The Draft (37 page)

“Well,” Berman began, “this breaking news about Brendan Cavanaugh being fired is certainly the second big story of the day. Almost on par with whether or not the Baltimore Ravens will in fact be receiving the first pick from San Diego, as was previously expected.”

The camera switched to a serious-looking Chris Mortensen, who addressed viewers directly. “That's right, Boomer. If you don't already know, it has now been confirmed that Brendan Cavanaugh, general manager of the Denver Broncos, has been fired for allegedly having contact with someone in the Ravens' organization concerning the deal the Ravens were trying to work out with the Chargers for the first overall pick. Now I've tried to get further details on the story, but thus far everyone in the Chargers, Broncos, and Ravens organizations are being tight lipped.”

“It was rumored that the Broncos and the Ravens were the only two teams left competing for that pick, is that correct?”

“Yes, that's right. But I've also been told by a league source that a private phone conference took place early this morning between the three teams and Commissioner Moran concerning the matter. However, I can't get any confirmation on what was discussed.”

“Is it possible the Ravens have lost the chance to—?”

Berman stopped when Moran reappeared. He was handed another card and approached the podium. Again the room fell silent. Three enormous images of the man appeared on the overhead screens.

“With the first overall pick of the draft, the San Diego Chargers have elected to make a trade. The pick now belongs to the Denver Broncos.” A collective gasp came from the audience.

*   *   *

Jon sat behind the vast, paper-littered table in the Ravens' war room, watching events unfold on the two flat-screen television monitors that hung from the corners. He chewed on a pen without realizing it. Cary Blanchard and his coaching staff sat in a row behind him. Kevin Tanner was at his left. Connally paced furiously and kept raking his fingers through his hair.

Finally, Connally turned to Jon and said, “Are you sure this is the right thing to do?”

Jon looked to Blanchard, who nodded. Then he turned back to his boss.

“Yes, I'm positive.”

*   *   *

Keyboards chattered and voices blended into a feverish cacophony as word of this stunning development raced through the MSG theater and out to the waiting football world.

Back on the ESPN riser, Berman turned to Kiper, who up to this point had remained silent. “Mel, what's your take on this?”

Kiper went to speak, then laughed and threw his hands up. “I have no idea. This is just … beyond imagination. Like all of you, and in fact most everyone else, I was under the impression the Ravens had the pick pretty much in the bag.”

Back in the pit, two league representatives stood in front of the Broncos table and waited. One of the Bronco reps was on the phone. After he hung up, he hurriedly filled in a new draft card and handed it to the officials. They in turn brought it to a group of league execs seated in a row at the front of the stage. They distributed the information among their record keepers and among ESPN personnel, the latter so they would have it ready for instant broadcasting. Then, finally, the card was given to the anonymous figure standing just outside the commissioner's lair. The commissioner was alerted that another pick was ready.

*   *   *

Jon stopped swiveling in his chair and leaned forward. Connally stopped pacing.

“Here it comes,” he said softly.

*   *   *

Moran took the card in stride, the ink on it barely dry, and came to the podium. He glanced at the card once, registering the information, then looked back up. As usual, his expression conveyed nothing.

“With the first overall pick of the draft … the Denver Broncos have selected, from Michigan, quarterback Christian—”

The rest of his speech was dampened by gasps and a smattering of applause. A respectable-sized cadre of Broncos faithful, who had made the pilgrimage in support of their beloved championship team, exploded in a symphony of screams and howls. Ravens fans, seated on the other side of the theater, stood motionless, thoroughly confused. In this sense, they truly represented the rest of their base back home.

Their bewilderment would not last long.

22

A smug Phillip Alderman
thought he was standing in the midst of history as it was being made.

They were all in the press room at the Broncos' facility. It was small and unspectacular, to say the least. A giant sheet decorated with the team logo hung from one wall, a lectern stood in front of it. There were two rows of cubbyholes, and each station had a light and a phone line so the writers could connect their laptops to the Internet. A local catering service provided platters of food and giant plastic tubs filled with ice and bottled beverages.

McKinley handled the press remarkably well. He was calm, smooth, and dynamic. He knew when to be serious and when to be playful. He seemed to enjoy the experience, and the reporters clearly enjoyed him. Alderman, standing just out of view of the cameras along with McKinley's mother and his agent, thought the kid had either studied the mannerisms and techniques of a thousand other press conference veterans, or he was really just that good by nature. Alderman joined him for the standard shot of him holding up his new Broncos jersey, a repeat of what McKinley had done with Commissioner Moran in New York City just a few hours earlier. He wanted to make sure his face was connected to this turning point moment in Broncos history. McKinley would lead them into a new and glorious era. The organization had been suffering from a long line of medicore QBs for since Elway. Now that would change. Yes, Brendan Cavanaugh had started the deal, but Alderman had finished it. He didn't like Cavanaugh's methods, but he knew the guy had been right about the team's greatest need.

What still troubled Phil Alderman, however, was why the Ravens, in the end, gave up the pick so easily. One moment there was Jon Sabino on the phone, almost whining like a child to the commissioner after weeks of intense negotiation and dealmaking. And then, with just minutes left, Skip Henderson called to say the Ravens decided to give up their pursuit of the pick. At first Alderman figured he had simply outbid them, that he and the Denver organization had, in the end, offered a more attractive package. That had certainly given up plenty, so it was a believable explanation on the surface.

But something about it didn't sit right. Alderman knew Sabino too well, knew the guy's reputation for cunning and brilliance. It just didn't make sense that he was simply
beaten.
This nagged at him from the edges of his mind for a while.

