fists, worried that he might have blown his shot at making the team already.

  He didn’t realize Gus was behind him until he heard Gus say, “Remember what Aaron Rodgers said to Packers fans that time after he played, like, his worst game? R-E-L-A-X.”

  “I can’t,” Teddy said. “You know how Coach just said you gotta want it? I want it too much.”

  “Just let it happen,” Gus said.

  “I’m gonna happen myself right into Pop Warner,” Teddy said. “That’s what’s gonna happen.”

  He didn’t get Jack in the next round either, getting Danny Hayes instead. Teddy didn’t do much better this time. The slant bounced off his shoulder pad, Danny threw high on the curl. When he tried to run his fly pattern, Teddy stumbled as he reached for the ball and ended up doing a solid, gold-plated face-plant.

  He did get up and manage to make a catch in coverage. Danny threw high again as Teddy came back a little for the ball, but Teddy was able to go up as high as he could and get his hands on the ball and keep them there.

  But he knew all Coach and the other parents were going to remember was him falling down.

  I waited all summer for this, he thought.

  All year, really.

  And now I can’t even get out of my own way.

  Before the last round, Coach gave them another water break. Jack came over and pulled Teddy away from where the other kids were getting their drinks.

  “I’m thirsty,” Teddy said.

  “Not now, you’re not,” Jack said.

  He walked him even farther away, so nobody could hear them.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Jack said.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do,” Jack said. “But this thing isn’t over yet. You can still pull this out.”

  “Every other kid on this field is playing better than me,” Teddy said.

  “Not true,” Jack said. “That last catch you made, hardly anybody out here could go up and get it like that. You’re still bigger than the other guys at your position, you’re still fast. And you’ve still got great hands.”

  “Hands of stone.”

  Jack ignored him. “And now you’ve got me coming out of the bull pen to throw to you, which means the way I’ve been throwing to you at school, and the way I’ll be throwing to you all season.”

  “You headed down to Pop Warner too?” Teddy said.

  Then Gus was with them. It was the same as always. All for one.

  “Well,” Gus said, “he may have a lousy attitude, but he hasn’t lost his sense of humor.”

  “Well, and my mind,” Teddy said.

  This time around he would be the last to go. So he watched Gus catch all five balls Jack threw to him, and Mike O’Keeffe do the same.

  Mike went right before Teddy. As he was running back with the football, Jack jogged over, leaned close to Teddy, and said, “On your last one, when the guy is covering you, I want you to do something for me.”

  “What?”

  Jack grinned. “Go long,” he said.

  “You want that to be the last thing Coach is going to see today?”

  “Yup,” Jack said. “Stop. And go long.”

  Teddy told himself to focus all his attention, and all his energy, on Jack; told himself to remember all their sessions behind Walton Middle, all the hours they’d spent together. He told himself to forget Coach and the evaluators and all the other kids watching.

  Just me and Jack, he told himself.

  He pitches, I catch.

  Simple.

  He ran his slant. Jack didn’t baby him, drilling a pass into Teddy’s stomach. Then Teddy ran his next three patterns—curl, post, fly—and caught them all. He was trying to think along with Jack now. Maybe Jack wanted him to go long again because Mike O’Keeffe, guarding him again, wouldn’t be expecting two straight deep throws.

  “Last play of the day,” Coach Gilbert called out. “Let’s make ’er a good one.”

  It wasn’t just the last play of the day, it was Teddy’s last chance to impress him, to show him how much game he really had.

  His last chance to show Coach he belonged.

  Teddy knew Mike would try as hard as he could to pick another ball off or knock one down. Maybe in his mind, a stop here might mean he made the team and Teddy didn’t. Maybe it would be all that was separating them when the evaluators and Coach added everything up.

  Teddy would have looked at things exactly the same way if he was the one on defense.

  “Go!” Coach yelled.

  Teddy took off down the right sideline, head down, running hard. When he suddenly put the brakes on, Mike jammed up on him, as if sure Jack was going to deliver the ball right there.

  Teddy had him.

  He took a big first step and was in high gear again, like a car going from zero to sixty. In that moment he had three full steps on Mike. It was like he was running free in the outfield at Walton Middle, right behind his own house.

  When he turned around, Teddy saw that Jack had put some air under the ball, more than the throw before. He wanted to give Teddy every chance to run under it.

  Teddy could see it all now: Ball and sky and Mike O’Keeffe, his own head down, trying to get back into the play, to give himself a chance to make a play.

  But Teddy wasn’t watching Mike, he was watching the flight of the ball.

  One that he was sure now that Jack had overthrown.

  It just looked too high and too deep and too far out of his reach.

  Teddy knew he had to be close to the end zone. He just didn’t know how close. He turned almost all the way around, knowing that this wasn’t a ball he could run through. He had to jump for it.

  He jumped, reaching up as high as he could, feeling as if he were starting to fall backward as he did, trying to make his right arm longer than it really was.

  At the last possible moment he put up his big right hand, one of those mitts, like he was trying to touch the sky.

