But now, seemingly out of nowhere, my mother sensed a comeback. I told her not to get her hopes up. “Nobody is courting anybody. And I’m not being wooed either. He is not my beau, nor am I his betrothed,” I said, throwing every old-fashioned term I could think of into the mix.
She laughed in spite of herself, then went in the opposite direction. “What do you suppose he sees in you, anyway?”
“The good Lord only knows,” I said, pressing my palms together, prayer-style, and staring up at the ceiling.
She ignored my sarcasm and asked, “You think it’s all that football knowledge? Finally paying off?”
Unlike my true devotion to the game, my mother’s love of Walker football was superficial, all about the fanfare. She went to every home game, tailgating with her famous deviled eggs and baby back ribs, but once she got inside the gates, the socializing never stopped. She was way too busy gabbing about how much she would just die if Walker lost to actually watch the game.
“Yes. Finally, it has all paid off!” I said, deciding it wasn’t worth it to call her out on yet another charge of sexism. It was the same way I bit my tongue whenever I heard people (and remarkably women were the worst offenders) imply that Erin Andrews and Samantha Ponder couldn’t possibly add real value to a football telecast, insinuating that they were merely eye candy on the sidelines.
“That has to be it,” my mom said, looking pleased with her theory.
“Yes! All that useless football information! At last! Bearing fruit!” I said, reaching for the bread basket.
“No more carbs,” she said, smacking the roll out of my hand, a sore spot in my childhood. When I was growing up, if I ate too much bread, sugar, or, God forbid, French fries, my mother would make me go out in the backyard and do calisthenics until I’d “worked it off.” It was a wonder I’d never developed an eating disorder.
I scowled at her, thinking that if Ryan was going to like me, he was going to like me. Then I picked up the roll, smeared on the butter, and took a big, defiant bite.
Eight
A couple days later, after I’d forced myself to make a follow-up call to Frank Smiley, as per Coach’s advice, I finally heard back from his assistant, receiving a curt invitation to meet him for lunch at Bob’s Chop and Steak House on the same day as Ryan’s event. The woman on the phone did not offer me alternate times or days, and seemed put out by even delivering the message, so I quickly agreed, then hung up and called Coach Carr with the news.
“I’m meeting Smiley at Bob’s Steak House,” I told him. “I assume it’s an interview?”
“It’s a damn coup is what it is,” Coach said. “You’re meeting the best sports editor in Texas for lunch. At his favorite restaurant. Guy might as well have a typewriter set up in one of those booths … Yeah, I’d say it’s an interview.”
“He still uses a typewriter?” I said, intrigued. I knew he still brought yellow tablets and mechanical pencils to the pressroom, unlike just about everyone else, who used laptops, but a typewriter was even cooler.
“I wouldn’t be surprised … People call me ‘old school.’ I’m new age compared to Smiley.”
“Doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who wants some girl on his staff,” I said, having already done my due diligence and confirmed that there were currently no women on the sports staff at the Post.
Coach didn’t deny this; he just said, “You’re not some girl.”
I smiled into the phone.
“So anyway … order the rib eye. Or the porterhouse. No salad—unless it’s the chopped to start.”
I wasn’t sure whether he was giving me his personal recommendations or some sort of boys’ club interview tip, but either way, I said, “Got it.”
“And be ready to talk baseball,” Coach said. “Frank’s a first-rate baseball snob. You know the type.”
I laughed and said I did, remembering a conversation Coach and I once had about baseball diehards. We concluded that they were a strange blend of snob and nerd, like a cross between an opera aficionado and a computer geek. They really seemed to believe that they were more evolved, with higher IQs than your average football fan. My mother might have been right about my reservoir of useless statistics, but it was nothing compared to the database that was the brain of a rabid baseball fan.
I told Coach that if Smiley wanted me for a baseball beat, I wouldn’t take the job anyway, but, after I hung up, I still spent the next hour nervously surfing my usual sites—ESPN, SI, FOX Sports, Rivals, Scout, Deadspin, and Yardbarker. I brushed up on the latest baseball gossip, as well as happenings in basketball, tennis, golf, soccer, and hockey. I could drink a fifth of whiskey and talk intelligibly about football, both college and the NFL, but otherwise I was a SportsCenter highlight reel kind of girl and didn’t want to embarrass myself. More important, I didn’t want to embarrass Coach. If he had vouched for me, I had to make a good impression.