The One & Only: A Novel (11 page)

I wasn’t sure whether he was giving me his personal recommendations or some sort of boys’ club interview tip, but either way, I said, “Got it.”

“And be ready to talk baseball,” Coach said. “Frank’s a first-rate baseball snob. You know the type.”

I laughed and said I did, remembering a conversation Coach and I once had about baseball diehards. We concluded that they were a strange blend of snob and nerd, like a cross between an opera aficionado and a computer geek. They really seemed to believe that they were more evolved, with higher IQs than your average football fan. My mother might have been right about my reservoir of useless statistics, but it was nothing compared to the database that was the brain of a rabid baseball fan.

I told Coach that if Smiley wanted me for a baseball beat, I wouldn’t take the job anyway, but, after I hung up, I still spent the next hour nervously surfing my usual sites—ESPN,
SI
, FOX Sports,
Rivals
, Scout,
Deadspin
, and Yardbarker. I brushed up on the latest baseball gossip, as well as happenings in basketball, tennis, golf, soccer, and hockey. I could drink a fifth of whiskey and talk intelligibly about football, both college and the NFL, but otherwise I was a
SportsCenter
highlight reel kind of girl and didn’t want to embarrass myself. More important, I didn’t want to embarrass Coach. If he had vouched for me, I had to make a good impression.

Two days later I drove to the famed steak house on Lemmon Street, wearing a navy pencil skirt, a white button-down blouse, and low pumps. I skipped all makeup except for a dab of lip gloss and put my hair up in a simple twist. My aim was to look like a serious reporter, without a trace of sex appeal.

Arriving at Bob’s twenty minutes early, I checked in with the maître d’ and waited for Smiley at the polished bar, sipping a club soda and glancing around the room. The crowd was mostly male and appeared conservative, wealthy, and important—or at least self-important—which, based on dining experiences in New York with my father, seemed to be a standard steak house phenomenon. The power scene felt exaggerated today, on steroids, the way things often were in my home state. Big was bigger. Loud was louder. Rich was richer. And less was never more. Then again, maybe I was just nervous, out of my collegiate comfort zone, where you could get away with wearing sweats to work if you really wanted to. In ten years on the job, plus the two I had interned in sports information as a student, J.J. had never once reprimanded me. He hardly even felt like my boss most of the time, offering suggestions rather than assignments or deadlines. My life was a regular cakewalk, and although I had doubts lately about the direction it was going in, I didn’t understand why so many people seemed to have the philosophy that easy was inversely proportionate to worthwhile. Was it really such a bad thing to phone it in—as long as you were happy and doing clean, honest work? Wasn’t there something to be said for working to live, as opposed to living to work?

As I contemplated this question, Frank Smiley walked into the restaurant in a brown corduroy jacket, suede patches at his elbows, a bow tie, and his standard hat—this one more trilby than fedora. His expression was gruffer than usual, and I could nearly read the words in a bubble over his head:
This is a waste of my time.
I took a few deep breaths as the maître d’ pointed at me too quickly for me to glance away. I gave Smiley a little wave as he tipped his hat in my direction,
then barreled toward me, the bubble changing to
Let’s get this shit over with.

“Shea Rigsby,” he barked when he got to the bar, the hostess standing demurely behind him with two oversize menus. He removed his hat with his left hand and extended his right. Neither of us smiled.

“Yes, sir,” I said, my hand falling into a stranglehold. I squeezed back as hard as I could, our hands pumping up and down three times.

“Pleasure,” he said, looking like it was anything but.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Smiley,” I said, though we had met before, or at least collided, in postgame press conferences.

He did not offer his first name, further unnerving me. I stood, catching my heel on my barstool and stumbling a little. A dash of club soda sloshed onto the bar. The bartender swiped it away almost instantaneously, yet Smiley’s eyes stayed critically fixed on the site of the spill.

“Whoops,” I said, righting myself. I smoothed my skirt as the hostess led us to a choice mahogany booth in the corner, obviously reserved for him, as inferior tables were filled around us.

