"The Rivalry: Mystery at the Army-Navy Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Feinstein John)

2. FRIDAY NIGHT AT THE PALESTRA

The Army-Navy misadventure began innocently enough, a chance for Stevie to do the two things he enjoyed most in life: being a sportswriter covering a big event and hanging out with Susan Carol.

Stevie was doing one of those two things on a wintry Friday night about a month earlier. He was sitting on press row at the Palestra, no more than a three-point-shot attempt away from the St. Joseph’s bench.

There was a time-out with just twenty-five seconds left in the game, and Villanova led St. Joe’s 67-65. The din of nearly ten thousand fans packed into the ancient gym was so loud it was difficult to hear anything.

“If St. Joe’s pulls this out, Jay will never hear the end of it,” Dick Jerardi, sitting to Stevie’s left, was saying, leaning close so Stevie could hear him. “They could go on and win the Big East, and all the Villanova fans are going to say is, ‘But you lost to St. Joe’s.’ ”

Stevie laughed. He knew the longtime Philadelphia Daily News reporter was right. As successful as Jay Wright had been during his coaching tenure at Villanova-including a run to the Final Four in 2009-his school’s fans found any loss to another Big Five school-St. Joseph’s, La Salle, Temple, or Pennsylvania-completely unacceptable.

Stevie noticed the St. Joseph’s Hawk mascot standing on the edge of the huddle, flapping his wings as always. St. Joseph’s motto was “The Hawk will never die,” and the student wearing the costume was required to keep his arms flapping at all times throughout a game. Given the difficulty of that task, Stevie hadn’t been surprised to learn that whoever was selected as the mascot received a full scholarship for that year.

Even though he really liked Jay Wright and Villanova, Stevie was rooting for St. Joseph’s to pull off an upset. For one thing, a win would mean more to the Hawks, who were unranked starting the new season. And he liked Phil Martelli’s everyman approach to coaching. Wright was just so smooth-known as one of the best-dressed coaches in the country. Jerardi had told him that Wright wore cologne during games.

TV finally came back from commercial and St. Joe’s inbounded. The ball swung to point guard Tommy Jones and he slowly dribbled the clock down. “Oh God,” Jerardi murmured. “They’re going for the win right now.”

The clock ticked under ten seconds. Jones began to approach the key. Out of the corner of his eye, Stevie saw St. Joe’s best shooter, Michael Anthony, cutting from the left baseline to the right, getting a screen to prevent his defender from following. Stevie knew what was coming next.

Sure enough, as Jones spun into the lane, Anthony popped out on the right side of the key. Jones got him the ball as the Villanova defenders scrambled. Stevie could see the clock… three… two…

Anthony caught the ball with the clock at two seconds and took one quick dribble to square himself and clear some space. He was just outside the three-point line when he released the shot, and the buzzer sounded with the ball in the air.

Swish.

The St. Joseph’s fans exploded! Anthony disappeared under a pile of teammates. The coaches met right in front of where Stevie was sitting to shake hands.

“Gutsy call,” Wright said, an arm around Martelli’s shoulders.

“I got lucky,” Martelli shouted back.

Stevie double-checked the scoreboard: St. Joseph’s 68-Villanova 67.

Martelli was right. He was lucky. He would have been second-guessed for days-maybe years in Philly-if the do-or-die shot hadn’t fallen.

But Stevie was luckier still. It was an amazing game, and he got to write about it and tell the tale.

Stevie was also lucky that the Villanova-St. Joseph’s game was played on a Friday night. He wasn’t allowed to cover games on school nights, his parents being a lot more concerned with how he was doing as a high school freshman than his budding career as a sportswriter.

Stevie had almost fallen into it, winning a writing contest when he was thirteen that allowed him to go to the Final Four. There he and Susan Carol, the other contest winner, had stumbled into a plot to fix the national championship game. Thanks to the fact that they had broken that story, the two of them had been asked to cover other events.

