On any given Sunday, one team can beat another... This is a novel about football—professional, that is—in something of the way, say, Bernard Malamud's The Natural is a novel about baseball. In it you can discover the essence, the truth of the war zone the players inhabit that can only be invoked by Pat Toomay, a man who was there.
“Pat Toomay has mixed fact and fiction to produce a story that will make every armchair quarterback laugh and wince—and worry at his exposition of “the game’s” most insidious reality: the prospect — on any given Sunday—of a fix.” —John Seigenthaler, USA Today
“Toomay, for many years a lineman with the Cowboys and the Raiders, gives a sinister turn to the old saw that ‘on any given Sunday, one team can beat another’. . . . He writes knowledgeably about football: its strategy, the pain, the respect and hatred between the men in the trenches.” —Publishers Weekly
CHAPTER 1
She is walking toward me along a rocky beach, in a sheer dress, her supple body limned against the setting sun. Unaware of my presence, she kneels before a tidal pool and for a moment observes the sea life thriving there. She gently stirs the water, rises and continues along the shore. Then she sees me. I smile in a knowing way, she in pleased surprise ...
I awoke with a jolt as the bus shuddered and lurched across a monstrous chughole. Again, the dream. It had been stalking me for some time, though never with the frequency of the last several weeks, and never so consistently unresolved. I shrugged it off. We must be downtown, I thought; and with the sleeve of my sports coat I wiped the condensation off the window of the bus.
It was the eighteenth of December 1976 — a Saturday evening — and Philadelphia was dressed up for a Bicentennial Christmas. Minuteman mannequins stood mute guard over Christmas displays in the storefront windows; great crepe-paper bells hung from nearly every lamp post. Though the hour was early, few shoppers were out. It was raining hard and rivulets of water ran down the sheet-metal gutters on the brickwork of the old buildings, down the concrete gutters in the streets, down the storefront windows and the windows of the bus. The bus was hot and the acrid smell of sweat hung in the air, overpowering the fragile scents of cologne and deodorant.
I asked the driver how much farther we had to go.
"We're here," he answered, and wheeling the charter into a circular drive, he parked before the Philadelphia Liberty Hotel.
"Thank God," someone said, and we all stood and gathered our belongings and began to file off.
Coach, as always, led the way. An impressive figure in greatcoat and fedora, with neatly clipped hair and deeply tanned face, he stepped off the bus and started up the canopied sidewalk, nodding and smiling at the scruffy adolescents with notepads and pens who had gathered in anticipation of our arrival. Coach was lugging a 16-millimeter analyzer projector and several strapped boxes of game film. As he neared the front door of the hotel, he turned and gestured toward me. I reached around him and pulled open the massive door, and out stepped a small, red-faced man in a three-piece suit.
"Where the hell have you been?" he said. "Article nineteen paragraph twelve, you're supposed to be here at least forty-eight hours before kickoff." And he crossed his arms and spread wide his legs as if to prevent our passing.
Coach glanced at his watch. "Yes, well, we seem to be a day late." He smiled. "We'll discuss it later."
"But this is a big goddamn game," the man persisted. "What if your plane had gone down? Do you realize the scheduling problems that would have created? And what about the local press? Have you forgotten your obligations to the local press?" The man was angry and bewildered.
"We'll discuss it later," Coach said, and brushing past him, walked inside the hotel.
Phil Tanner, the team's advance man and business manager, was standing in the center of the lobby, smiling nervously as we came in. Coach glowered at him.
"You been holding hands with him, Tanner?"
"I couldn't get rid of him, Coach. I —"
"What's your job? Your job is to get rid of him!"
"But he's from the league office, and he's been screaming at me for two hours. I —"
"Excuses, you're giving me excuses."
"I didn't know what to do, Coach. I mean —"
"Get on with it. Do you know what to do now?"
He did, of course; and as Coach stormed across the lobby for the elevators, Tanner began handing out room keys. A fat, sweaty man, there were perspiration stains in the armpits of his jacket, and I found myself staring at them as he read from an alphabetical list. "Rafferty," he rasped, and when I raised my hand he tossed me the key — room 418. At the newsstand I bought an early edition of the Sunday Philadelphia Examiner, then, noting the crowd waiting near the elevators, climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. There I ran into Jan Rutledge and Wayne Law — our quarterback and his favorite receiver. They were headed for a local seafood restaurant and Wayne, my roommate, asked if I wanted to join them.