He slid in with his back to the wall and fired off his first question. “So Coach Carr said you can write?”

“Well, I’m certainly not one to contradict Coach Carr,” I said. In my mind, it was a deft reply—a way to combine modesty, humor, and confidence.

“Do you love it? Writing?”

I hesitated, then gave him the risky truth. “It’s a love-hate relationship. I love the feeling
after
I’ve finished writing something. But the actual writing? Sometimes not so much.”

Smiley nodded, not disapprovingly, then said, “Yes. I’ve always said finishing a column is a lot like leaving the dentist.”

“Or the gym,” I added.

“Oh, I wouldn’t know about that,” he said, as a young waiter with perfect hair and posture arrived to offer us beverages.

Smiley made perfunctory eye contact, but looked annoyed by the interruption and said, “We’re ready to order … Aren’t we?”

“Yes,” I said. Then, without looking at the menu, I told the waiter I’d like the rib eye, medium.

“And for you, Mr. Smiley?”

“The usual,” he said.

“And any sides for you today?”

“The usual,” he repeated, with a wave of his hand, practically shooing him away from the table.

When the waiter left, Smiley took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. “So. I know all about your Walker ties.”

“Yes, sir. I have … a lot of Walker ties …” I stammered, reminding myself to answer as simply as possible. Less likely to screw up that way.

“Could you cover college football? And be fair and objective?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He raised his unibrow, and I gave way to the silence.

“Yes. I think I could write very objectively about teams getting their asses handed to them by Walker.”

It was a misfire. Smiley wasn’t amused. He stared at me, waiting for my real answer. I looked directly into his eyes and tried again, telling him that I was confident I could.

Smiley nodded. “Okay, Ms. Rigsby, tell me this. What do you see as the role of a sportswriter?”

My mind went blank as I stalled by answering his question with a question. “For a traditional news outlet?”

“Yes. A
news
paper. Not glib twits or tweets or whatever the hell they’re called, or mamsy-pamsy, whining blogs.”

I took a long sip of water, stalling again, then stammered an awkward reply. “Well, I think … at some basic level … it’s a reporter’s job to keep fans in touch with their favorite sports and teams.”

Smiley stared at me, his eyes glazed. My answer bored him,
pained
him, and maybe even pissed him off.

Panicked, I knew I had to come up with something better—and fast. I cleared my throat, then said, “But when people read the paper now, they generally know what happened the night before. From television
or online articles. Radio. Twitter. And the mamsy-pamsy blogs,” I said with a hint of a smile.

He nodded, somewhat reengaged but still appearing skeptical.

“So it’s less about actual, immediate coverage,” I continued, “and more about adding some level of analysis and insight. Exposing all the underlying emotions. The human element.”

He perked up slightly.

“Bottom line, it’s just a game, right? But it’s our job to show that it’s
not
just a game. It’s a metaphor for life. If sports don’t matter, then life doesn’t matter.”

“Yes,” he said emphatically. “That’s
exactly
it.”

I kept going, with more confidence. “It’s like those little human interest clips they show during the Olympics. They make you care about a random Russian luger like he was your brother … Because you know what? He
could
be your brother. He
is
your brother.”

“Yes.
Yes
,” Smiley said. “And who do you think does that well? Which reporters?”

I fought against the urge to say, “You, for one,” thinking that obsequious was the wrong route to take with Smiley. Instead, I rattled off a handful of the best sports reporters, a mix of contemporary writers and old-timers: George Plimpton, Roger Angell, Red Smith, John Feinstein, Robert Creamer, Frank Deford, Dan Jenkins, Buster Olney, Peter King, and Rick Reilly.

“You didn’t name one female writer,” he said.

“Okay. Mike Lupica,” I said, proud of my quick locker room retort.

He smirked as I said, “Sally Jenkins. She’s great. And Robin Herman.”

“Aren’t you too young to know Angell? Half those guys?” he asked.

