Last Shot (2 page)

Now he had to wait until his father came home to make it official. Naturally, he was late. It was almost seven by the time he heard the car pull into the garage. Stevie was waiting for him, letter in hand, when his dad walked inside.

“Nice to see you, too,” he said as Stevie thrust the letter at him without saying hello. But then he started to read.

“Wow!”
he said. “Stevie, that’s really great! I’m so proud of you!”

“So I can go?” Stevie said.

“What did your mother say?”

“She said I can go if you can go with me.”

Dad smiled. “I think that could be arranged. I’m sure I could scalp a ticket down there if I had to.”

“Scalp what?” Mom said, walking into the room.

“A ticket to get into the Final Four,” Dad said, waving the letter.

“What about work for you and school for Stevie?”

“Hon, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Plus, he earned it by winning the contest. I really think he’ll learn a lot from the trip.”

She smiled. “Uh-huh. And clearly you won’t mind going either.”

“Not even a little bit.”

And so it was settled. But Stevie knew his dad was
wrong about one thing. This would
not
be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. For him, it would be a
first
-in-a-lifetime experience.

He would see to that.

If Stevie had been in charge, he and his dad would have flown to New Orleans on the first flight available on Thursday morning. That would have given them all afternoon to hang out at the coaches’ hotel.

“The coaches’ hotel? What in the world is that?” his father asked when Stevie broached the idea.

“
All
the basketball coaches in the world go to the Final Four,” Stevie said. “It’s like a convention or something. And there’s this one hotel where they all stay and hang out. I mean, except for the four whose teams are playing.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I read it in that book you gave me for Christmas last year.”

“I should have known.”

But it turned out six-thirty was the earliest his dad could get away. They connected in Atlanta and arrived at the hotel a few minutes after eleven, which with the time change meant it was after midnight on Stevie’s body clock. Still, when he and his dad walked into the sparkling lobby of the New Orleans Hyatt Regency, he forgot how tired he was. A large sign just inside the door said
WELCOME FINAL FOUR MEDIA
. Proud and still a little amazed, Stevie thought to himself: That’s me.

They made their way to the front desk to check in. There was only one person working and the man ahead of
them was engaged in a loud argument with that person.

“Look, I’ve been in the car for fourteen hours today,” Stevie heard the man say. “I really don’t need this. I
know
my reservation was for a suite. I don’t want one of those tiny little rooms you give to people. I didn’t come here to spend five days sleeping in a closet.”

“Sir, this is a king-size room. And, as I said, if we can upgrade you tomorrow, we will. You can speak to the manager about the confusion in your reservation in the morning.”

“Confusion?” the man shouted. “There’s no confusion. You screwed up. This is outrageous. I mean, don’t you have any idea who I am?”

Suddenly, Stevie knew exactly who the man was.

“Dad,” he hissed, “that’s Tony Kornheiser!”

His dad smiled. “Sounds like he’s having a bad night.”

At that moment, Kornheiser turned around and looked at them. “I’m really sorry about this. They screwed up my reservation.”

Disgusted, he took the key that the clerk was now handing him. “This isn’t the end of this,” he said to the clerk. “Have a good night,” he said to Stevie and his dad as he walked toward the elevators.

“You too, Mr. Kornheiser,” Stevie said. “I hope the rest of the weekend gets better for you.”

Kornheiser stopped and smiled at Stevie. He pointed at the clerk, then at Stevie. “You see,” he said,
“he
knows who I am.”

He turned and walked away.

“Dad,” Stevie said with a grin, “I have a feeling this is going to be the most unbelievable weekend of my life.”

STEVIE WAS UP AT SEVEN
the next morning, barely able to control his excitement. The first event on their agenda was the USBWA awards breakfast, where he and his co-winner, Susan Carol Anderson, would receive their plaques and meet their escorts for the weekend. According to the USBWA press release that had been waiting for them in their room, Susan Carol was from Goldsboro, North Carolina.

“I just hope,” he said to his father, “that she’s not a Duke fan.”

