Brian Mcgrory - The Nominee

Flynn steals the inbounds pass, stops and pops at the top of the key, and swish! Folks, the guy has taken this game into his own hands and it is truly a sight to behold!

The story was now important enough that I was willing to share — an unusual accommodation for me, considering I don’t usually like sharing so much as a thought. I had called friend and newsroom colleague Vinny Mongillo that afternoon with two requests: first, I wanted him to probe some of his many police sources for information about Randolph’s prosecutor days, and second, in complete confidence, could he please do what we in the news biz call a scrub of Terry Campbell. I didn’t tell him that Campbell might someday soon be our ultimate boss, but I would. I would.

Flynn brings the ball down court against double-team pressure, slides through two defenders, wheels into the middle and lofts a fifteen-footer toward the hoop. Bang! Ladies and gentlemen, with just two minutes remaining in a tie game, there are no words that can describe the magic going on right here on this court tonight!

I’ll admit, I never had the chance to get to know John Cutter particularly well, though I do know he was a great publisher, and while he was running the paper and Paul Ellis was next in line as the company president, they were an unbeatable team. His reputation — John’s — was that of a brilliant man with a dose of the family’s trademark paternalism, but also subject to bouts of occasional depression. Paul Ellis, a retired army general, arrived at his family’s paper to provide some balance and guidance to his older cousin. The two became famously close and John’s death hit Paul hard — so hard that he even offered John’s eldest son, Brent Cutter, the presidency of the company after his father’s death.

With just fifteen seconds left and the championship game still tied, Flynn is dribbling out the clock, weaving in and out of his hapless opponents who haven’t been able to stop him the last seven times down court. Eight seconds. Flynn fakes to the basket and pulls back. Six seconds. He dribbles around the top of the key. Four seconds. He jabs right, whirls left and launches an eighteen-footer. Bang! Ladies and gentlemen, Jack Flynn

of South Boston has hit a buzzer-beating jumpshot to win this epic game!

I turned around to see Baker standing at half-court, his blond fur uncharacteristically sticking straight up on his back, staring and growling at the dark shadows of the school. To put this into context, I’d heard him growl exactly once before in his life, when I brought home a blonde with a better-than-average chest who patted him — before he growled — with an outstretched arm, like some non-dog people do. “Is he friendly,” she asked, nervously.

“Not as friendly as me,” I replied. And at that exact moment, the dog growled and the relationship was effectively over. I told Baker he owed me the $184 I had just spent on dinner, but he didn’t seem to understand, or maybe he just didn’t care.

“What’s the matter, pal,” I asked as I, too, probed the shadows with my eyes. I saw nothing.

Baker looked at me as if I was some sort of gold-plated idiot, then looked back toward the redbrick building. I squinted and stared harder, making out a small alley between the brick school and the sandstone chapel. Baker inched toward the dark and I called out, “Who’s there?”

Silence, which is precisely what I wanted to hear. “Lie down, Baker,” I said. He ignored me, so I turned toward the basket and took another jumper, then another, missing them both. When I glanced back at Baker, he was still creeping toward the dark, growling harder now, his fur still on end. I was setting myself up to take a foul shot when a voice crashed through the lonely night air.

“Does he bite?”

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the blonde talking — the only thing I was sure of, because the voice was every bit a man’s. I whirled toward the shadows, but still didn’t see anyone. As I stared more intently, a figure emerged from the black into the hazy peripheral light, a large man wearing a baseball cap — the Detroit Tigers, as a matter of fact — slung low over his face.

“Sometimes,” I replied, my tone a mix of suspicion and curiosity. Baker continued to edge toward the man, who was now standing still. I called out, “Who are you?”

“Mike,” he replied. “My name’s Mike. Can you call the dog off, man?”

I ignored his request and said, “What are you doing here?”

“I hang out here,” he said, talking to me but staring at my dog. “Can you please call your dog off.”

Not in his canine lifetime had anyone been in such fear of old Baker, who usually greets strangers by rubbing himself against their legs or dropping his tennis ball at their feet in hopes of engaging them in a game of catch.

“What do you want?” I asked him. I was standing twenty feet away, holding the basketball against my hip. The man was standing helpless a few feet from the building. Baker was somewhere between us, fixed on this man named Mike, growling up a veritable storm.

“I want you to get your dog away. Then I wanted to know if you had any game in you.”

“You’re going to play in those?” I asked, incredulously. The man was wearing a pair of battered work boots. Baker inched closer still.

“C’mon, the dog, man. The dog.”

“Baker,” I said, not very sternly, or at least not sternly enough. “Come here.”

He ignored me, which didn’t particularly surprise or bother me.

The man’s face was dark, but I could vaguely see his eyes fixed on Baker’s, who was, in turn, fixed on his. Before I found myself in a lawsuit in this overly litigious society, I stepped toward my dog, grabbed his collar, and whispered soothingly, “Sit, pal. Time to sit down.” He did, but his eyes never left the intruder, or at least what we both suspected was an intruder.

“Thanks, man,” he said, sounding relieved. “You got a little one-on-one in you?”

The guy emerged fully into the faint floodlight. He was slightly taller than me, probably about six foot three. He had skin pocked by acne scars, brownish hair that fell from beneath his cap in greasy strings, and a tattoo on the right side of his neck that looked to be a bird, an eagle.

“A quick one,” I said.

He walked over to the side of the court and peeled off his denim jacket. He held his hands out for the ball, and when he got it, he dribbled twice, hard, and took a shot that slammed off the backboard and rim. Just from that one errant jumper, I knew he couldn’t play, first because he stared at the ball while he dribbled it, and then because he surged forward when he jumped. I decided to dispatch him quickly.

“Game to five,” I said, “winner’s out. You start.”

He took the ball, barreled toward the right and threw up a flailing layup that hit the backboard but never the rim. I rebounded it, cleared and tossed in a fifteen-foot jumper, nothing but net. One zip.

Next play, I faked right so hard that when I cut back left, he tripped over his own boots and sprawled across the pavement. I laid it in with ease. Two zip.

I stayed silent, mostly because I didn’t particularly want to antagonize a tattooed guy who appeared from the shadows of the night on a lonely basketball court. Mrs. Flynn didn’t raise any fools, and neither did I. Baker was usually a fine judge of character, and he didn’t appreciate our newfound company one little bit. As a matter of fact, he stood at half-court intently watching every move we made. Watch dog. I liked that.

Most opponents would have said good move after that last play, but ol’ Mike here didn’t say a word. So I took the ball, steamed left, flipped the ball around my back, pulled up in the middle of the key and buried a ten-foot jumper. Three zip. Need I say that the crowd, ladies and gentlemen, was going wild?