Last Shot

BOOKS BY JOHN FEINSTEIN

THE SPORTS BEAT

LAST SHOT:
MYSTERY AT THE FINAL FOUR

VANISHING ACT:
MYSTERY AT THE U.S. OPEN

COVER-UP:
MYSTERY AT THE SUPER BOWL

CHANGE-UP:
MYSTERY AT THE WORLD SERIES

THE RIVALRY:
MYSTERY AT THE ARMY-NAVY GAME

RUSH FOR THE GOLD:
MYSTERY AT THE OLYMPICS

THE TRIPLE THREAT

THE WALK ON

FOUL TROUBLE

Every book is a collaborative effort, none more so than this one. Esther Newberg, my tireless and remarkably stubborn agent, was the first person to suggest the notion of a children’s book to me and her assistants, Andrea Barzvi and Christine Bauch, pushed me forward until I jumped off the cliff and made the attempt.

I was more than fortunate that Nancy Siscoe at Knopf saw potential in the idea and then pushed, prodded, and pulled until there was actually a book. A good editor needs a great deal of patience; Nancy has plenty of that, but also a creative mind that, even as I benefitted from it, made me quite envious.

My friends and family occasionally roll their eyes when I try new things but are always there to support me when I attempt them. That was especially true in this case of Mary, my wife, and Danny and Brigid, who each have a good deal in common with this book’s two young heroes.…

Steven Thomas

735 Northview Blvd.

Norristown, PA 19401

Dear Steven Thomas:

It is my great pleasure to inform you that you have been selected by the U.S. Basketball Writers Association as one of the two winners in this year’s USBWA fourteen-and-under writing contest. Your story “Nothing Like the Palestra” was selected by the judges from more than 200 entries. Congratulations! You and your co-winner, Susan Carol Anderson, will be flown, courtesy of the USBWA, to New Orleans to participate as working journalists at this year’s Final Four. Press credentials and a hotel room have been arranged for you and a guardian, and our executive director, Joe Mitch, will be in touch with you shortly to arrange flights and to answer any questions about your schedule, attached here. You should plan on arriving no later than Thursday evening, since the presentation of your award will take place Friday morning. We hope you stay right through the championship game on Monday night. We look forward to seeing you in New Orleans at what we all hope will be just the first of many Final Fours you will cover in your journalism career.

Again, congratulations on a wonderfully reported and written story.

Best wishes,

Bobby Kelleher

President, USBWA

STEVIE THOMAS
read the letter once, then twice, then a third time to be sure it was real. Then he started screaming.

“Mom! Mom! Mom!”

Stevie suffered a few bad moments when his mom said she wasn’t sure she or his father could get away from work to go with him and then started fussing about the time off from school. But somehow Stevie knew his dad wasn’t going to turn this down.

After all, Bill Thomas had been the one who had first introduced his son to sports—specifically basketball. He had started taking Stevie to see Philadelphia’s Big Five—Temple, Villanova, St. Joseph’s, Pennsylvania, and La Salle—when he was four. Going to basketball games had become Bill and Stevie’s thing. Occasionally they went to see the 76ers play
but neither of them thought the NBA was really worth their time. Stevie had written a story for his school’s monthly newspaper, the
Main Line Chronicle
, about watching players on the 76ers bench sit and laugh and tell jokes during the last few minutes of a 20-point loss to the woeful Washington Wizards. But the college players really cared.

It was through the
Chronicle
that he had heard about the USBWA writing contest. The paper had received a press release inviting anyone age fourteen and under to enter the contest. What got Stevie’s attention was the line at the bottom of the release: “Two winners will be chosen to fly to New Orleans to be members of the working press during the Final Four.” Right there in one sentence were both his dreams come true: a chance to go to the Final Four
and
to go there with a press pass.

Stevie had taught himself to read at age five using the sports section, so the reporters were as big heroes to him as the players and coaches. His favorite Philly reporter was Dick Jerardi. But it wasn’t long before he learned he could call up stories from other papers online and read Mike Lupica and Dick Weiss from the New York
Daily News
and his two heroes, Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon, who he knew worked for the
Washington Post
, since he watched them every day on
Pardon the Interruption
.

Stevie wanted to really impress the judges with his reporting skills, so he called the main number at the
Daily News
and asked to speak to Dick Jerardi. To his delight, Jerardi called him back the next day, and when he explained that he wanted to write a story about the Palestra,
Jerardi gave him the names and phone numbers for all the local SIDs—short for Sports Information Directors—who could help him with his story.

Shaun May, the SID (Stevie liked using the term; it made him feel like a pro) at Penn, gave him a press credential to cover the Penn-Columbia game. Stevie and his dad had gone to the Palestra a million times before, but this time his dad was in the bleachers—and Stevie was on press row. He decided that night, even before sitting down to write the story, that this was definitely what he wanted to do when he grew up. Get paid to have the best seats at a basketball game? Get to talk to the players and interview Coach Fran Dunphy? Have someone bring statistics to your seat at every time-out? Eat for free in the pressroom before the game?

“Dad, why would anyone want to do anything else?”

His father, who worked in a large law firm downtown, nodded. “I’ve thought about that more than once myself,” he said. “Of course, you know, sportswriters don’t make very much money.”

“Kornheiser and Wilbon do,” Stevie answered. “Lupica does.”

“That’s three out of thousands,” his dad answered. “And they only make big money because they’re on TV.”

He had a point. But still, if you could get paid at all to go to games and have the best seats, you were pretty lucky.

Stevie spent hours putting together his story, making the Palestra the feature, rather than the game. He poured ten years’ worth of avid fandom into his writing, and when he was finished he had almost three thousand words. The contest
rules said no more than one thousand. Cutting two-thirds of what he had written was painful, but he thought the end result was pretty strong. He sent the story in just before the January 15 deadline and waited, hoping against hope he might win.