Playing for Pizza (22 page)

Chapter

23

The pretty town of Bolzano is in the mountainous northeastern part of the country, in the Trentino-Alto Adige region, a recent addition to Italy that was chipped away from Austria in 1919 by the Allies as a reward to the Italians for fighting the Germans. Its history is complicated. Its boundaries have been rigged and gerrymandered by whoever happened to have the larger army. Many of its residents consider themselves to be of Germanic stock and certainly look like it. Most speak German first and Italian second, often reluctantly. Other Italians are known to whisper, “Those people aren’t real Italians.” Efforts to Italianize, Germanize, and homogenize the population all failed miserably, but over time a pleasant truce evolved, and life is good. The culture is pure Alpine. The people are conservative, hospitable, and prosperous, and they love their land.

The scenery is stunning—ragged mountain peaks, lakeside vineyards and olive groves, valleys carpeted with apple orchards, and thousands of square miles of protected forests.

Rick got all this from his guidebook. Livvy, however, piled on the details. Since she had not been to the
region, she had initially planned to make the trip. Exams, though, intervened, plus Bolzano was at least a six-hour train ride from Florence. So she passed along her research in a series of windy e-mails. Rick scanned them as they arrived during the week, then left them on his kitchen table. He was much more concerned with football than with how Mussolini screwed up the region between the wars.

And football was plenty to worry about. The Bolzano Giants had lost only once, to Bergamo, and by only two points. He and Sam had watched the film of the game twice and agreed that Bolzano should have won. A bad snap on an easy field goal made the difference.

Bergamo. Bergamo. Still undefeated, the winning streak now at sixty-six. Everything the Panthers did had something to do with Bergamo. Their game plan against Bolzano was impacted by their next game against Bergamo.

The bus ride lasted three hours, and halfway through it the landscape began to change. The Alps appeared to the north. Rick sat near the front with Sam, and when they weren’t napping, they talked about the outdoors—hiking the Dolomites, skiing, and camping in the lake region. With no children, Sam and Anna spent weeks each autumn exploring northern Italy and southern Austria.

·  ·  ·

Playing against the Giants.

If Rick Dockery had one game to remember in his
sad little tour of the NFL, it was against the Giants, on a foggy Sunday night at the Meadowlands, on national television, in front of eighty thousand raucous fans. He was with Seattle, in his customary role as the number-three quarterback. Number one got knocked out in the first half, and number two was throwing interceptions when he wasn’t fumbling. Down twenty points late in the third, the Seahawks threw in the towel and called on Dockery. He completed seven passes, all to his teammates, for ninety-five yards. Two weeks later he was on waivers.

He could still hear the deafening roar of Giants Stadium.

The stadium in Bolzano was much smaller and a lot quieter, but much prettier. With the Alps looming in the background, the teams lined up for the kickoff in front of two thousand fans. There were banners, a mascot, chants, and flares.

On the second play from scrimmage, the nightmare began. His name was Quincy Shoal, a thick tailback who once played at Indiana State. After the usual stints in Canada and arena ball, Quincy arrived in Italy ten years earlier and found a home. He had an Italian wife and Italian kids and held almost all Italian records for running the football.

Quincy rambled seventy-eight yards for a touchdown. If anyone touched him, it would not be evident on the game film. The crowd went berserk; more flares and even a smoke bomb. Rick tried to imagine smoke bombs at the Meadowlands.

Because Bergamo was next on the schedule, and
because Sam knew they were there scouting the game, he and Rick had decided to run the ball and downplay Fabrizio. It was a risky strategy, the kind of gamble Sam enjoyed. Both felt confident that the offense could pass at will, but they preferred to save something for Bergamo.

Since Franco usually fumbled his first handoff each game, Rick called a pitchout to Giancarlo, a young tailback who had started the season as a third-stringer but was improving each week. Rick liked him primarily because he had a soft spot for third-stringers. Giancarlo had a unique running style. He was small, 175 pounds or so, and not muscular at all, and he really didn’t like to get hit. He had been a swimmer and diver as a young teenager, and possessed quick and light feet. When faced with imminent contact, Giancarlo often hurled himself upward and forward, picking up additional yardage with each vault. His runs were becoming spectacular, especially the sweeps and pitchouts that allowed him to build momentum before hurdling over tacklers.

