Long Snapper's Blues

By Mike Tanier

When a varsity hanger-on suddenly becomes a hometown hero, he discovers that two girlfriends, two fathers and two possible futures are too much of a good thing.

Long Snapper's Blues is a coming-of-age novel by Mike Tanier, NFL lead columnist for Bleacher Report and former contributor at The New York Times, Football Outsiders, Sports on Earth and other outlets. It's a tale of high school football, high school hijinks and the pressures of growing up with high expectations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Tanier
• Release date: Jul 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9780578493077

Book preview

Prologue

Thanksgiving Day

There’s no way I can snap this football.

It’s the final seconds of the fourth quarter. We’re trailing by two points. It’s fourth down. Danny Trang is kneeling on one knee precisely 24 feet behind me with his hands outstretched. I’m crouched in the freezing rain with my feet in a muddy puddle. There’s a 250-pound juvie-detention hardcase just inches from my helmet. I can smell his stale breath as he growls and cusses.

You’re dead. he growls. You hear me? I’m gonna shove that ball up your kicker’s ass.

My job is to fire the football between my legs, with perfect rotation and accuracy, hard enough so the ball reaches Danny before this ogre bowls me over, but gently enough that the wet ball doesn’t blast through his hands and bounce off his helmet.

If I do that, the way I’ve done it a thousand times in practices and games, maybe we kick a field goal, maybe we win.

But my wrist and hand are so swollen I can’t even wiggle my fingers. It feels like someone shoved hot thumbtacks inside a hard cast, wrapped it around my right hand and forearm, then stuffed an oven mitt on top of that. The ogre sprained my wrist before halftime. And you can’t snap a football that you can’t even feel when you touch it. Trust me; I spent the last hour trying.

I’m gonna break you like I broke your little bodyguard. Then I’m coming for your girl. Then I’m coming for your mom.

My girlfriend isn’t speaking to me, for good reason. My mom just got kicked out of the bleachers. I don’t even want to think about what this ogre did to my best friend.

My reputation at school is hanging by a thread. The one college with any interest in me is ready to give up on me. My coach’s job is on the line, thanks to me.

And my deadbeat dad, out there whooping with his townie drinking buddies? He’s why I’m in this mess in the first place.

You’re gonna wish your skinny ass stayed on that bench forever.

If I botch this snap, I lose a scholarship, my coach gets fired, and this monster named R.J. Muggs won’t just cripple me: he’ll humiliate me in front of the whole township.

But there is no way I can snap this ball properly. And Danny’s a split-second away from calling hike.

I don’t know what to do.

But I do know exactly how I got myself into this predicament.

Chapter 1

August

The Crab Shack

It all started when I fished a guy named Gil Polcher out of the culvert next to Uncle Carmine’s Crab Shack.

Polcher was a doughy guy about my stepfather’s age, his aqua-green golf shirt already sweat-pitted as he floundered around in the weeds between Jorge’s Autos and the little live seafood hut where I worked the dawn-to-noon shift.

The culvert’s a good foot deeper than it looks from the parking lot. And wetter, even in an August drought, because the corn fields surrounding Jorge’s and Uncle Carmine’s get irrigated every day. Stepping into the culvert looks like an easy shortcut from Jorge’s to Carmine’s on a hot day. Stepping out of it involves scrambling through a minefield of muddy rocks, thorny weeds and hidden hornet’s nests.

I saw Polcher nurse a rental car into Jorge’s sometime before noon, smoke billowing out from the hood like a steam train chugging down the county highway. I was helping one of our regular customers, an old ba noi, load a bushel of crabs into the back of her station wagon. She insisted on lifting the bushel, which weighed about five pounds more than she did, into the hatchback herself, which is when the little suckers must have realized that they were a few hours from becoming bun rieu. The bushel tipped, and next thing I knew I was chasing crabs all over the parking lot.

Jailbreak, I groaned. Mrs. Nguyen saw the commotion and left the register to help with translations and retrieval. I grabbed the ornery little soup fixins’ from the back as they snapped their claws at customers and ran for their lives.

It was my first day on the dawn shift at Uncle Carmine’s, and it wasn’t going well.

