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  “This is all big-time today,” Gus said, after Teddy had warmed him up along with the other receivers down near the goal line.

  “Once the ball gets kicked off, it’s still the same game we always play,” Teddy said.

  “You really believe that?” Gus said.

  “Heck no!” Teddy said.

  Somehow, as excited as they were and as nervous as they were and as impatient as they were for the game to start, they both managed to laugh.

  Teddy waved to his mom when she got up to her lucky spot with Gus’s and Jack’s parents. There was nothing more to be said between them, because they’d said it all at home. Cassie and Katie arrived together. It was as if Cassie’s last official act as Katie’s coach was watching her sing the anthem.

  Teddy walked over to say hi to them.

  Cassie said, “The only thing that could possibly make today better was if I were playing too.”

  “Yes,” Teddy said. “Having you in uniform would give us a much better chance to win!”

  “Did I detect a note of sarcasm there?” Cassie said. “I certainly hope I didn’t.”

  “Definitely not,” Teddy said. “No, ma’am.”

  “For the last time, do not ma’am me.”

  She put out her fist then. Teddy gently pounded it. “Let’s do this,” said Cassie, the captain of the real home team in Walton.

  Right before it was time for Katie to sing, Coach Gilbert walked the Wildcats down to their end zone, then told them to get in a circle around him and take a knee.

  “I’ll make this short,” he said. “You know I’m not big at long speeches. But I just want you to appreciate the chance we’ve got today, and appreciate at the same time that win or lose, this will be one of those days we’re all gonna remember. Just because you only get so many days like it in your life, and you can trust me on that.”

  He was making a slow circle as he spoke, as if trying to speak to each one of them directly.

  “It’s not just what we’ve done to get to today,” he continued. “It’s that we’ve made the journey together. You guys have picked each other up every time you had to, you’ve met every challenge, you’ve handled every test.”

  Teddy saw him smile.

  “But now you are here. We’re here. Together. And you know that today is no different from last week. If we win, we get another game. We get ourselves another one of these days.” He paused and said, “And maybe another one after that.”

  Now Coach knelt down.

  “Anybody here ready to stop playing yet?”

  “NO!” they yelled.

  “Are we gonna let those guys on the other side of the field stop us from getting to where we want to go?”

  “NO!” They were even louder this time.

  But Coach’s voice was quiet when he spoke again. “Let’s go make one more memory,” he said.

  He led them back to their bench. As they did, Teddy heard the screech of some brakes in the parking lot, heard the slam of a car door, and then saw his dad running toward Holzman Field.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  It was one more thing, perhaps the last thing all day, that would happen in slow motion, especially since his dad was moving faster than Teddy had ever seen him, his old Walton cap on his head.

  Teddy watched as he came around the bleachers, hopped the fence, and came right for him.

  Teddy felt like running himself, but he knew there was no place for him to go.

  “I told you not to come,” Teddy said.

  His dad was out of breath. His face was red. “Just hear me out.”

  “I did that already.”

  His dad put his hand on Teddy’s arm. Teddy stared down at it, then back at him. But he let his dad walk him down the sideline about twenty yards, so they could talk in private. Teddy knew they didn’t have long, because Katie was getting ready to sing the national anthem.

  “Dad,” he said, “the game’s about to start. The biggest football game of my life. Even bigger than the one you missed last week.”

  “I almost missed this one too,” his dad said. “They canceled the red-eye flight I was supposed to take from San Diego. I had to go through Chicago to get here in time.”

  Teddy was shaking his head again. “But I told you I didn’t want you here.”

  “You don’t always get to decide. I’m still the dad.”

  “Today?”

  “Nah, kid. You’re going to be stuck with me for a long time, I’m afraid.”

  “Why, because you didn’t get one of those jobs?”

  His dad smiled. “Actually,” he said, “I got both of them.”

  “I—I don’t get it.”

  “Turned ’em both down.”

  “But in your letter you said—”

  “I know what I said about wanting to be happy, and doing something I love,” he said. “But I finally figured out this week that you’re the one who makes me happy. Being your dad is what I love to do most in the world. That’s the only job I want.”

  He paused and said, “Okay?”

  Teddy looked at him. Really looked at him. And saw him as clearly in that moment as he ever had. “Okay,” he said.

  His dad put his hands on both sides of Teddy’s helmet and smiled again. “Okay,” he said.

  They stayed right where they were while Katie Cummings sang a beautiful anthem. Then they walked back toward the Wildcats’ bench together.

  “How’s the arm?” his dad said.

  “Perfect,” Teddy said, thinking that this was already a day to remember and they hadn’t even tossed the coin yet.

  “You really throw that block last week like Coach said?”

  “I did.”

  “The kind of block I got hurt on, that kind of block?” his dad said. “Have I taught you nothing this season?”

  “More than you think,” Teddy said.

  “Now you need to do one thing for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Play the game of your life.”

  Teddy did.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  It was 20–19, Norris, at halftime.