  He didn’t catch the ball cleanly, the way his man Beckham had that time against the Cowboys, what everybody had called the greatest catch of all time.

  But as Teddy felt the ball touch his hand and felt himself falling back to earth at the same time, he controlled the ball just enough to tip it forward, tip it into his body, so he could somehow get his left hand on it too.

  As he landed on his back—hard—he knew both hands were on the ball Jack had just thrown him.

  He was aware, even flat on his back, that it had gotten kind of loud at Holzman Field.

  He was still on his back, the ball still pressed to his chest, when he looked up and saw Jack Callahan staring down at him. Teddy thought he shouldn’t have been able to get down the field that fast.

  But he was Jack.

  “That ought to work,” he said to Teddy.

  Then he was pulling Teddy up.

  Again.

  FIVE

  This was the way Coach Gilbert left it with them before they left tryouts:

  He would meet that night with the evaluators, and then he would post the names of the kids who had made the Wildcats on the Walton Town Football website at eleven o’clock the next morning. The rest of the kids would find their names on the town’s Pop Warner site. Then he asked that the kids who made the Wildcats show up at Holzman Field at one o’clock, where they’d be given game jerseys, helmets, pads, and playbooks.

  Then they had to go to Bob’s Sports and try on their football pants there.

  Teddy and Jack and Gus decided they wanted to be together—all for one—when they found out, even though Teddy knew there was no real drama for his friends. They were making the te
am; they’d both played like total stars.

  Cassie was with them too. She never wanted to be left out of anything.

  She said, “I’m just here for the drama.”

  The next day, they met up at Jack’s house at nine thirty. Mrs. Callahan made them all pancakes. It was ten when Jack grabbed his laptop and they went down to the basement to wait through what Teddy knew was going to be the longest hour of his life.

  At least he wasn’t thinking about his dad today. Just about football. Because right now football mattered more to him.

  “Stop worrying,” Cassie said. “You’re all going to make it.”

  “We are all going to make it,” Gus said.

  “I know Cassie doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Teddy said.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “But you were there,” Teddy said to Gus. “You saw how I played before I made one lucky catch.”

  Cassie said, “I heard it was a little more than luck. Jack and Gus said you morphed into that guy from the Giants who stole David Beckham’s name.”

  “I don’t think he stole it, exactly,” Jack said.

  “He’s going to make it, right?” Gus said to Jack. “I’m right, right?”

  Jack grinned. “Right,” he said.

  “You’re being serious, right?” Gus said.

  “I am being serious,” Jack said. “Coach isn’t going to cut a guy who made that catch.”

  “I still can’t believe I caught it,” Teddy said.

  “And do you know why you did?”

  “No. But I know I’m about to find out.”

  “Because you had to,” Jack said. “Sometimes in sports you’re better than you think you are, because you have to be.”

  Teddy didn’t want to check his phone again to see what time it was, but it was as if Gus were reading his mind.

  “Five till,” he said.

  Jack turned on the television. They tried to watch SportsCenter. Teddy knew they were both acting nervous just to make him less nervous. It wasn’t working. But they had to try. There were about a million ways, he was discovering, to be a good friend.

  Or a great one.

  The list wasn’t finally posted until ten minutes after eleven o’clock.

  “Wait,” Jack said.

  “Wait?” Teddy said. “Because we’re all having so much fun here?”

  “No,” Jack said, shaking his head. “I can’t access the list.”

  “Let me try,” Cassie said. “You’re probably doing something wrong.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, his fingers moving across the keys, “only you have a handle on this whole Internet thing.”

  “Well,” she said, “if you don’t want help . . .”

  “I don’t.”

  “Would it be helpful,” Teddy said, “if I reminded you again that I am dying here?”

  “I’m doing my best,” Jack said.

  It took him nearly five more minutes, which made all the other waiting time since Teddy had awakened this morning feel as if it had gone by in a blink.

  Finally Jack exhaled, then said in a quiet voice, “Here it is.”

  Gus walked over the arm of his chair and jumped on the couch next to him. Cassie got on the other side.

  Teddy didn’t move.

  Nobody said anything until Jack Callahan looked up, smiling at Teddy. Pointing at the screen.

  “Callahan, Jack,” he said. “Madden, Teddy. Morales, Gus.”

  It got even louder in the basement than it had the day before at Holzman when Teddy had come down with the ball.

  Make the catch, make the team.

  • • •

  It was a good, loud, happy scene at Holzman Field a couple of hours later, one table set up with uniform jerseys on them, another one with helmets and pads.

  Teddy hadn’t even asked about team colors, mostly because he didn’t think he’d get this far. But he couldn’t believe what he saw:

  Giants colors.

  Blue helmets, with a small, white Walton w on the side, like the lowercase ny on Giants helmets. Old-school all the way. And the jerseys were dark blue, like the Giants’ road jerseys.

  The colors for his favorite team were now his colors, on his team.