I worked an afternoon shift in early summer, but with football practice starting, I began opening the store so I could get six hours in and Uncle Carmine (that’s the shack’s real name; Carmine is actually my Nonna’s husband) could drink beer on summer nights and fall asleep in front of the television watching baseball.

It was the same routine since I was 15 years old. Madre wasn’t a big believer in lazy teenage summers because she worried that they would turn me into Lum. Craig, my stepfather, encouraged me to work so I wouldn’t end up like the lazy rich kids his law firm hired, the ones who expected corner offices and half-day Fridays as interns.

But waking before dawn landed me in the middle of our family’s morning coffee wars.

Craig bought Madre a Kurik Solo Mug coffee maker for her birthday in the spring. It’s the Bentley of coffee makers, brewing perfect 10-ounce servings from little plastic pods of different flavors and roasts. Craig expected it to solve the problem of everyone liking different kinds of coffee – Craig preferred medium roast, Madre liked stereotypical mom flavors like pumpkin spice and Irish Crème, Delores liked what Madre liked and I would drink dishwater if it woke me up – but it quickly became a kitchen battleground.

First, Delores started drinking all of Madre’s pods during late-night gaming sessions with her boyfriend, forcing Craig to buy Irish Crème and Pumpkin Spice by the crate and lock the pods away in file cabinets and other places my sister wouldn’t think to look.

Then the rest of us realized that 10 ounces of coffee was only enough of a bump to get us alert enough to prepare the next 10 ounces of coffee. So Craig, Madre and I each started waking up earlier and earlier for first dibs on the Solo Mug. Waking up earlier just made each of us need more coffee, which became a vicious cycle.

Madre finally invoked exclusive rights on the coffee maker whenever she was ready for coffee (it was her birthday gift, after all), which resulted in further spiraling by my stepfather and I, because Madre liked to linger over coffee for almost an hour before work. So by the end of the school year Craig and I were waking up so early that Delores and her boyfriend had not even fallen asleep yet.

This sort of thing happened all the time in the Riley household. My girlfriend Liviana liked to say that we weren’t just type A, but type triple-A, My buddy Hagan said we were hardwired to self-destruct. Neither of them had room to talk.

The early Crab Shack shift and Coffee Wars required me to wake up at 5:30 AM, only to find Craig rushing to fill his travel cup with a second serving, with Madre tapping her feet on deck. So I texted Liviana at 5:30 AM, knowing she was already awake too, preparing to help her mom with day care for her army of nieces and nephews before starting her own shift at the Hagemobler Furniture Outlet.

U AWAKE? I texted.

My phone made the Super Mario-coin cha-ching sound whenever Liviana texted back. She cha-chinged back with a trio of little sleepy-face emojis.

SEE YOU AT PRACTICE? I texted.

Cha-ching. A thumbs-up, a smile and a heart.

Still waiting my turn for coffee, I scrolled instagram and Snapchat. Hagan posted a photo of his helmet and pads. Summer’s over. Too quick, he captioned. Danny posted video game screenshots and complaints about glitches. U-Turn, with the world watching, posted a team photo, with himself front and center. The game teaches us. The story continues, he captioned.

By 6:15, when the sun rose over the tree breaks between the corn fields, it was over 80 degrees, and I was unloading crates of crabs and oysters from trucks while negotiating peace treaties between the Spanish-speaking truck drivers and the Italian and Vietnamese grandmas who like their crabs so fresh that they triy to climb into the trucks to hand-pick them.

By 9:15 it was over 90 degrees, the air so still that dragonflies hovered nearly motionless on the reeds lining the culvert, and I was hauling crab bushels and bags of ice from the cold storage to the store counter so Mrs. Nguyen could ring up customers, then loading up cars for the older nonnas, abeulitas and ba noi so that no crabs got loose and commandeered any station wagons on the county highway.

By about 11:15, I was leaf-blowing crab bits and shorn-off claws from the gravel of the parking lot after the jailbreak so they wouldn’t bake into stink pebbles in the midday sun.

That’s when I saw the wobbly, red-faced middle-aged rando stumbling around in a culvert he should have been smart enough not to waddle into.