Then, four days after the draft, the answer came with sickening clarity—while Alderman was sitting in his office reviewing a list of potential candidates to officially replace Cavanaugh, an e-mail landed in his inbox, following by a chime. He usually only tended to e-mails twice a day—once in the morning, and once at lunch. But when he glanced over at the screen and saw that this one was sent by a longtime friend who had retired from the league years ago and sent e-mails only when the matter was important—and that the subject line read,
YOU MIGHT WANT TO LOOK AT THIS
—he immediately opened it. The message contained nothing more than a live Web link. Clicking on it, Alderman was taken to an article posted by sportswriter Patti Sheridan less than an hour before. The headline—“A Father's Pride: Baltimore Signs the Talented Son of Legendary Quincy Pressner.”

It took Alderman less than two minutes to read and fully absorb the piece. In that brief span, his greatest fears—plus a few he hadn't even considered—were realized. He saw how Sabino had screwed him. He understood the damage that had been done. And he knew that, once again, his organization had been beaten.

Then he did something he hadn't done since his college days—rushing into his private bathroom, he vomited.

*   *   *

When Jon entered the hospital room, Bell was sitting up, reading the latest
Sports Illustrated.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey, thanks for coming over so fast. I know you're busy today. It could've waited until the draft was over, y'know.”

Jon smiled and waved away the comment. “No problem. The worst is over.” He sat on the same rolling stool Blackman had used.

“How'd it go? Did you get your boy?”

“No, I think we might've done a little better.”

Bell, like every other Ravens fan, was stunned. “No shit? Who'd you get?”

Jon gave him all the details, finishing with Raymond's incredible tryout.

“Wow, the son of Quincy Pressner.”

“I know. Incredible, isn't it?”

“It sure is.”

They were silent for a moment, each looking at the other with tiny smiles and thousands of unspoken sentiments between them. It was a conversation neither of them wanted to have.

“So,” Jon said quietly. “You're calling it a day.”

Bell nodded. “Yeah, I am.”

“I had a feeling. When you told me on the phone before, the first thing that went through my mind was, ‘There's more to his injury than we first thought.'”

“You got it.”

“Will you be all right?”

“Yeah, I'll be fine. Josh is going to be taking care of me for a while. He's the man.”

Jon laughed. “You're calling him ‘Josh' already?”

“Shit, yeah.”

“Amazing. You could charm a dying man out of his last heartbeat.”

“It's not the men I'm interested in charming, Jon.”

“Right, right. So … what happens now?”

“You tell me.”

Jon thought it over for a moment. “Well, we'll give you some kind of ceremony.”

Bell rolled his eyes. “Please don't.”

“I don't think the fans will let you off that easy. You'll have ceremonies, parades, free food, free booze, lots of gifts. The press might even write something nice about you.”

“The hell you say.” They broke into uproarious laughter at this line. It was one of their favorites from a movie they both loved—
The Shawhank Redemption
. Over the years, they'd used it on each other on many occasions.

“You'd be surprised.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I can deal with all that.” Bell looked his old friend squarely in the eyes. “Y'know, I'm not bitter. I mean, I wanted to go a few more years, but … damn, I've been doing a lot of thinking as I've been lying here; there's not much else
to
do. I've been lucky, Jon, damn lucky. I've had some great games, I've got two Super Bowl rings on my hand, laid lots of beautiful women, traveled all over the world. What do I have to be bitter about?”

“I agree.”

“Everything's gone my way for so long that I guess I got used to it. Maybe this is the way the numbers balance themselves out in life.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“I don't know. I'm not smart enough to know that kind of stuff. But I know I'm happy. And I'll be able to leave the league in one piece.”

“That's right,” Jon said, nodding. “Which is more than some guys can say. You'll be leaving happy, healthy, and rich as hell.”

“Yeah, that too. I've made lots of money.”

“And you'll make plenty more before you leave.”

Michael was staring straight ahead, thinking about something else, when Jon said this, so his reaction was delayed. He turned with a look of utter bewilderment and said, “What are you talking about?”

“The multimillion-dollar settlement for the remainder of your contract. The one I made with that agent of yours.”

Bell pushed himself up further, the copy of
SI
slid off his lap.

“What the hell are you talking about, Jon? I didn't make any—”

“Wahlberg, your agent. He called me the other d—” Two men couldn't have looked more perplexed with each other. “You don't know anything about this?”

“No, I don't. What the hell's going on?”

The anger that alighted in Michael Bell's brain when Jon began the story developed into full-blown rage in a matter of minutes. It reached a crescendo when Bell whipped the magazine across the room and screamed out several choice obscenities, which brought two nurses running.

Over the next hour, the following three things happened in following order—Bell apologized personally to Jon Sabino. Then he apologized over the phone to Peter Connally. And then he called Jerry Wahlberg to inform him, with the help of some more colorful words and phrases, that his services would no longer be required.

*   *   *

Back in his office on Sunday evening, Jon busied himself with some last minute cleaning up now that the draft was over. His desk was finally getting neat again, papers in their relative piles, pens and pencils in the cup, no loose clips lying around. He liked to have his desk cleared and “reset” at the end of each day. It was a philosophy he had picked up while reading a biography of Ronald Reagan years earlier, and he found it surprisingly effective.

Finally, he got up and took his jacket from the back of the chair. As he slipped it on, Kevin Tanner appeared.

“Oh, hi, Kev. What's up?”

Tanner was grinning from ear to ear.

“Don't give me that ‘what's up' crap, you sly devil.”

Jon grinned back. “Devil? Me?”

“While most of our fans are ready to tar and feather you, the most astute ones are talking about canonizing you as the Patron Saint of Ingenuity. They're starting to figure it all out. So's the media. You should read the articles that are being posted on the Net.”

Jon laughed and diverted his eyes downward in a gesture of self-deprecation.

“I can't imagine what you're talking about.”

Tanner just stood there, staring, until Jon felt like a zoo specimen.