Free Fantasy League by Mike Lupica

that couldn’t be moved. It was her mother’s idea, Anna learning a musical instrument, a fact that Anna was constantly reminding Charlie of, telling him her mother thought music would make her more of a lady.
    She always put air quotes around “lady.”
    â€œI’m wondering,” Anna said to him one time, “if Mom wants me to be the kind of musical lady that somebody like Lady Gaga is. Or that other famous lady, Miley Cyrus.”
    But of course she had gotten really good at piano really fast, despite her constant grumbling that it was taking her away from sports, and Charlie knew she actually looked forward to her lessons. Just not tomorrow, because she would rather have been at Bulldogs practice with Charlie and her gramps.
    On Wednesday night, Charlie and Anna were at her house, up in her room, waiting for the last fifteen minutes of Mr. Fallon’s show . . . and for Charlie’s debut on ESPN radio.
    They’d finished the second
Charlie Show
that afternoon over at Charlie’s house, then gone to the Anna’s for dinner, Charlie’s mom having another late night at the studio.
    Now they waited through the calls and guests on Mr. Fallon’s show. To Charlie the show usually felt like one more place on the dial you could go to for nonstop Bulldogs bashing. Yet not this week, not after the way Tom Pinkett and the whole team had played in the opener. Even Steve Fallon—normally one of the bashing kings of L.A. radio—was being nice tonight, though what he was mostly doing was telling listeners to enjoy the team’s victory while they could, before this week’s princes turned into next week’s frogs.
    â€œThese are the two hours of the day when I don’t like Kevin’s dad very much,” Anna said. “He’s mean even when he’s trying to sound nice.”
    â€œI don’t think he means it,” Charlie said. “Most guys on the radio, and you know how much I listen to the radio, say stuff just to draw attention to themselves. And usually think they’re funnier than they actually are.”
    â€œMean is still mean.”
    â€œHow about all the mean things
you
say about your own family’s team?”
    â€œTo you,” she said. “I say them to you. You never hear me do it in front of other kids. Not even Kevin.”
    â€œBut you do mean
your
mean things.”
    Anna laughed. “Soooooo much.”
    Steve Fallon had been taking calls for most of the last half hour, Charlie thinking the comments were mostly boneheaded, people acting as if they had no idea what they were watching when they watched the Bulldogs play. Mr. Fallon had begun the last hour of his show, which ran from seven to nine, interviewing one of the radio broadcasters from the Ravens, who Charlie thought sounded like just another caller, only with a deeper voice.
    Like he should have just identified himself as Bob from Baltimore.
    Finally—
finally
—with about eight minutes left in the show, Mr. Fallon introduced the clip with Charlie, explaining that he played on a team with his son, Kevin, that he was known as Brain to his teammates, and was practically like the pinball wizard of fantasy football.
    â€œWhat’s a pinball wizard?” Charlie said.
    â€œNo clue,” Anna said.
    â€œBy the way?” he said. “I pretty much could have gone the rest of my life without being called ‘Brain’ on the radio.”
    â€œDeal,” she said. Her way of telling him to deal with it.
    Then she was shushing him, even though she was the last one talking, because there was Charlie’s voice coming out of her radio, from the clip Mr. Fallon was using from
The Charlie Show
.
    He listened to himself make his picks, talking about the points he’d picked up in Week One, talking about a trade he’d made already, talking about how his kicker—from the Texans—had made three long field goals in