“I spent my childhood reading that stuff. Old articles. And I collect
Sports Illustrated
s. When I was ten or eleven, Coach Carr gave me hundreds of issues when his wife cleaned out the attic. They make for great rainy day reading. Reliving the ‘rumble in the jungle’ or the ’eighty-six Mets–Sox series or the epic McEnroe–Borg rivalry.”

For the first time since we sat down, Smiley looked impressed. Not
just satisfied or curious but affirmatively impressed. I knew the look well. It was the look that guys at bars would give me right after I gave them my game day analysis and right before they’d jokingly say, “Will you marry me?”

“What pieces stand out for you?” Smiley asked, but this question felt different from the others. This one sounded like something he’d pose to his reporter buddies over beers, not to a chick he was begrudgingly interviewing as a favor to a legendary coach.

“Hmm. Let’s see,” I said, thinking. “Well, John Updike’s piece on Ted Williams, for one. Phenomenal.”

Smiley lit up as I continued, “Roger Angell’s piece on Steve Blass.”

He nodded. “Go on.”

“Gay Talese’s ‘The Silent Season of a Hero’ … Although it’s hard not to be a genius when you’re writing about Joe DiMaggio … Norman Mailer’s story on Muhammad Ali. ‘Ego’—wasn’t that the perfect title? … And Frank Deford’s ‘Raised by Women to Conquer Men.’ ”

Smiley wrinkled his brow. “Which one was that?”

“The Jimmy Connors piece … And let’s see … my favorite football books … John Eisenberg’s
That First Season
 …
Boys Will Be Boys
by Jeff Pearlman,” I said, referring to the book on the Dallas Cowboys of the nineties. “And Jack Cavanaugh’s
Giants Among Men.
That book makes me wish I had been alive in the fifties—and a Giants fan … and … probably my favorite,
Paper Lion.
George Plimpton’s a friggin’ genius.”

“You have good taste,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said, as our food arrived, and I noted that I actually, finally, had an appetite. No matter what happened on the job front, I had proven to Frank Smiley that I was legit.

“Oh. One more thing,” Smiley said. His voice was casual, but I could see in his eyes that he was about to test me. “How do you feel about women in the locker room? Think that’s okay?”

My pulse quickened, perspiration trickling down my sides as I did the silent calculation. I told myself that I could wear these no-nonsense clothes and forgo makeup. I could order a big slab of meat before noon.
And I could pretend that true impartiality was possible in my highly charged, partisan world of college football. But I just couldn’t—and wouldn’t—give Smiley the answer I knew he was looking for on this one.

So without blinking I said yes. Absolutely.

Smiley raised his overgrown brow. “Oh?”

“No double standards,” I said, unyielding, firm. “Whether in the NFL or the WNBA. Locker rooms need to be open to all or closed to all. And closing them isn’t the answer. We need to be in there to get the immediate reactions and raw emotion. And, as a practical matter, to file our stories on time.” I noticed that I had switched from the third person to
we
and
our
—and wondered what this reflected about my true desire.

“What about player privacy?” Smiley asked.

“What about it?” I fired back.

“Don’t players have the right to it?”

I resisted rolling my eyes and instead told him that players of both genders had plenty of time to shower, change, or at least cover up during the requisite cooling-off period.

“And if they don’t want to cover up?”

I shrugged. “That’s on them.”

“Wouldn’t that make you … uncomfortable? If a male athlete chose not to cover up?”

“I’ve been in locker rooms, Mr. Smiley. I’ve been in winning locker rooms and losing locker rooms. And they all are the same. They all stink. And they are all full of dirty clothes and sweaty towels and bloody bandages.”

“And naked men,” he shot back.

“Sometimes, yes. Sometimes there are three-hundred-pound naked men with gnarly cuts and hairy backs and bruised hamstrings.”

He didn’t seem to get my point, or at least pretended not to, so I kept going, “Locker rooms aren’t lounges of flirtation, Mr. Smiley. Not in my experience. Nobody is thinking about sex after a battle. And if women are allowed to be war correspondents, they should be allowed
in a locker room after a football game,” I finished, feeling jubilant, as if I had scored one for female journalists everywhere.