“If she’s from North Carolina, she probably likes Duke or North Carolina,” his dad said.

Whatever. Susan Carol wasn’t who he wanted to meet anyway. The USBWA would also be giving out its Player of
the Year and Coach of the Year awards. Paul Hewitt, the coach at Georgia Tech, whose team had lost to Connecticut in the East Regional final, had won the coaching award, and Raymond Felton, the great guard from North Carolina, was the Player of the Year. Since the Tar Heels had been upset by Saint Joseph’s in round sixteen, Felton would also be there.

This was almost a perfect Final Four as far as Stevie was concerned. There was a Philadelphia team—St. Joe’s—which made him happy. There was a Big East team—Connecticut—which also made him happy, since the Big East was his favorite league. There was a Big Ten team—Minnesota State—which was okay with him, especially since he absolutely loved to watch Chip Graber play. If Stevie could wake up one morning and be anybody in the world, it would be Chip Graber. Graber was only five eleven, but he was, as Dick Vitale always said on TV, “an absolute jet.” A little guy who went past people before they knew what had happened. Chip was a senior, and his dad, Alan Graber, was his coach. That father-son story line made MSU the media’s favorite team. Stevie had read that Graber might be one of the first five players chosen in the NBA draft in spite of his height. Some people called him “Iverson without the tattoos.” He was that good.

Stevie had grown three inches in eighth grade, so he was now five foot four. Short, and not even close to being a jet. More like a prop plane. He had made the eighth-grade team at school, but he only got to play when the team was way ahead or way behind.

“My ability in this sport,” he had announced to his dad after a game in which he never moved off the bench, “is limited to knowing the difference between a good player and a bad player.”

“Which puts you ahead of quite a few people,” his father pointed out.

The only team that had made it to New Orleans that bothered Stevie was Duke. The dreaded Blue Devils, who
always
seemed to be in the Final Four. Or close to it. Every time he turned on ESPN, it seemed as if Dick Vitale or someone else was yelling about how great Duke was and how Mike Krzyzewski was the most wonderful coach and the best person who had ever lived.

Yech.

Okay, he was a pretty good coach—ten Final Fours, three national titles. But there was something really annoying about a team that never lost. And Duke always got the calls from the referees, especially when they played Maryland, and Maryland was Stevie’s favorite ACC team. Stevie had hoped against hope that Villanova would beat Duke in the Sweet Sixteen, but it hadn’t happened. Then Duke had come from 13 points down in the regional final to beat Louisville. Now Duke was slated to play Connecticut in the second game on Saturday, after Minnesota State and St. Joe’s faced off in the first game. The winners of those games would play for the national championship on Monday night.

Getting off the elevator for breakfast, Stevie spotted someone wearing a button that said “ABD” on it. “Hey,” he said, “what team is that?”

The woman wearing the button smiled at him and said, “It means ‘Anybody But Duke.’ ”

“I want one of those,” Stevie said to his dad as they walked toward the ballroom.

“Might blow your unbiased-reporter image, don’t you think?”

“I’ll wear it inside my shirt, next to my heart.”

His dad laughed.

They were met at the ballroom door by a man with a mustache and glasses. “Steven? Mr. Thomas?” he asked as they walked up. “I’m Joe Mitch. We’re so glad you could make it.”

They shook hands, and Joe Mitch guided them into the room. “Steven, I was one of the judges on the contest. I can’t tell you how impressed we all were with your story. Let’s go up front. I want you to meet Susan Carol and her dad. They just got here.”

Stevie really wanted to meet Paul Hewitt and Raymond Felton and some of the real writers. “We met Tony Kornheiser last night,” he said to Mitch. “Sort of.”

“Well, you’ll meet a lot more people today, I promise you that,” Mitch said. “Here are the Andersons.”

Stevie braked to a halt when Susan Carol Anderson, hearing her last name, turned around.

The first thing he noticed was that she was about nine feet tall. He looked down at her feet, figuring she was wearing heels. More bad news. She was wearing flats.