I throttled down the claw-blower, pulled the mufflers off my ears and waved him towards a point where the path out of the culvert wasn’t too steep. I reached out with a sweaty hand, he clasped it with a sweatier one, and we had just enough traction for me to pull him out instead of him pulling me in. He stumbled at the lip of the ditch and nearly tumbled into my arms. It was sweaty and awkward.

Do you speak English? he asked.

Si, Senor, I replied. Then I decided not to mess with him. The guy had just dealt with Jorge, whose English comes and goes based on whether he feels like your business is worth it. And it’s hard to tell an Italian complexion from Latin after the whole township spent half a summer baking in a brick oven.

I take it you’re not the ditch inspector, I added. Well, not mess with him too much, anyway.

He was panting. He reached into his pockets for a phone and a charger. I need the Internet and electricity, he said.

You’re in luck, I said, turning off the blower. This part of township just got both last week.

I led him toward the cold storage shed at the Crab Shack. He told me that his car starting smoking while he was driving in circles, trying to make sense of the instructions from his GPS. Then he realized that his phone wasn’t hooked into the charger tightly enough; it died just as he called for roadside assistance. He was having a worse day than I was, in other words.

It would help if the road signs around here made any sense, he said. He pointed to the intersection: Jorge’s and Carmine’s stood on one corner, corn fields on two others, an apple orchard on the fourth and a lonely flashing traffic light blinking to no one in the August haze in the middle. Is that the intersection of County 563 and County 653?

Nope, I explained. That’s 635 and 536. You are looking for where Copper Creek-Devil’s Landing Road meets Cedarville-Hessian’s Crossing Road. We’re at the intersection of Copper Creek-Cedarville road and Centerton-Devil’s Cove Road. He wasn’t the first confused motorist to pull in to the Crab Shack.

Uh-huh. He tried to wipe sweat from his brow with a sweaty forearm. May I ask what sociopath named and numbered the highways around here?

I wasn’t born yet, so no one consulted me.

Uncle Carmine kept his office door locked, but there was an outlet beside the garage door switch for the cold-storage shed. My new middle-aged friend plugged in. I returned to my parking lot cleaning chores as his phone flickered to life.

I ducked back into the garage a few minutes later, to escape the heat and make sure he didn’t somehow get clawed to shreds by our inventory. He was still tethered by the charger cord to the corner of the cold-storage shed, tapping and squeezing his phone like he was trying to wake up a drunk. How come it takes a half hour to get a ride out here?

I pointed out at the parking lot, fields, orchards and stands of pine trees in the distance. You’re not exactly downtown, I said.

I explained that any driver coming to fetch him might get as lost as he did. What car services there were made their money down the shore, about an hour away, driving folks from casinos to beaches to restaurants and back again. Even with a GPS, asking them to navigate Copper Creek Township was like setting them loose in a corn maze. Type a digit wrong, mistake East Bay Drive with West Bay Drive or hit a detour, and they would wind up in either the pinelands or out to sea.

He grunted. The guy in the shop says my car won’t be done until the end of the day but I’ve got someplace to be at 1.

Jorge will give you a lift in the tow truck if it’s not too far, I said.

He grunted; he was nearly shivering now that the sweat on his golf shirt was refrigerating in our cold storage. Is Copper Creek High School too far? he said.

Copper Creek High School? My high school? What business did this guy have there in August?

I looked him up and down. The aqua-green tee shirt had a little dragon logo on the breast. Paunchy as he was, he also had some muscle, like someone who maybe played a little football back in the day.

Are you going to watch the football team practice? I asked.

Yeah, he replied, and talk to the coaches.

You’re a college football recruiter, aren’t you?

He wiped his hand on his slacks and held it out. Yep. Gil Polcher, Virginia College of the Tides.

We clasped clammy hands for the second time in half an hour. Chase Riley, backup center and linebacker I said. I can give you a ride.

Pity Date

We were barely out of the parking lot, less than a quarter mile down the highway, when Gil Polcher discovered the problem with closed windows and a blasting air conditioner after a six-hour shift at a crab shack.