  Some of the kids didn’t care what number they got, some kids did. The guys in the line, offense and defense, seemed willing to take anything in the 60s or 70s. Jack requested number 12 and got it, because he loved Aaron Rodgers and loved Tom Brady, too. Teddy just waited. He felt as if he had to have been one of the last guys picked, like the last kid picked in a playground game.

  So he was just going to wait his turn, take whatever was left when he got up to the table.

  But when he did get up there, Coach Gilbert was smiling at him. He had a jersey in his hands, but Teddy couldn’t see the number.

  “Congratulations,” Coach said.

  “Thanks, Coach.”

  “I think I mentioned yesterday that I was a receiver in high school,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I used to catch passes from your dad.”

  “My mom told me that,” Teddy said, “when I told her you were coaching the Wildcats.”

  “Well, in my life, I never made a catch like you made yesterday, son,” he said. He paused and said, “I asked some of the other parents, and they told me you’ve never played organized football before. Is that true?”

  “No, sir,” Teddy said. “I never did.” He grinned at Coach, the old Teddy coming out of him, and added, “Mostly because nobody would have me.”

  “Well, I will,” Coach Gilbert said.

  “Thank you,” Teddy said. “I wish the season was starting today.”

  “Got a number preference?” Coach said.

  Teddy ducked his head, looked up, and said, “Actually, I do.”

  “One of your buddies might have mentioned you were a Giants fan.”

  “Big-time,” Teddy said.

  “Do I even have to guess who your favorite player is?”

  “Number thirteen,” Teddy said.

  “Had a feeling,” Coach said, and then handed him the jersey in his hands.

  13.

  Teddy looked at the jersey and the number and then back at Coach. “Thank you so much!” he said.

  “It’s all yours,” Coach said. “Pretty much been yours since you made that catch yesterday.”

  Teddy thanked him again and walked away with the jersey, feeling as if Coach Gilbert had just handed him some kind of trophy.

  He got his helmet next, got fitted for his pads, grabbed a playbook off the stack. It was a long walk home from Holzman if you were carrying this much stuff. Jack said his dad could drive Teddy. Teddy said he wanted to walk, and that he’d call Jack later.

  He didn’t remember much of the walk, just that it felt like he was floating, all the way past school, cutting across the outfield, across his backyard, through the back door, placing his uniform carefully on the kitchen table.

  This time his dad was waiting for him in the living room.

  SIX

  His mom was sitting on the sofa, her hands in her lap. She was smiling, but Teddy got the idea that her smile was something she’d put on, like her makeup.

  Just from what he’d observed the other day, she was a different person when his dad was around.

  His dad.

  It was one more thing he didn’t have a choice about, thinking of him that way, whether he wanted to or not. But how else was he going to think of him? Mr. Madden?

  Dave?

  Teddy went over and sat down next to his mom.

  “Hey, champ,” David Madden said. “How did it go today?”

  Teddy wanted to tell his mom the good news, but he didn’t want to do it with his father in the room, the guy who thought it was cool calling him “champ.” He had called Teddy that the other day on the porch. It was what he called Teddy on the phone.

  Teddy hated it more than ever. What had just happened at Holzman, he wasn’t a part of it. It wasn’t his. It’s mine, Tedd
y thought. Mine and Mom’s.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” his dad said.

  Teddy waited.

  “I just wanted to stop by because I didn’t feel as if we really got much of a chance to talk the other day,” his dad said.

  “Not much to talk about,” Teddy said.

  “Well, truth be told, there’s a lot to talk about,” David Madden said. “Not that we have to do it all right away.”

  “I’m definitely down with that,” Teddy said.

  “I understand this is a lot for you to process.”

  “You understand,” Teddy said, nodding. “You mean, like you understand me?”

  “Teddy,” his mom said in a low, strained voice.

  “No, Alexis,” his dad said. “The boy and I need to talk this out.”

  From champ to boy. Wow, Teddy thought, I’m starting to lose ground here.

  “Is that what we’re doing?” Teddy said. “Really? Talking things out? Like a real father-son talk?”

  David Madden said, “Listen, Teddy, I know our relationship is obviously going to change.”

  Now Teddy couldn’t help himself, whether he was going to upset his mom or not. “What relationship?”

  “Teddy,” she said again, even quieter than before.

  “You’re right,” his dad said. “A hundred percent. I should have said that we’re going to start a relationship, at least if that’s all right with you. You might not want that, at least not right away. But I do. I know I can’t undo the past, and that’s on me. But I’m here now.”

  Teddy took a closer look at him than he had when he’d first come to the house. His father had more gray hair than the last time he’d seen him. He looked older, somehow.

  “You’re not here because of me,” Teddy said. “You’re here because you got a better job.”

  David Madden put his hands up, almost in surrender.

  “Listen,” he said. “I know this is going to be uncomfortable, for all of us, at least at the beginning. All I’m asking is for you, again, to give me a chance to make things right.”

  “You never gave me a chance,” Teddy said. “Why should I give you one?”

  “Because I’m your dad and I’m asking you,” David Madden said. “You may not think I’ve earned the right. I probably haven’t earned the right. All I’m asking you to do is have an open mind, and judge me on what I do from now on.”