Sam had given him the advice every young runner gets in the seventh grade: Do not leave your feet! Lower your head, protect the ball, and by all means protect your knees, but do not leave your feet! Thousands of college careers had been ended suddenly by showy leaps over the pile. Hundreds of professional running backs had been maimed for life.

Giancarlo had no use for such wisdom. He loved sailing through the air and was unafraid of a hard landing. He ran eight yards to the right, then flew for
three more. Twelve to the left, including four from a half gainer. Rick bootlegged for fifteen, then called a dive to Franco.

“Don’t fumble!” he growled as he grabbed Franco’s face mask when they broke huddle. Franco, wild-eyed and psychotic, grabbed Rick’s and said something nasty in Italian. Who grabs the quarterback’s face mask?

He didn’t fumble, but instead lumbered for ten yards until half the defense buried him at the Giants’ 40. Six plays later, Giancarlo soared into the end zone and the game was tied.

It took Quincy all of four plays to score again. “Let him run,” Rick said to Sam on the sideline. “He’s thirty-four years old.”

“I know how old he is,” Sam snapped. “But I’d like to keep him under five hundred yards in the first half.”

Bolzano’s defense had prepared for the pass and was confused by the run. Fabrizio did not touch the ball until almost halftime. On a second and goal from the 6, Rick faked to Franco, bootlegged, and flipped it to his receiver for an easy score. A neat, tidy game—each team had two touchdowns in each quarter. The noisy crowd had been thoroughly entertained.

·  ·  ·

During halftime, the first five minutes inside a locker room are dangerous. The players are hot, sweating, some bleeding. They throw helmets, curse, criticize, scream, exhort one another to step it up and do
whatever is not getting done. As the adrenaline slowly settles, they relax a bit. Drink some water. Maybe take off the shoulder pads. Rub a wound or two.

It was the same in Italy as it was in Iowa. Rick had never been an emotional player, and he preferred to hunker in the background and let the hotheads rally the team. Tied with Bolzano, he was not at all worried. Quincy Shoal’s tongue was hanging, and Rick and Fabrizio had yet to play pitch and catch.

Sam knew when to enter, and after five minutes he stepped into the room and took over the yelling. Quincy was eating their lunch—160 yards, four touchdowns. “What a great strategy!” Sam ranted. “Let him run until he collapses!” “I’ve never heard of that before!” “You guys are brilliant!” And so on.

As the season progressed, Rick was impressed more and more by Sam’s tongue-lashings. He, Rick, had been chewed out by many experts, and though Sam usually left him alone, he showed real talent when going after the others. And the fact that he could do it in two languages was awesome.

·  ·  ·

But the locker room rave had little effect. Quincy, with a twenty-minute rest and quick rubdown, picked up where he left off. Touchdown number five came on the Giants’ first drive of the second half, and number six was a fifty-yard gallop a few minutes later.

A heroic effort, but not quite enough. Whether it was old age (thirty-four), or too much pasta, or simply overuse, Quincy was finished. He stayed in the game
until the end, but was too tired to save his team. In the fourth quarter, the Panthers’ defense sensed his demise and came to life. When Pietro stuffed him on a third and two and flung him to the ground, the game was over.

With Franco pounding the middle and Giancarlo bunny-hopping around the ends, the Panthers tied it with ten minutes to go. A minute later they scored again when Karl the Dane scooped up a fumble and wobbled thirty yards for perhaps the ugliest touchdown in Italian history. Two tiny Giants rode his back like insects for the last ten yards.

For good measure, and to keep sharp, Rick and Fabrizio hooked up on a long post with three minutes on the clock. The final was 56–41.

·  ·  ·

The locker room was far different after the game. They hugged and celebrated, and a few seemed on the verge of tears. For a team that only weeks earlier seemed listless and dead, they were suddenly close to a great season. Mighty Bergamo was next, but the Lions had to travel to Parma.

Sam congratulated his players and gave them exactly one more hour to revel in the win. “Then shut it off and start thinking about Bergamo,” he said. “Sixty-seven consecutive wins, eight straight Super Bowl titles. A team we have not beaten in ten years.”

Rick sat on the floor in a corner, his back to the wall, fiddling with his shoelaces and listening to Sam speak in Italian. Though he couldn’t understand his
coach, he knew exactly what he was saying. Bergamo this and Bergamo that. His teammates hung on every word, their anticipation already building. A slight wave of nervous energy swept over Rick, and he had to smile.