"Thanks," I said, "but I'm going to try and catch Judy later, maybe eat with her."
"You don't give up, do you."
I gave him a look.
"Suit yourself," Wayne said, and he and Rutledge ambled off down the hall.
In the room I set my attache case on the bureau and the newspaper on the nightstand between the two beds. I took off my coat, tie, and shirt, and hanging everything over the back of a chair, stretched out on the bed nearest the window. I was tired, but it was the kind of tiredness that comes from tension, and I knew it would be difficult to sleep. So, to pass the time, I picked up the Examiner sports page and read Mickey Baron's column.
The Las Vegas oddsmakers had made us a two-point favorite on the strength of our defense, "but," wrote Baron, "the oddsmakers are blind. They have overlooked two insurmountable liabilities ..." and he named them: Coach's outrageous play calling, and Rutledge's rag arm. "A disastrous combination," Baron concluded, and picked Philadelphia in a rout.
I turned to the agate columns to check the injury report. Though his observations were valid, I felt Baron could only be right if Wayne Law didn't play — and there was a chance he might not. A game-breaking receiver and our offensive co-captain, Wayne had suffered a mildly pulled hamstring two weeks before, in the fourteenth regular season game, and had not played last week. We didn't really need him then since the opposition was severely outmanned and we won handily. But this game was different. Not only was Philadelphia our match, but we had to win to get into the playoffs. Wayne's presence could mean the difference between winning and losing.
There was nothing to worry about. Wayne was not mentioned in the report: he would play.
After reading the rest of the newspaper I dozed, waking up hungry at eight-fifteen. Judy was due in the hotel at eight-thirty, so I walked down to the lobby to meet her.
The lobby was crowded. Most of the people there were from Washington, team followers, and they all displayed the team colors in one way or another. Their children, similarly bedizened, patrolled the lobby like giggling little Cossacks after autographs. There were about fifteen of them, each clutching pen and paper. As autograph hounds, though, they weren't very discriminating. In fact, any man over six feet was stopped and badgered until he signed his name to every scrap of paper.
Ducking across the lobby, I sat down near the elevators to wait for Judy. Though unnoticed by the kids, I had been spotted by a man in a burgundy hat on the other side of the room. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that he was waving at me. Not wanting to be bothered, I turned away toward the front door of the hotel and continued my watch.
The Cossacks had just finished with the bell captain when Brady Young came in. Brady was Judy's editor at the Washington Herald; he carried a suit bag and portable typewriter and was surrounded by kids. "My hands are full," he kept saying, but the kids were persistent and demanded autographs. As Brady put down the typewriter to begin signing, I got up and asked if he'd seen Judy Colton.
Now the Cossacks wanted me.
"I saw her at National Airport," he said. "I don't know — I expect — she's probably stopped somewhere to eat ..."
A bell rang, elevator doors opened, and Brady Young disappeared.
After dutifully signing the autographs, I started back across the lobby for the stairs. As I did the man in burgundy stepped forward and doffing his hat, flashed a nervous grin. I knew him after all. He was Charlie Rale, an investment broker from Washington, formerly Jan Rutledge's friend and adviser and once an avuncular member of the team "family" — in fact, the family's self-styled financial coach, and a damned good one at that.
"Are you going to speak to me?" he asked timidly.
"Why, hell yes," I said. "I just didn't recognize you in that ridiculous hat."
"Aw, I bought it in the goddamn gift shop. Tanner's been fucking with me since I got to the hotel."
"They don't give up."
"Harassment, and it's getting worse. This latest thing is nuts."
"I know."
The "latest thing" was Judy's profile of Charlie in her Herald column two weeks ago. It was an innocent piece, filler really, intended only as a bit of publicity for Charlie and his failing brokerage business, yet it inspired an incredible response from my employer, Washington club owner Roger Clayton. After reading the article, Mister Clayton had phoned Brady Young at home, delivered a lecture on journalistic improprieties, demanded Judy's resignation. Asked why he'd singled her out, Clayton said: "Treason. She's publicized an individual who tried to destroy the Washington franchise." He was quite serious. But he was also quite drunk, and when Brady, a long-time friend of Clayton's, reminded him of this the following day, Clayton withdrew his request and apologized.
