Football Nightmare (2 page)

“Who?” Heck demanded. “Point them out to me and I’ll straighten them out, fast.”

Keith started pacing back and forth. “It doesn’t matter who. Look, you don’t get it. It didn’t happen to you, so you couldn’t understand. Dad, remember the story you told me? About that baseball player?”

“Which player?” Mr. Stedman looked puzzled. “Oh, you mean Fred Merkle?”

“Yeah,” Keith replied. He looked at Heck. “This guy, Merkle, played Major League baseball a long time ago, and he was good, too. But he made one mistake in a big game, just
one
. And no one ever let him forget it. For the rest of his life, people called him ‘Bonehead’ Merkle. Right, Dad?”

Mr. Stedman sighed. “Right. But —”

“Right!” Keith cut him off. “It didn’t matter that he was a good ballplayer, batted .300, was a good fielder. For the rest of his life, he was ‘Bonehead’ Merkle of the New York Giants.”

“That was different, son,” said Mr. Stedman softly. “That was the Major Leagues, and he was a pro … and it was still unfair. But nobody expects a boy to never make mistakes.”

“I don’t see it that way. I don’t want to have to listen to people give me grief about that for the rest of
my
life. So I’ll find something else to do, something that’s not football.”

“Listen,” Heck said, “if you’d just talk to the guys on the team, you’d see that they all want you back and that nobody blames you for what happened. And if there are one or two creeps somewhere who give you grief, well, who cares what they say? Your buddies know that you’re a great ballplayer, a great pass-catcher.”

“I think you should do whatever you decide,” Mrs. Stedman said, putting a hand on her son’s shoulder. “But I hate to think that you’ll be unhappy, not being out there with your friends.”

“Keith?” His sister, Traci, had come into the room and heard part of the conversation. She had an anxious look on her face. “Is that true? You aren’t going to play football anymore?”

“Right,” said Keith.

“You won’t change your mind? I like watching you play and cheering for you,” Traci said. “You’re really good!”

Keith felt that everyone was ganging up on him. He held up a hand like a crossing guard stopping traffic. “Listen up, all of you. I don’t want to play football. And I’m not going to play football. Okay? Understand? End of discussion.”

He wheeled and walked quickly out of the room.

3

W
hen Keith woke up the next morning, he looked out the window and saw that it was a beautiful, sunny day. He felt great … until he remembered what had gone down the previous evening. Then he felt lousy again.

If only he had held on to that pass, Keith thought, his life would be totally different now. Or if he hadn’t played football last season … or if he’d been an interior lineman, like Cody. Linemen don’t get the spotlight. They miss out on the glory, but they also miss out on the humiliation.

Mr. Stedman had already left for work when Keith walked into the kitchen. Neither his mother nor his sister were anywhere to be seen. He poured some orange juice, fixed himself a bowl of cereal, and sat down. After drinking the juice, he stared at the cereal for a while and shoved it away.

He’d always had a healthy appetite, unless he was sick. Until now, at least. He was about to pour the cereal into the disposal when the phone rang. It was Heck.

“How are you doing?” Heck asked. Keith thought his friend sounded a little cautious, like he was choosing his words carefully, not wanting to have any problems.

“Good. What’s up?”

“Nothing much,” Heck replied. “I was just thinking, it’s a nice day, you want to go down to the pool and hang out for a while?”

Keith’s first impulse was to turn the idea down, but then he thought,
Why not?
He didn’t want to become a total hermit, did he? And Heck was his buddy, right?

“Yeah, sounds good. I’ll leave a note saying where I’m going and ride my bike over to your place.”

“Cool,” Heck said. “See you soon.”

Keith scribbled a note for his mom and left it on the hall table. He put on a bathing suit and a T-shirt, grabbed a towel and a change of clothes, and stuffed them in his backpack. Then he rolled his bike out of the garage, hopped on, and pedaled slowly down the street. Heck lived just a few minutes away, and the town’s pool and recreation area were also close by. He hoped the subject of football wouldn’t come up today, but he had a feeling that it probably would. Heck could be stubborn and he wanted Keith to play with the Bucks.

Well, Keith could be stubborn, too. He wasn’t going to change his mind.

