Free Fathers & Sons & Sports by Mike Lupica Page A

the house and killed the engine. I could see Mama at the kitchen window and behind her Donna on the phone. A year ahead of me at school, Donna was a cheerleader and one of the most popular girls in her class. No one was prouder than she of my place on the team. Now Bobby entered the picture, standing on his tiptoes to look out the window and see who’d pulled up out front. He vanished and a few seconds later I spotted him at the door, waiting to find out how practice went, to check my arms and legs for new cuts and bruises, evidence of collisions with teammates.
    At that moment I understood something that I was sure my father had realized long ago. There comes a time when quitting stops being an option, when quitting means quitting on those who are counting on you and quitting on your destiny, and although I was still groggy from Big Hamm’s hit, I understood this with absolute clarity. It was too late now to quit the team. It would always be too late.My father never wore a hat in the house. He took his cap off. “I don’t want to make you think you have to play,” he said. “Everybody gets knocked down. Not everybody gets up, though. Today you got up.”
    “You don’t need to tell me that. It would be better if you didn’t say anything.” I pushed the door open and stepped outside. “What’d Mama cook for supper?”
    “Mixed meat and rice and gravy.”
    “I hate mixed meat.”
    “When you’re done eating, you’re going to thank her and tell her how good it was. You hear me, boy?” “Yes, sir.”
    He took his time walking around to my side of the truck, and together we started under the pine trees for the house. I wasn’t feeling any better, so he held me by the elbow and made sure I didn’t drift.
    John Ed Bradley is the author of several highly praised novels, including
Tupelo Nights
and
My Juliet.
A former staff writer for
The Washington Post,
Bradley has contributed feature stories to
Sports Illustrated, Esquire,
and
GQ. It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium
was published in 2007. Bradley lives in the historic Coliseum Square in New Orleans’ Lower Garden District
.

After Jackie

HENRY AARON
AS TOLD TO CAL FUSSMAN
    can remember being a kid back in Mobile sitting on the back porch when an airplane flew over. I told my father when I grew up I was going to be a pilot. You know what he said? He said, “Ain’t no colored pilots.”
    So I told him I’d be a ballplayer. And he said, “Ain’t no colored ballplayers.”
    There were a lot of things blacks couldn’t be back then. There weren’t any coloredpilots. There weren’t any colored ballplayers in the major leagues. So it was hard to have those dreams.
    Then Jackie came with the Brooklyn Dodgers to Mobile for an exhibition game in 1948. I went to hear him talk to a crowd in front of a drugstore. I skipped school to meet Jackie Robinson. If it were on videotape, you’d probably see me standing there with my mouth wide open.
    I don’t remember what he said. It didn’t matter what he said.
He was standing there
.
    My father took me to see Jackie play in that exhibition game. After that day, he never told me ever again that I couldn’t be a ballplayer.
    I was allowed to dream after that.
    Cal Fussman is a writer for
ESPN The Magazine
and
Esquire.
He has interviewed Jimmy Carter, Robert DeNiro, Jack Welch, Muhammad Ali, General Tommy Franks, Robert McNamara, Donald Trump, Ted Kennedy, Sumner Redstone, George Steinbrenner, Jeff Bezos, Al Pacino, and Rudy Giuliani, to name a few. He lives with his family in Chapel Hill, N.C
.

Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich

MARK KRIEGEL
    hey cannot see him, this slouching, ashen-faced man in their midst. To their oblivious eyes, he remains what he once was, unblemished by the years, much as he appeared on his first bubblegum card: a halo of hair, the fresh-faced, sad-eyed wizard cradling a grainy leather orb.
    One of the regulars, a CPA, retrieved that very card last night. He found it in a shoe box, tucked away with