He was no longer a hired gun, a ringer brought in from the Wild West to run the offense and win games. He no longer dreamed of NFL glory and riches. Those dreams were behind him now, and fading fast. He was who he was, a Panther, and as he looked around the cramped and sweaty locker room, he was perfectly happy with himself.

Chapter

24

Much less beer was consumed Monday night during the film session. There were fewer wisecracks, insults, laughter. The mood wasn’t somber, they were still quite proud of their road win the day before, but it was not the typical Monday night at the movies. Sam raced through the Bolzano highlights, then switched to a collage of Bergamo clips he and Rick had worked on all day.

They agreed on the obvious—Bergamo was well coached, well financed, and well organized and had talent that was slightly above the rest of the league, at some positions, but certainly not across the board. Their Americans were: a slow quarterback from San Diego State, a strong safety who hit hard and would try to kill Fabrizio early in the game, and a cornerback who could shut down the outside running game but was rumored to have a pulled hamstring. Bergamo was the only team in the league with two of their three Americans on defense. Their key player, though, was not an American. The middle linebacker was an Italian named Maschi, a flamboyant showman with long hair and white shoes and a me-first attitude he’d copied from the NFL, where he happened to think he
belonged. Quick and strong, Maschi had great instincts, loved to hit, the later the better, and was usually at the bottom of every pile. At 220 pounds, he was big enough to wreak havoc in Italy and could have played for most Division I schools in the United States. He wore number 56 and insisted on being called L.T. to mimic his idol, Lawrence Taylor.

Bergamo was strong defensively but not overly impressive with the ball. Against Bologna and Bolzano—all those killer bees—they trailed until the fourth quarter and could’ve easily lost both. Rick was convinced the Panthers were a better team, but Sam had been beaten by Bergamo so many times he refused to be confident, at least in private. After eight straight Super Bowl titles, the Bergamo Lions had achieved an aura of invincibility that was worth at least ten points a game.

Sam replayed the tape and hammered away at Bergamo’s weaknesses on offense. Their tailback was quick to the line but reluctant to lower his head and take a shot. They rarely passed until they had to, always on third down, primarily because they lacked a dependable receiver. The offensive line was big and fundamentally sound, but often too slow to pick up the blitz.

When Sam finished, Franco addressed the team, and in superb lawyerly fashion gave a rousing, emotional appeal for a hard, dedicated week, one that would lead to a mighty victory. In closing, he suggested that they practice every night until Saturday. The idea was unanimously approved. Then Nino, not
to be outdone, took the floor and began by announcing that to show the gravity of the moment, he had decided to stop smoking until after the game, after they had thrashed Bergamo. This was greeted warmly because, evidently, Nino had made such a commitment before and Nino, deprived of nicotine, was a frightening force on the field. Then he announced there would be a team dinner at Café Montana Saturday night, on the house. Carlo was already working on the menu.

The Panthers were edgy with anticipation. Rick flashed back to the Davenport Central game, the biggest of the year for Davenport South. Starting on Monday, the school planned the entire week and the town talked of little else. By Friday afternoon, the players were so anxious some were nauseous and threw up hours before the game.

Rick doubted if any Panther would be so overcome with nerves, but it was certainly possible.

They left the locker room with a solemn determination. This was their week. This was their year.

·  ·  ·

Thursday afternoon, Livvy arrived in all her splendor, and with a surprising amount of luggage. Rick had been at the field with Fabrizio and Claudio, working relentlessly on precision routes and quick audibles, when he took a break and checked his cell phone. She was already on the train.

As they drove from the station to his apartment, he learned that she was (1) finished with exams, (2) sick of her roommates, (3) thinking seriously of not returning
to Florence for the final ten days of her semester abroad, (4) disgusted with her family, (5) not speaking to anyone in her family, not even her sister, a person she had feuded with since kindergarten and who was now way too involved in their parents’ divorce, (6) in need of a place to crash for a few days, thus the luggage, (7) worried about her visa because she wanted to stay in Italy for some vague period of time, and (8) really ready to hop in the sack. She wasn’t whining and she wasn’t looking for sympathy; in fact, she covered her plethora of problems with a cool detachment that Rick found admirable. She needed someone, and she had fled to him.