Heck was waiting with his bike when Keith rolled into the Szymanskis’ driveway. Heck shrugged himself into his backpack and the two friends started toward the park, where the town had a large pool and a field that was used for various sports and events.

“So,” Heck said after a few minutes of silence. “How you doing?”

“Okay, I guess,” Keith answered.

There was another silence, which Heck broke again.

“I was wondering, who’s this guy, uh, Murple, Mertz … I can’t remember the name.”

“Huh?” Keith blinked, not sure what Heck was talking about.

“That guy you mentioned last night, the old ballplayer who made the mistake.”

Keith realized what Heck meant. “His name was Fred Merkle. He played for the New York Giants baseball team, like, ninety years ago. My dad read about this stuff, he told me.

“Anyway, Merkle was a good baseball player. Well, this one year, I think 1908, the Giants and the Cubs were playing a game. The winner would win the National League and play in the World Series. The score was tied in the ninth inning and the Giants had runners on first and third. Merkle was the runner on first. A base hit would win the game.

“The next guy up hit a single and the guy from third scored. The game was over, the Giants had won. Merkle ran off the field.

“Only he hadn’t run all the way to second base. He figured the game was over. That’s what usually happened in those days. Except a Cub player yelled that Merkle hadn’t reached second base, grabbed the ball, and stepped on second. The umpire said Merkle was out and the run didn’t count. They had to replay the game, and this time the Cubs won. They went to the Series instead of the Giants. So, for the rest of his life, Merkle was called ‘Bonehead.’ He played for a long time, and was good, too. But all the fans remembered was that one mistake. Merkle said that when he died, they’d probably carve ‘Bonehead’ on his grave. One mistake. That was all it took.”

“Huh,” said Heck. “I see. Yeah, that was a bad deal he got. But that was Major League baseball. Everybody watches that. I mean, that’s not what happened to you, you know?”

Keith sighed. He had known that it would come up again. “Look,” he said. “You don’t get it. It didn’t happen to
you
. It wasn’t a picture of
you
lying there on the ground in the newspaper. It was
me
.”

“Well, yeah, sure,” said Heck, “but still, people have mostly forgotten about it by now. If you’d just come back and play, you’d —”

“
No
. I’m not going to play. I told you that yesterday, and you’re not going to change my mind, so I wish you’d drop it. I know you think you’re right and I’m wrong, but I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“Sure, I understand … but —”

“No, buts!” Keith brought his bike to a screeching stop. “If you don’t cut it out, I’m going to turn around and go home. You have to promise. Yes or no?”

Heck braked to a stop and looked at the ground. “I was just —”

“Yes or no?”

Heck took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay, yes. You win.”

The boys made the rest of the trip in silence.

At the pool, Keith spotted a few of the other Bucks in the shallow end of the pool. One was Cody Aarons, who held a large beach ball over his head while a few other boys tried to knock it loose. For a moment he wondered whether coming to the pool had been a good idea, but before he could decide, Cody spotted him and let out a happy yell.

“
YO! Keith, my man!
Hey, Heck! Hey, come on in, dudes!”

Keith waved and smiled. “Be right there!” He walked his bike to where he could chain it up and went with Heck to the locker room to stow his gear.

While he got his towel out, he tried to think positively.
These guys are my friends, my teammates. They’re on my side. Definitely. Absolutely. For sure
.

But he was having a hard time persuading himself of that.

Once he’d changed, Keith ran over to the pool and jumped in. Grinning, Cody left his other friends, wrapped Keith in a bear hug, lifted him up, and dropped him into the water with a splash.

“Lookin’ good, dude! Hey, how come you missed the meeting yesterday? You’re going to make it to practice, right? We’re going to be tough this year.”

Keith shook his head. “I won’t be there, Code.”

The big lineman stared at Keith, and then shook his head from side to side. “Guess I have water in my ears and didn’t hear right. It sounded like you said you weren’t coming out. But that can’t be right.”

“Your ears are working fine,” replied Keith. “You heard what I said.”

Cody looked at Keith as though the other boy were speaking some strange, unknown language. “But … how come? Why —”

Cody’s eyes shifted away from Keith over his shoulder. Keith looked around and saw Heck, who had evidently signaled to Cody to stop asking questions.