Charlie's problems with Mister Clayton began in April of 1974 and, according to Charlie, stemmed from his association with a California sports attorney who was rounding up talent for the World Football League. Before that an intimate of Mister Clayton, Charlie had served as a liaison for the attorney in his dealings with several Washington players who were interested in the new league. When Mister Clayton found out what was happening he was furious. He had taken good care of Charlie. There had been trips to exotic places, girls, a special seat on the team charter, golf games with important people. For Charlie to help lure Washington players to the other league was treachery. So Mister Clayton expelled Charlie from our midst. But that didn't end it. Using his considerable influence, Clayton began punching holes in Charlie's lifeboat, his brokerage business, and as a result the waves of financial ruin were lapping closer and closer.
"Have you ever tried to talk to him?" I asked. We were walking across the lobby toward the stairwell.
"Who?" he said.
"Mister Clayton. I mean, what the hell."
"You want me to get killed?"
"It's been two years, Charlie. You'd think —"
"There was some other stuff going on there, Brad. I don't want to get into it." He opened the door to the stairwell. "Listen," he said, "I had an appointment with Rutledge tonight and he didn't show. If you see him upstairs, ask him to call me. It's kind of important."
"I think he went out to eat with Wayne."
"Oh."
"Bookbinder's, I think."
"Maybe later then. If you see him. Don't go to any trouble."
"Sure."
"Wayne's leg's all right, I guess?"
I had started up the stairs. "What's up?"
"I mean, he wasn't reported hurt in the paper. He wasn't on the injury report."
"So he's going to play."
"But he's hurt."
"Charlie, if he was hurt he'd be on the report."
"You mean he's playing a hundred percent?"
"I mean if he's not on the report, he's okay."
Charlie shook his head. "Fastest healing hamstring in medical history."
"It wasn't that bad," I said.
"A lot of people'd like to know how hurt he is, you know what I mean?"
"That's not news."
"I mean, I thought he was hobbled."
"He's tough, Charlie. You know that. We're all tough."
I knew what he was getting at. More was involved than simply the effect that the presence or absence of a name on the injury report might have on the strategy developed by opposing coaches. Everybody knows about the pink sheets, the football cards, the odds, the big bets. If a key player is injured and unable to play in a particular game, and if this information is withheld, then the handicappers cannot set an accurate point spread and those people with knowledge of the injury have a definite advantage in betting that game. Gamblers would naturally pay a high price for such an edge and that's why the league requires public disclosure of all injuries, to minimize if not eliminate the scramble for "inside information." And of course it was this scramble personified that stood sweating before me in a funny hat and disguised as a friend. He was desperate and it angered me.
"You wouldn't be trying to get a little edge, would you, Charlie? You wouldn't be looking to take unfair advantage, would you?"
"Not me, Brad. No way."
"You think I'm stupid?"
"No way."
"No way."
"So what's the story? Gimme a little help here."
"I'm going to bed. Tell that to your friends. Rafferty went to bed early."
I spent the next few hours in my room eating room-service food and watching Saturday-night television. At eleven, just before curfew, Wayne returned. He had been talking with some players in the hall and he came in laughing, his face flushed and his eyes glistening.
"Hey, Brad," he said, "how about Coach this afternoon? He really held back on 'em, didn't he? Can you imagine what that league official would've thought if he'd started in on diurnal rhythms?"
Wayne was laughing and I did too. "He probably would've thought the same thing we thought when we first heard it — that Coach had lost his mind." But of course that was before the team had been turned over to a group of Georgetown University behavioral scientists for three days of intensive study during the last off-season, at Coach's insistence, and since then we've all become acutely aware of our bodies' diurnal rhythms and their sensitivity to change, particularly to the disruptive changes brought about by travel. That's why we were late arriving in Philadelphia. "The less time we spend on the road, the better for us," Coach says. "I'm not gonna bust up the old DRs any more than I have to. And if that means stretching a league rule here and there and heating up Phil Tanner's duodenal ulcer, well, so be it. I'll try anything to help us win, and for that you will appreciate me."
Wayne was undressing now, carefully hanging and folding his expensive clothes.
"So how was Bookbinder's," I said.
"You ever eat a bad oyster?"
"Oh, no."
"Rutledge claims he ate a bad oyster. Anyway, he puked all over himself."
"He's not —"
"No, no. He's fine. He's got a seafood hangover, that's all. And a helluva laundry bill." Naked now, Wayne rummaged in his suitcase for his playbook.