Now Stevie wrote for the Washington Herald whenever he could, and Susan Carol wrote for the Washington Post. And he’d found a girlfriend as well as a job. Even though they had endured some seriously rocky moments, Stevie and Susan Carol were going out-well, as much as you could when one person lived in Philadelphia and the other lived in Goldsboro, North Carolina.

As Stevie made his way through the celebrating St. Joseph’s fans to the interview room that was underneath the stands, he noticed he had a text message on his phone from Bobby Kelleher: Call as soon as u can. Great game.

Stevie figured it would be at least ten minutes before any players or coaches came in to talk to the media, so he found a corner where his phone got service and dialed Kelleher’s number.

“Man, Phil took a hell of a chance playing for one shot,” Kelleher said, answering the call.

“Where are you?” Stevie asked, because it sounded almost as loud on Kelleher’s end as on his.

“I’m in a sports bar down the street from the Penn State campus,” Kelleher said. “I watched the game with Hoops. It absolutely killed him not being there.”

Stevie smiled. Hoops was Dick Weiss, a columnist for the New York Daily News. Weiss was a born-and-bred Philadelphian who had grown up watching games in the Palestra. Even though he worked for a New York paper, he still lived in Philadelphia and would always be a Philly guy at heart.

But Kelleher and Weiss were both covering the Penn State-Ohio State football game the next day, which had a noon kickoff, so they had to settle for watching the basketball game on TV.

“Hey, Hoops wants to say hi,” Kelleher said.

A moment later, Weiss was on the phone. Even over the noise, his Philadelphia accent was distinctive. “You have to ask Phil what he was doing on the last play, okai?” he said. “He was vurry, vurry lucky that shot went down.”

Stevie agreed, and they made plans to see a game in December when the regular football season was over and Weiss had some free time. Then Kelleher came back on the line.

“Anyway, you think you can take the train down to Washington on Sunday?” he said. “You can tell your folks you’ll be there and back in a few hours.” Reading Stevie’s mind, he added, “You can do your homework on the train.”

“I’ll ask,” Stevie said. “What do you need, a Redskins sidebar or something?”

“Hardly. I wouldn’t do that to you. No, we’re having a big planning meeting over at the Post. Army-Navy will be in DC in a couple weeks and the two papers are combining coverage and going all out. First time the game’s ever been played in DC, and it may be the last. Both papers want you and Susan Carol involved.”

“Is Susan Carol going to be there Sunday?” Stevie asked.

He heard Kelleher laugh. “Yes, Stevie, I figured that’d get you here. Typical her: she’s managed to get an interview with Orrin Hatch on Monday to talk about his legislation to ban the BCS. She’s going to stay with us Sunday night.”

Stevie shook his head. That was typical Susan Carol. She was always one step ahead.

“When did you call her?” Stevie wondered.

“This afternoon. Don’t ask me how she got the interview set up so fast, because I haven’t a clue. Talk to your parents. You’ve probably got a short school week coming up with Thanksgiving, and you won’t miss more than a day or two of school to cover the game. You’ve pulled it off in the past.”

Barely, Stevie thought. Still, especially with Susan Carol involved, the Army-Navy game sounded like fun. He heard someone call his name and saw Dick Jerardi waving him in the direction of the interview room.

“Martelli’s coming in,” he said. “Gotta go.”

“Call me in the morning,” Kelleher said. “I’ll be up early fighting traffic to get to the stadium.” Stevie rolled his eyes. After sports, Bobby’s biggest obsessions were traffic and parking.

Stevie hustled into the interview room just as Martelli was talking about the last shot.

“I think I probably lost my mind during the time-out with twenty-five seconds left,” he said. “I know, it’s crazy playing for one shot there. But something in my gut just told me this was the way to go. Fortunately, Anthony made me look like a good coach by making the shot.”

Stevie scribbled furiously in his notebook. That took care of Weiss’s question. Now all he had to do was convince his parents to let him take the train to Washington on Sunday.