He rolled down the passenger-side window of my Kia. You should have warned me about the smell, he said.

I didn’t want to insult your intelligence, I replied.

I planned to body-spray myself in the locker room before practice. Or maybe I wouldn’t, just to see if any underclassman had the stomach to line up against me. But the seafood smell wasn’t just on my body or in my clothes. Liviana said it had seeped into the seats of the Kia. I was nose-blind to it. She gave me some lavender spray to spritz the interior with before I took her out, but Hagan threatened to punch me if I spritzed when he was in it, and I figured Polcher was more of a Hagan than a Liviana.

Don’t assume too much, Polcher said, fishing around in his messenger bag as I drove. I didn’t take you for a high school kid.

Really? Did you think I was a college guy or a hired hand?

You’d be surprised how little difference there is between the two. And not a lot of high school kids work jobs like that anymore.

Not a lot of recruiters look for football players in irrigation ditches, I said.

He chuckled. The fields and orchards of Copper Creek Township rolled past. Hot air blasted into the Kia through Polcher’s open window.

Nice car, he said. Guess you had to sell a lot of crabs to pay for it.

The Kia was Madre’s car before Craig bought her the Benz SUV for Christmas and handed me the keys to the Kia as my gift. I got a car and Madre and Craig got a break from driving me everywhere. It’s a hand-me-down, I said. It runs on seaweed and Old Bay, I added.

He chuckled again while pulling a laptop from his messenger bag. He booted up. So, how well do you know Ulysses Turner? he asked.

It was the question I anticipated the moment I discovered Polcher was a recruiter and not some real estate salesman with bad luck and no sense of direction. U-Turn is my second-best friend in the whole world, I said.

Polcher nodded. Has he made his decision about where he wants to play college ball yet?

Now it was my turn to chuckle.

Ulysses Turner. Option quarterback. Three-star RahRah.com recruit. The captain of every single team he’s ever been on. There are Pop Warner championship trophies in my bedroom that I earned by watching U-Turn from the bench as Ole Lum called quarterback power and quarterback belly until the other team surrendered.

U-Turn began fending off high school girls in the sixth grade and college recruiters as a freshman. Few of them followed NCAA regulations to the letter. The recruiters offer you girls, U-Turn once said while we soaked together in Craig’s lukewarm tub. Then the girls appear on Instagram and offer you more girls. He sometimes showed us the Instagram posts to prove it, if Liviana and Gretch weren’t around.

U-Turn had standing scholarship offers from at least four teams in the Big East and ACC but was holding off on even making soft commitments. Whoever offers me the least is the one that’s probably telling me the truth, he liked to say.

I don’t mean to be rude, but unless College of the Tides is a nickname for Ohio State or something, U-Turn may be out of your weight class, I said.

I appreciate the honesty, Polcher said. What about fallback schools?

U-Turn’s in honors classes and study groups with me. Trust me, he’s not falling back very far.

It never hurts to ask. Polcher tapped at his keyboard. The farms of the western township gave way to little houses and gas stations on the outskirts of Copper Creek Village. And what about Douglas Hagan?

Another question I anticipated. Hagan is my best friend in the whole world.

I see. Another honor student in your study group who is already spoken for?

Doug Hagan. Center. Two-star Rahrah.com recruit. My neighbor when I lived at the old row-house at Shucks Point. We wrestled in the backyard together until I was no match for him, which was around the second grade.

Hagan was the reason I didn’t get pushed around by the troublemakers in Shucks Point, the reason (along with U-Turn) why Lum kept coaching long past the point when he should not have been trusted around children. And as long as Lum was the coach I stayed on the team, even though I only had one skill.

Hagan’s a half-head taller than me and at least 40 gristly pounds heavier. He had his own set of ardent college football pursuers. A few were jilted by U-Turn but saw Hagan as a consolation prize to justify the trip to our corner of nowhere, but most of them were from the smaller regional programs.

They’re always so damn cheerful I want to punch them through a wall, Hagan would say when he compared notes with U-Turn. Anyone who knew anything about me wouldn’t be that happy to meet me.

Hagan and I were closer than brothers. He kept me from going crazy when my parents broke up, and I was now trying to return the favor.

