“Coach, if it’s all the same to you, I think I’m going to join the newspaper staff,” I said. “I appreciate the spot, but my dad also needs a delivery boy at his store after school, and I don’t see how I could do it all.”
We stood and we shook hands. “Your name will be on the list I post this afternoon, Hell. You can bet your ass it will. I’ll leave it up to you what you want to tell everyone.”
I reached the door.
“Hell.”
“Yeah, Coach?”
“Life is about heart. Yours is as big as any kid’s I’ve ever coached. Don’t you ever forget that.”
“No, Coach, I won’t.” I left his office with one less dream but somehow feeling like I was seven feet tall.
9
“What happened?” Ernie asked the question even before the swinging door to the locker room had shut behind me. He’d been waiting in the hall.
“I made the team,” I said.
He pumped his fist as we walked through a hall crowded with students coming back from lunch and hurrying to get to class. “I knew he’d keep you. You work harder than anyone.”
“I turned him down.”
Ernie stopped. “You did what?”
“Mr. Shubb is looking for someone to write sports for the newspaper and take over as the editor in chief next year.”
“So?”
The first bell clattered, echoing loudly. “I think I’ll get more out of that than playing sports. It’s a big commitment—I can’t do both. Plus, my dad needs me at the store.”
“You’re giving up basketball?”
“It’s better for my future,” I said over the clatter of the bell and the banging of lockers.
“You can’t quit, Sam.”
“I’m not quitting,” I said. “I’m just choosing something different. Besides, think about all the great stories I can write about you now.” This caught Ernie’s interest. His eyes widened. “I’m going to call up the Times and get a job covering high school games. Coach says they don’t have a high school reporter. When I’m done, you’ll be a legend.”
The idea to contact the Times had come from my eavesdropping on Coach Moran’s telephone conversation. If I was going to be writing articles for the school paper, I might as well see if I could get paid to do it.
I called the Times sports editor when I got home and asked if he wanted a high school reporter. He asked me to see him the following day and to bring examples of my writing, which were essays I’d written in my English classes, since I hadn’t yet written for the paper. Given that saying about beggars not being choosy, the Times hired me. They agreed to pay me thirty-five cents a column inch, plus my mileage to and from the games. They also gave me a press pass.
My coverage of Ernie’s exploits appeared in the Times at least once a week during the next year and a half. By our senior year, I hadn’t just made Ernie a legend at Saint Joe’s; I’d made him a household name throughout the county. College recruiters showed up in hordes at Ernie’s games and practices. The recruiting letters, which started as a trickle, became a deluge of envelopes stuffing his parents’ mailbox and bore the insignias for USC, UCLA, California, Syracuse, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Arizona. Coaches offered him scholarships in basketball, football, and track, but it became apparent that football was the sport that best utilized all of Ernie’s athleticism and provided his best chance at a professional career.
Giving up basketball for the journalism staff had two other unintended consequences. After a feature article I wrote about Ernie won first place in a journalism contest and I received a $500 scholarship, Mr. Shubb entered my writing in other competitions. By the end of my senior year, I had won close to $2,500 in scholarship money, which, as my mother liked to say, was no small potatoes. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Not playing sports also gave me the time to work at my father’s store, and that led to the second unintended consequence.