“Um … sorry to hear it,” Cody mumbled. “But if that’s what you … later.”

He rejoined the first group of boys. Keith saw him talking to them quietly, after which a few of them looked in his direction. Keith turned to Heck, who had joined him in the pool. “Maybe I should’ve stayed home today.”

Heck laughed. “You planning on becoming a hermit for the rest of your life? Listen, you don’t want to play football? Okay, then don’t, it’s your choice. But to run and hide just because someone
might
make some dumb remark about you, that’s a bad idea, period. Lighten up!”

Keith smiled gratefully at his friend. “You’re right. I’m letting this thing get to me way too much.”

“Now you’re making sense!” Heck said. “Come on, those guys are having fun!”

They swam over to Cody and his group, who were tossing the huge beach ball back and forth. Cody saw Keith coming and threw the ball high in the air in his direction.

As Keith reached for it, he heard one of the others say, “Think you can hang on to
this
one, Keith?”

Somebody else snickered. Keith caught the ball, fired it back hard toward the others, and turned away, sure everyone in the pool had heard the nasty crack and was laughing at him.

Heck caught up to him and grabbed his arm. “Come on, man, it was a
joke
. Just a dumb joke. The guy didn’t mean anything by it. Chill out and come over.”

But Keith shook his head. “You go on. I don’t feel like it right now.”

He climbed slowly out of the pool and sat on a folding chair under a canvas umbrella. He stared at the ground, feeling hurt and angry.

Would he ever put this behind him?

4

T
hat evening, Keith sat by himself in his backyard, looking through a sports magazine but not paying much attention to it, when he heard his name called and looked up.

Heck and Cody peered cautiously out the back door, as if they weren’t at all sure what kind of reception they could expect.

“Okay if we sit down?” Cody asked.

Keith shrugged. “Suit yourselves.”

Once they were seated, Cody glanced at Heck and cleared his throat. “I, uh, I just wanted to say, that guy who made the stupid remark at the pool today … he isn’t one of the Bucks.”

“Right,” Heck said. “He was just a creep who happened to be hanging out and thought he was being funny.”

“He knows different now,” Cody snapped, frowning darkly. “I told him to watch his mouth from now on, or he’d be sorry.”

Keith managed a weak smile. “Thanks. I appreciate what you’re saying, but you didn’t really have to do that.”

“Yeah, I know I didn’t
have
to,” said Cody, hitching his chair closer to Keith. “I
wanted
to. I mean, we’re friends, right? And the guy was dissing you, and I didn’t like it.”

Keith nodded. “Well, thanks for standing up for me. I really mean it. But let’s face it. The guy was only saying what a lot of kids have been thinking.”

Cody rolled his eyes. “But the thing is, that isn’t true!”

“Cody’s right,” Heck said. “For sure, nobody who ever played a sport would give you grief for what happened in that game. We all know that anyone can make a mistake. It could have been one of us.”

Cody laughed. “Probably
will
be one of us next time. And there’s going to be a next time.”

“You shouldn’t let someone like that dude at the pool get to you, that’s the main thing we want to tell you.” Heck leaned forward and stared hard at Keith. “Your real friends know better. It’s important that you understand how we feel.”

“I know how you two feel,” replied Keith. “And I think probably a lot of the other guys on the team feel the same way — not all of them, but a lot. But if I were to play and drop another pass or two, well … they’d start changing their minds.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Heck protested. “You aren’t going to start dropping passes. So why worry about it?”

“See, that’s the thing.” Keith shook his head. “I don’t know what I’d do. I think I’d start thinking about messing up the second my number is called. And the more I think about it, the more likely I am to blow it again.”

Heck and Cody looked at each other, clearly exasperated. “But you’re not making any — Oh, hi, Mr. Stedman.”

Keith’s father stepped out into the yard. “Hi, boys. Nice night.”

“For sure,” Heck answered.

“Mr. Stedman,” Heck said, “maybe you can help us out here.”

Mr. Stedman squatted next to his son on the terrace. “If I can, I will. What’s up?”

“We’re trying to talk Keith into changing his mind about football,” explained Cody. “We could definitely use him this season, and we know he’d be a game-breaker for us.”