  Teddy had thrown pretty much everything he had at the Panthers. His dad had thrown just about everything he had in his playbook. Teddy had completed one touchdown pass to Gus. Another had gone to Jake, when they’d completely fooled the Panthers on third-and-a-foot. Jake had snuck out of the backfield and gotten behind everybody, and Teddy had put the ball on the money for what became a sixty-yard score.

  Teddy had also gotten his own six, on a one-yard sneak, lowering that shoulder again and feeling as if he were pushing back the whole Panthers line by himself.

  But Scotty Hanley was treating this like a QB game of one-on-one, looking like even more of an undersized wizard than he had the first time they’d played him. He scrambled for first downs. He scrambled and threw on the run. He threw from the pocket, somehow seeing over the rush and finding open receivers. By halftime he had three touchdown passes.

  “This is the best you’ve played yet,” Teddy’s dad said to him, the two of them at Teddy’s favorite spot at the end of the bench. “It’s all you ever hope for in sports, saving your best for the biggest game.”

  “But what if his best is better than mine?” Teddy said.

  They both knew he was referring to Scotty Hanley.

  “Well, kid, that’s sports too, if that’s the way it works out. But it won’t.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Are you kidding? You think I came all this way for us to lose?”

  The Wildcats were getting the ball to start the second half. Before the Panthers kicked off, Jack came over and stood with Teddy. So did Gus. And when Teddy turned around, almost as if he was supposed to in that moment, he saw Cassie on the other side of the fence, smiling at all of them, nodding her head.

  “I’m just gonna tell you one thing,” Jack said to Teddy, “and then I promise to shut up.”

  “Don’t shut up!” Teddy said. “I need you.”
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br />   “Just keep doing what you’re doing,” Jack said. “Don’t force anything, and don’t change a thing.”

  “Except one thing,” Gus said. “This half we score more points than they do.”

  Before they took the field, Teddy’s dad came over. “Guys have always told me, after they stopped playing, that nothing was as good as playing. I used to think the same way. But I was wrong.”

  “Lot of football left,” Teddy said to him.

  “Good!” his dad said.

  Teddy threw his third touchdown pass of the game, to Mike O’Keeffe, on the Wildcats’ second drive of the quarter. But Scotty matched that right before the quarter ended, breaking away from a Wildcats blitz and running twenty yards for the score. The Wildcats had missed their conversion after Mike’s touchdown when Nate couldn’t control the ball before going out of bounds. Scotty got his conversion, though, hitting his tight end.

  Panthers 27, Wildcats 25.

  One quarter left, unless somehow they ended up in overtime.

  Both teams, after all the points they’d put up, after all the offense in the game, slowed down in the fourth quarter, exchanging punts twice. Scotty Hanley finally got the Panthers driving again. But with just over three minutes left, Max Conte caught up with him after another scramble and knocked the ball out of his hands from behind. Gregg Leonard recovered. Wildcats ball.

  Teddy was standing between his dad and Coach Gilbert after Max’s play. Coach turned to Teddy, grinning, and said, “You want to call your own plays the rest of the way, like you did last week?”

  “Nah,” Teddy said. “My dad’s got this.”

  “We’re gonna use short passes as runs,” his dad said. “And then when they finally are expecting one more of those, we hit them down the field.”

  “And win this stinking game once and for all,” Teddy said.

  “Well, yeah,” his dad said.

  Teddy threw to Jake in the right flat. Then he hit Brian with the same play on the other side. First down. Two minutes and ten seconds left. He hit Gus on a neat curl, then made the same pass to Mike on the other side. Right, left. Right, left. He felt like a boxer throwing short punches. They were already at the Panthers’ thirty. Teddy threw a quick out to Gus on the right sideline for five yards, stopping the clock with a minute and thirty left.

  Teddy looked over at his dad, who smiled and threw him a fist. Teddy put up his own fist, thinking, Most fun I’ve ever had in my life.

  Jake brought in the next play. His dad was ready to take a bigger bite out of the Panthers’ defense, a ten-yard shot to Nate over the middle. But before they broke the huddle, Teddy said to Gus, “If Nate’s covered, I want you to take off.”

  “Roger that,” Gus said.

  Teddy shook his head. “You say some very odd things sometimes,” he said.

  “Copy that,” Gus said.

  The Panthers came with a blitz, and even though it didn’t surprise Teddy, there was enough pressure to chase him out of the pocket to his right. He didn’t even have time to check to see if Nate was open down the field; he was just trying to avoid a sack before he ran out of field.

  He wasn’t going to take a dumb chance. He remembered everything his dad had ever told him about quarterbacks eating the ball if they had to. But before he did that, he was going to do something else his dad talked about constantly:

  He was going to try to make a play.

  He reversed at the last second and began running to his left, back across the field.

  As he did, he saw Gus Morales in the clear, behind everybody, waving for the ball as he ran toward the goalposts. Somehow Teddy was able to set himself just enough as he flung the ball across his body, and down the field, the best pass he’d ever thrown in his life.

  He got hit as he threw but stayed on his feet, which was where he was when he saw the ball settle into Gus’s arms in the end zone. That was right before Gus, the ball in his right hand, was raising his arms in the same moment the ref closest to him did the same thing.