Another honor student in my study group who is already spoken for, I said. You may be wasting a trip.

Oh, it’s never a wasted trip, Polcher said, staring down at his laptop screen. What’s your story, mister backup center and linebacker?

We reached Main Street, just past the row of historic homes shaded by old elm trees, over the Killdevil Creek Bridge, into the shopping district with the historic gas lamps the chamber of commerce installed five years ago.

For all Hagan and U-Turn had told me all about recruiters, I had never spoken to one. I only saw them when they ear-holed one of my friends after a game or practice, or heard they were at school when the guys were called out of lunch or gym, or saw how fast they responded when U-Turn sent them a text and timed their response with his fingers, which rarely counted past five.

Suddenly a recruiter wants to hear my story, but only because his car broke down, the real players are out of his league and I was the only person for him to talk to.

We had a half hour until practice started. There was a parking spot right in front of Christian’s Christian Coffee Shop. My story is that I’m hungry, I said, pulling into the spot.

Christian’s fresh blueberry muffins proved too tempting for Polcher to pass up, and I convinced him to enjoy one on the shaded patio instead of wolfing them down in the smelly Kia.

So, how much of a backup are you? he asked as we watched the slow traffic on Main Street.

I play mostly special teams, I told him. I don’t want to waste your time. I’m not planning to play college football.

Why not?

That was a question I had never been asked. No one had even seen me standing next to U-Turn and Hagan, or even guys like Jutty and Buttercream, without humming that old Sesame Street song about one thing not being like the others.

I’m not exactly college football material, I said, holding my arms out so he had a better look at the very ordinary merchandise.

I don’t know about that, Polcher said. You’re no Notre Dame linebacker. But you throw those crab bushels around alright. I knew you were smart are before you humble-bragged the whole Honor Student thing. And you work like a farmhand.

Should I take that as a compliment?

Polcher reached back into his messenger bag. Every program needs a few guys willing to work like farmhands.

He handed me the brochure. College of the Tides. Accomonolak, Virginia. The map on the brochure made it look like the campus was on a stretch of peninsula U-Turn could throw a beachball across. It was a college brochure like the 200 others that piled up on my desk over the last three years, with pictures of well-dressed multi-culti kids reading thick textbooks under trees, peering into microscopes, laughing over nonalcoholic smoothies in a brightly-lit student union.

One picture was different though: a girl in scuba gear hanging from a pier, a body of water – the Chesapeake Bay, I figured – glistening behind her as she conferred with some beardo professor holding a vial.

Marine environmental engineering, I mumbled, reading the header.

Polcher’s eyebrow cocked. Do you know what that is?

Craig’s an environmental lawyer. He works for condo developers, guys who want to build golf courses right on the bay, guys who want to cut down thirty acres of pine forest for an outlet mall. He keeps them in compliance with state environmental laws and makes sure no turtle species goes extinct trying to hatch golf balls instead of eggs.

Craig claims to always be on the good side of environmental issues, which was true if you ignore the fact that not building big box stores and riverside condos in the first place is the only real good side. But Craig works closely with the engineers who build bulkheads and jetties, develop septic systems and landscape techniques that keep the bay and inlets from turning into one big sewer system.

The work sounds interesting, and valuable, and it pays well. A good career for a bright individual like me who spent his youth halfway between a housing development and a shallow marsh, whose stepfather also happens to be well connected.

It’s designing architecture and industry that’s as friendly to seaside ecosystems as possible, I said to Polcher.

Sounds like you know more about it than I do. You may want to keep one of those brochures for yourself.

I tucked one in the hip pocket of my cargo shorts. Is this standard recruiting policy? Get rides from high school kids, give them brochures, hope to play on New Year’s Day?

Polcher sipped his coffee. I like how unimpressed you are of me. It’s refreshing.

I’m sorry, I said. But I’ve been up since before dawn, and I can’t imagine a lot of guys swoon when you pitch them about the Mighty College of the Tides Snapper Turtles.