“Steven and Bill Thomas,” Mitch said. “Susan Carol and Don Anderson.”

There were handshakes all around, and Stevie’s dad asked Don Anderson how their trip to New Orleans had been. “Not bad,” he said. “And you?”

Susan Carol was eyeing him. Stevie stood up as straight as he could. He figured she was about three inches taller than he was. Okay, maybe four. She had long brown hair and, he had to admit, she was pretty … for a giraffe. “I read your story,” she said. “The one that won. It was very good. I’d like to go to the Palestra someday.”

She had one of those Southern accents that stretched words out. “Palestra,” in her accent, became
Paa-lae-sta-ra
. Four syllables. At least.

“Thanks,” he said. “When did you get a chance to see it?”

“Oh, it’s up front,” she said. “They blew both our stories up and put them on easels near the podium. Come on, I’ll show you.”

He had to admit he wanted to see that. “Dad, I’ll be up front,” he said. His father, Joe Mitch, and Don Anderson were chatting away. His father waved and nodded, and Stevie followed Susan Carol to the front of the room, weaving through people. The stories, as she had reported, were sitting on easels, printed like real newspaper stories. “Wow,” he said. “I wish I could get one of those.”

“You will,” she said. “Mr. Mitch told me they were for us to take home after the breakfast.”

“Wow,” he said, then realized he had said “wow” twice and probably sounded like a little kid. “I mean, that’s really nice of them.”

He had been looking at his story, which had been given the headline
THE PALESTRA—STILL ROCKING AFTER 80 YEARS
, wanting to drink it all in. He looked over at the other easel, where her story was set up. The headline almost made him gag:
COACH K—HALL OF FAME COACH
 … 
AND PERSON
.

“So, I guess you’re a Duke fan,” he said, not bothering to look at what she had actually written.

Her face lit up. “Oh, absolutely.” (It came out
abb-so-looo-taly
.) “My daddy went to divinity school there and I’ve (
aaahv
) been a fan, I guess, since the cradle. I even got to talk to Coach K for my (mah) story. He was sooooo nice.”

Stevie felt sooooo nauseous. To steer the conversation away from the saintly Coach K, he said, “Your father went to divinity school?”

“Yes,” she said. “He’s a minister.”

“But he’s not …”

“Dressed like a minister? No. It’s mostly priests who wear collars. He wears civilian clothes all the time.”

A minister’s daughter and a Blue Devils fan … Stevie had a thought that made him smile.

“I hear Coach K curses all the time. What does your dad think about that?”

“That even Coach K isn’t perfect,” she answered, not seeming even a little bit riled by his gibe at the saint.

Someone came up behind them.

“So, I presume you are our two winners. I’ve read the stories. They’re vurry, vurry good.”

Stevie knew a Philadelphia accent when he heard it. He
turned and there was Dick “Hoops” Weiss, who had been a legend at the
Philadelphia Daily News
for years before moving to the New York
Daily News
.

“Dick Weiss,” he said, introducing himself to Stevie and Susan Carol. “Steven, as a Philly guy, I loved your story on the Palestra, okay? But Susan Carol, you did a great job with Coach K, too.” They both thanked him. Weiss explained that they would be given their awards by Bobby Kelleher, the
Washington Herald
columnist who was the president of the USBWA. “After breakfast we’ll meet in the lobby at eleven-thirty and head over to the Superdome,” he said. “Steven, I’m your escort. Susan Carol, you’re going to be with Bill Brill, who is a member of our Hall of Fame.…”

“Oh, I know
just
who Bill Brill is,” Susan Carol said. “I started reading his stories when I was little. He’s fantastic.”

Weiss laughed. “Well, one thing I can tell you for sure. He shares your affection for Coach K. And for Duke.”

Stevie was about to say something when Bill Brill walked up—he knew it was Bill Brill because he was wearing a name tag on his checked sports coat, which had the widest lapels Stevie had ever seen.