  Wildcats 31, Panthers 27.

  Teddy calmed everybody down in the huddle, reminding them the game wasn’t over. Brian brought in the play for the conversion: one more of his dad’s naked bootlegs. Teddy could have run it all the way in, but he dove in just to make sure. They were up 32–27.

  When he got to the sideline, his dad lifted him off his feet with a hug.

  “I couldn’t have made that throw,” his dad said.

  “I actually don’t think I can make it either,” Teddy said.

  One minute left at Holzman.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Teddy watched that minute from his own forty-five yard line.

  He watched as Scotty threw a first-down pass deep down the middle to his favorite wide receiver, the play getting the Panthers to midfield right away.

  His coach called their first time-out.

  Scotty scrambled again on the next play, the Wildcats managing to put heavy pressure on him with just a three-man rush, everybody else dropping back into coverage. But when he got out of bounds, the ball was on the Wildcats’ thirty-five yard line.

  Forty seconds left.

  On the next play Scotty crossed everybody up, running a simple, straight handoff to his halfback, who ran thirteen yards up the middle to the Wildcats’ twenty-two.

  Another time-out.

  Thirty seconds left.

  “I think the kid checked off and called that play himself at the line,” Teddy’s dad said. “Unbelievable.”

  “We just need a couple of stops,” Teddy said.

  “Somebody on defense has to make a play,” his dad said.

  Scott was forced to throw the ball away on the next play. Then he ran it again, all the way to the Wildcats’ ten.

  Fifteen seconds left.

  Teddy couldn’t breathe. And couldn’t do anything. His game had become somebody else’s game.

  Scott rolled to his right now. He looked as if he might be able to run the ball all the way in. It was him against Andre Williams. Andre had to either come up on him or drop back into coverage. Do or die, truth or dare. Andre committed, and came up.

  Trying to make a play.

  As he did, Scotty Hanley stopped himself maybe a yard from the line of scrimmage and threw this little floater to his wide-open tight end in the corner of the end zone.

  Panthers 33, Wildcats 32.

  That was the way it ended.

  Teddy felt his knees buckle on the sideline, like he’d taken his last hit of the season. He even felt as if he might go down.

  But he didn’t.

  Because then his dad’s arms were around him, and not just keeping Teddy from falling to the ground. His dad was lifting Teddy up in the air, his embrace feeling stronger than it ever had, as if he never planned to let go.

  • • •

  They’d all gotten into the handshake line. The trophy presentation had been made at midfield. When that was over, Teddy sought out Scotty Hanley one last time.

  “You got me good,” he said, leaning in—leaning down, actually—and bumping shoulders with him.

  “And you would have gotten me if you’d had more time.”

  “Some game,” Teddy said.

  He couldn’t keep himself from smiling. Because it had been that kind of game.

  “Best I ever played in,” Scotty said, and then told Teddy he’d see him next year.

  As Teddy walked away, it was sinking in that it was already next year for him, at least in football.

  Coach gathered his players around him one more time and told them how proud he was of them, and that he was going to throw them the biggest pizza party Walton had ever seen next weekend. A few minutes later Cassie was on the field, telling Teddy and Jack and Gus that they were coming to her house for homemade pizza tonight.

  It was an order, of course, not an invitation.

  Teddy walked over and hugged his mom, as she told him how proud she was. Teddy thanked her. She asked if he wanted her to wait for him.


  “Dad said he’d drop me,” Teddy said.

  “That was some entrance,” she said, “wasn’t it?”

  “No,” he said. “That was just Dad.”

  He walked back to where he’d left his helmet and his pads behind the bench. He’d put his jersey back on after he took off the pads, just because he knew when he took it off later, he’d be taking it off for good.

  He saw his dad then, down the field, leaning against one of the goalposts, hands in his pockets, staring out at the field, almost like he was taking a picture of it for himself. For his own memory.

  Teddy walked down there.

  “I keep telling myself I should feel worse than I do,” his dad said.

  “Funny,” Teddy said. “I keep telling myself the same thing.”

  “You know why I don’t? Because I know you did everything you could. And I mean, everything.”

  “We both did,” Teddy said. “That last drive of ours was perfect. The game just ended too soon.”

  “Like the season did.”

  Teddy shrugged and smiled again. “There’s always next season,” he said.

  “There is that,” his dad said.

  He put his arm around Teddy’s shoulders. They walked across the field to the Wildcats’ bench then, both of them probably wondering how they could lose the big game the way they just had and still feel like they’d won so much.

  Photo by Taylor McKelvy Lupica

  MIKE LUPICA is the author of The Only Game, the first book in the Home Team series, and many other bestselling books for young readers, including QB 1, Heat, Travel Team, Million-Dollar Throw, and The Underdogs. He has carved out a niche as the sporting world’s finest storyteller. Mike lives in Connecticut with his wife and their four children. In addition to being a bestselling author, he is a celebrated sports reporter both on radio and in print. You can visit Mike at mikelupicabooks.com.

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