Free The Blind Side by Michael Lewis Page B

these bags!”) She drove him back—into what she assumed must be the worst neighborhood in Memphis. They stopped in at McDonald’s. He ordered for himself two quarter pounders with cheese. On a hunch she bought six extra burgers for him to take home with him. At length, they reached what he said was his mother’s house. It was an ominous dark redbrick building behind a tall metal gate. Across the street was an abandoned house. The scrub grass, the dead plants in pots, the flaking paint on the houses: everything, including the small children in the streets, looked uncared for. She parked and stepped out of the car, to help him with all the bags. That’s when he sprang into action:
“Don’t get out!” he said.
“I’ll just help you with the bags.”
“You don’t need to get out of the car,” he said.
He was so insistent that she stepped back inside the car and promised to stay put, with the doors locked, while he went in and found someone to help him with his packages. A few minutes later a line of small children streamed out of the front gates of the depressing apartment building and, antlike, lifted the sacks and carried them inside. When the last child had moved the last package, the gate closed behind him.
He hadn’t given her the first clue of what he thought of her, or of their strange afternoon together. “Probably,” she figured, “that I’m some nice lady who wanted something from him.” So when he thanked her, she made a point of saying, “Michael, it was my pleasure. You don’t owe me anything.” And that, she thought, was that.
It wasn’t, of course. He was different from the other children that she and Sean had helped out. For a start, he was obviously more destitute. And she couldn’t explain why just then, but she was drawn to him and felt the urge to do things for him. He was just this big ol’ kid who could have been mean and scary and thuggy, but everything about him was soft and gentle and sweet-natured. With him she felt completely safe; even if he wasn’t saying anything, she sensed he was watching out for her.
She went home and thought about the problem still at hand: how to clothe the biggest sixteen-year-old boy she had ever laid eyes on. She flipped through her Rolodex. Several of her interior decorating clients were professional athletes. All but one were basketball players, and all of them were tall and thin. The other was Patrick Ramsey, the Washington Redskins’ new starting quarterback. “I know how these athletes are about their clothes,” she said. “They’re very particular and they’re tossing them out and getting new ones all the time.” What more fertile source of extra-large hand-me-downs than the NFL? She called Ramsey, who said he was more than happy to dun his teammates for their old clothing. She gave him Michael’s measurements, and Patrick Ramsey took them down.
A few days later, he called back. “You’ve got these measurements wrong,” he said, matter-of-factly. She explained that she had taken the measurements herself, and written them down on a piece of paper. It must be Patrick who had them wrong. He read them back to her—20-inch neck, 40-inch sleeve, 50-inch waist, 58-inch chest, etc.—nope, he had them right.
“There’s no one on our team as big as he is,” Ramsey said.
She thought he was kidding.
“Leigh Anne,” said the Redskins quarterback, “we only have one player on this team who is even close, and he wears Wrangler blue jeans and flannel shirts and no black kid is going to be caught dead wearing that stuff.” That would be Jon Jansen, the Redskins’ starting right tackle.
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line.
“Who is this kid?”
The Blind Side

The Blind Side

CHAPTER FOUR
The Blind Side
THE BLANK SLATE
EVERY ONE OF THE COACHES at Briarcrest can recall the moment they realized that Big Mike was not any ordinary giant. For Hugh Freeze the moment was a football practice at which this new boy, who had