Sea Dragons, he corrected, though the little dragon on his golf shirt did look a little turtle-like. And no, most kids don’t act like I’m offering them a free ride to USC. We’re a Division II school that only added football four years ago. We’re lucky to win three games per year against colleges with campuses in strip malls. We’re still building a sub-foundation. Most recruits can barely conceal their disappointment that they’re stuck talking to me.

That’s… sad, I said. It really was. This poor Polcher guy was barely a recruiter for barely a program. It was fate that he ended up getting dragged out of a ditch by someone who was barely a high school football player.

I’ll put in good word for you to the guys, I said.

He rested his hands on his knuckles. This is starting to sound like a pity date, he said.

I wouldn’t know, I said, smiling as I bussed our little table. I have a steady girlfriend.

The Hessians

Gil Polcher and I were fast friends by the time we reached the parking lot behind the athletic fields. The lot was filled with seniors, parents and carpools: football guys, field hockey girls, soccer boys and girls, varsity and JV, enough cars to fool you into thinking school was in session. We drove past the Home of the Hessians banner hanging from the gym, searching for a parking spot in the shade.

Why the Hessians? Polcher asked, no longer shouting over the gale from his still-open window. Was there a Revolutionary War battle near here?

Something like that.

Every elementary school kid in the township knew that Copper Creek wasn’t named for the copper color of the creek (they are all copper colored, so the name wouldn’t help much) but a Colonial frontiersman named Malachi Kupper, who discovered bog iron, marl and other pioneer-era valuables in the local marshes and built a mill and a foundry near the middle of the village.

By the Revolutionary War, there was just enough iron coming out of (then) Kupper’s Creek to make cannonballs, so the British sent some German mercenaries down what is now the state highway to blow stuff up. But Malachi Kupper and a few dozen townspeople held the whole Hessian army off at what became Copper Creek Bridge with just some muskets and moxie.

The Hessians later reported that they thought they were fighting demons, which some historians attributed to the ferocity and courage of the townsfolk, some to the hand of the Lord himself, but most to the fact that contaminants in the still waters around the creek probably poisoned the local hard cider in a way that Malachi Kupper’s neighbors were used to but the German soldiers weren’t. So the Hessians retreated in terror, Kupper became a hero and the township population was stagnant for a century afterward because half the residents were either crazy or sterile.

I gave Polcher a highly-edited version of the origin of our name.

Why name your team after the army that lost? Why not name you the Demons or something?

We were the Demons until the 1950s, when that sounded sacrilegious or un-American or something.

So they changed it to the Hessians?

No. They changed it to the Redskins.

I’m sorry I asked, he said as I selected a parking space I liked under a tree. South Jersey is weird.

This is Down Jersey, not South Jersey, I said, correcting him. North Jersey is a suburb of New York. South Jersey is a suburb of Philly. Down Jersey is a hunk of Alabama that broke off and floated north. If you call Copper Creek ‘South Jersey’ around here you’ll sound like some kind of big-city elitist.

Polcher slipped his laptop and brochures into his bag. I can’t tell if you are messing with me or not, he said.

I grabbed my helmet and pads from the trunk, plus a school-property football I practice with during the offseason. Polcher slung his messenger bag over his shoulder. We walked toward the field, keeping to the shade.

Buttercream trotted past us toward the field with shirtless Jutty riding on his shoulders. Yah, mule! Giddyup, Buttercup, Jutty said, whipping Buttercream with his jersey. Afternoon, Einstein, Jutty added, waving at me.

Polcher watched them gallop past. That jockey with the braids is pretty yoked up, he said.

You mentioned that College of the Tides had an academic requirement, I said.

Polcher nodded; he got the message. What about his faithful steed? That kid’s 250 pounds before lunch.

I’m assuming you also have an ‘able to read’ requirement.

Huh. You’re saving me a lot of time. Thanks.

Need me to point out Coach Treggs to you?

I’m guessing he’ll be the guy in shorts with sunglasses and a whistle?

Yes, I said, pointing to some commotion at the edge of the parking lot. But right now he’s the guy surrounded by little girls.

Coach Treggs crouched on one knee on the hot blacktop, hugging the Treggs Triplets, or Tregglets, three little girls with different color-coded braids so their non-parents could keep