"After you guys left I ran into Charlie Rale," I said. "We had a little talk."
"Yeah? — Ah," Wayne said, finding his playbook. "I thought I left you home, little buddy." And clutching the book — his "little buddy" — he climbed into bed.
"He was looking for Rutledge," I said. "They've got a deal working or something."
"You mean Charlie's got a deal working and he wants to get Rutledge involved."
"I don't know, they were supposed to have a meeting — I saw him in the lobby, that's all."
"Jan won't talk to him, Brad, just like you shouldn't talk to him. You know how Mister Clayton feels about that." Wayne flipped through his playbook to the scouting report.
"Mister Clayton asks you to shoot Baptists, you gonna shoot Baptists?"
"Did I tell you about Huey Greene? He's a Baptist."
"Goddammit, Wayne, I made some good money with Charlie Rale and I don't understand —"
"He's a Baptist who backpedals, Huey Greene. Unfortunately he has yet to learn when to stop backpedaling and start running and he can't possibly cover me on the post."
"Come on."
"I'm serious," he said. "You remember the Buffalo wideout who booted the game winner two years ago? That was Huey Greene. Buffalo traded him to Philly, Philly made him a corner and you oughta see the way he plays — all balled up and churning. You can blow right by him on the post, and once you do he overcompensates and that opens up the quick out. What I'm telling you, this is going to be a piece of cake."
"Can you run the patterns?"
"Hey. The rest was Mister Clayton's idea — rest for the weary, you know. I ran hard on Friday, there was no pain."
"Good."
"Good? That's all?"
"I'm sorry, but it kills me the way he takes care of you, it really does."
"We're a little irritable tonight, aren't we."
"It really does," I said. "I mean, he gives you the week off, he offers you that goddamn job looking after his race horses — it'll never happen either, that job. You wait. It's just a carrot, you know what I mean? A carrot hanging off the top of your helmet so you'll run faster."
Release Date: December 22, 1999
Release Time: 157 minutes
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast:
Al Pacino as Tony D'Amato
Cameron Diaz as Christina Pagniacci
Dennis Quaid as Jack "Cap" Rooney
James Woods as Dr. Harvey Mandrake
Jamie Foxx as Willie "Steamin" Beamen
LL Cool J as Julian "J-Man" Washington
Ann-Margret as Margaret Pagniacci
Lauren Holly as Cindy Rooney
Lawrence Taylor as Luther "Shark" Lavay
Jim Brown as Monte "Montezuma" Monroe
Aaron Eckhart as Nick Crozier
Bill Bellamy as Jimmy Sanderson
Matthew Modine as Dr. Ollie Powers
John C. McGinley as Jack Rose
Lela Rochon as Vanessa Struthers
Elizabeth Berkley as Mandy Murphy
Clifton Davis as Mayor Tyrone Smalls
Charlton Heston as AFFA Football Commissioner
Andrew Bryniarski as Patrick "Madman" Kelly
James Karen and Gianni Russo as Christina's Advisors
Duane Martin as Willie's Agent
Pat O'Hara as Tyler Cherubini
Mazio Royster as Wide Receiver
Rick Johnson as Dallas Quarterback
Allan Graf as Referee
Margaret Betts as Mayor's Aide
Lester Speight as Sharks' Security Guard
Eva Tamargo as Tunnel Reporter - Game 3
Delia Sheppard and Jaime Bergman as Party Girls
Dan Sileo as Dallas Defensive Tackle
Sean Stone as Fan (as Sean C. Stone)
Antoni Corone as Fan
Cameos
Dick Butkus
Terrell Owens
Ricky Watters
Irving Fryar
Joe Schmidt
Oliver Stone
Barry Switzer
Y. A. Tittle
Warren Moon
Johnny Unitas
Pat Toomay
Emmitt Smith
Wilt Chamberlain (uncredited)
Pat Toomay played ten years in the National Football League for such teams as the Dallas Cowboys and Oakland Raiders. He is the author of numerous articles about pro football, and two books: The Crunch and the novel On Any Given Sunday. Pat lives in Albuquerque, where he enjoys the friendship of Acoma Pueblo spiritual elders Gilbert Concho and Becky Chino and his relationship with Tibetan Lama Karma Rinchen. Wandering New Mexico's charged terrain is an important pastime. He has two sons, Seth and John.
Film
