Off Season

Chapter Three

  Many of the professional athletes I had met in life had presence. Just by breathing, they could fill a room with a certain kind of energy. Magnetism. Electricity. An aura. They changed things without even trying and they all had a formidable presence wrapped up in effortless command of any room they walked into.

   Harrison Shaw did all of that and more.

Once he arrived at Miracle Meals, I felt the energy of the interview pull away from me and push toward him. I could almost see the reporters salivate over his arrival, and the photographers whipped their cameras away from my face and onto him. Forget our ragtag charity and boring sound bites from me. Harrison Shaw was the main event, and everyone knew it.

He smiled. A natural, easy smile. He didn’t mind the attention. This guy expected it.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said as the door shut behind him. “I don’t like being late, but it couldn’t be avoided. Traffic.”

Most likely a bullshit excuse, but no one questioned that explanation. Instead, the photographers clicked their video cameras off their tripods and walked over to Harrison, ready to document his every move at Miracle Meals.

Robert exchanged a glance with me. In fifteen months, we’d worked together enough that I could almost read his thoughts. Robert enjoyed this. A lot. Not every day that a marquee athlete descended on a small, obscure charity in the middle of the urban jungle. And Harrison Shaw wasn’t just any professional football player. Harrison Shaw had a name, an image, and a past.

Robert walked over to me, a coy smile painted across his face.

“Shawshanked,” he said under his breath when he reached my side.

I laughed and tapped him on the arm with two fingers. “New meaning to the word, don’t you think?”

“’Course, he didn’t “shawshank” anyone in the playoffs. Baltimore did that to him.”

“True.”

“Can’t get past the first round of the playoffs. Terrible.”

I had to agree. The divisional playoff between Baltimore and Cincinnati had put Harrison Shaw on a direct path to this moment. A 30-0 loss for the quarterback, and national embarrassment in prime time. I’d never watched a more epic self-destruction on a football field, and the skewering on social media during and after the game had only magnified it all. Cincinnati fans wanted a win, no matter the cost. They wanted a championship. And they wanted proof that a new round of tax money to rehab the stadium three years prior hadn’t gone to nothing.

Harrison needed to deliver that, and he hadn’t done in. In fact, he hadn’t done much of anything since joining the team. He had glowing college stats and a few endorsements, but not much else.

“He’s had a bad couple of weeks,” I said to Robert. “We should be nicer to him.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“Come on, he’s being nice. He’s here to volunteer.”

Robert’s nostrils flared.“What he needs to do is earn that contract money of his. I still can’t believe they gave him $100 million over the next three years.”

“He only gets all of that if the team wins the Super Bowl.”

“We’re talking about a hundred million here. No one’s worth that much.”

I shrugged a shoulder. I didn’t disagree with him, but I didn’t agree, either.

“He’s probably not worth a third when you really stop and think about his performance on the field,” Robert said, his voice still low.