John Feinstein - The Rivalry - Mystery at the Army-Navy Game

“Is Susan Carol going to be there Sunday?” Stevie asked.

He heard Kelleher laugh. “Yes, Stevie, I figured that’d get you here. Typical her: she’s managed to get an interview with Orrin Hatch on Monday to talk about his legislation to ban the BCS. She’s going to stay with us Sunday night.”

Stevie shook his head. That was typical Susan Carol. She was always one step ahead.

“When did you call her?” Stevie wondered.

“This afternoon. Don’t ask me how she got the interview set up so fast, because I haven’t a clue. Talk to your parents. You’ve probably got a short school week coming up with Thanksgiving, and you won’t miss more than a day or two of school to cover the game. You’ve pulled it off in the past.”

Barely, Stevie thought. Still, especially with Susan Carol involved, the Army-Navy game sounded like fun. He heard someone call his name and saw Dick Jerardi waving him in the direction of the interview room.

“Martelli’s coming in,” he said. “Gotta go.”

“Call me in the morning,” Kelleher said. “I’ll be up early fighting traffic to get to the stadium.” Stevie rolled his eyes. After sports, Bobby’s biggest obsessions were traffic and parking.

Stevie hustled into the interview room just as Martelli was talking about the last shot.

“I think I probably lost my mind during the time-out with twenty-five seconds left,” he said. “I know, it’s crazy playing for one shot there. But something in my gut just told me this was the way to go. Fortunately, Anthony made me look like a good coach by making the shot.”

Stevie scribbled furiously in his notebook. That took care of Weiss’s question. Now all he had to do was convince his parents to let him take the train to Washington on Sunday.

Stevie waited until breakfast the next morning to bring up the Washington trip to his parents. He knew his mother would need convincing, and he had been too tired when he got home from the game to start a debate.

“How much homework do you have this weekend?” his mom asked, a predictable and reasonable first question.

“Not much,” Stevie lied.

His father looked at him sharply. “I thought you told me you had a paper due on Beowulf , but you’d pass on watching the football games today to get it done,” he said.

“Well, I can still do that,” Stevie answered. “And I can do the rest on the train.”

His parents looked at one another. Christine Thomas shrugged helplessly. “I know you’re going to let him do it, Bill,” she said. “You always do.”

“It’s not as if he’s flunking out of school,” Bill Thomas said. “He’s making solid B’s.”

“Which these days might get him into a solid B-grade college-but not anyplace that’s any good,” she said.

“Mom, not everyone needs to go to an Ivy League school,” Stevie said. His dad had gone to Penn and his mother to Columbia. They had met in law school at Yale.

“All he’s done with journalism will help him a lot, Chris,” Bill Thomas said. “Plus, can we worry about college when he’s, I don’t know, a junior?”

“Okay, okay, I know when I’m outnumbered,” she said. “Stevie, I want to see the Beowulf paper before you get on that train.”

“You got it, Mom.” He raced off to call Kelleher before she could change her mind.

By ten the next morning, he was on a train out of 30th Street station. He had only written half the Beowulf paper, but the fact that it was actually pretty good rescued him. “Come home with the paper unfinished and you won’t get to work on this project,” his mother had said.

He quickly read the sports section of the New York Times -having read the Philadelphia Inquirer at home-and then dug into his math and Spanish homework. The trip to Union Station in Washington took a little under two hours, and he was just about finished when it arrived. That left Beowulf to finish on the ride home.

He had been in Union Station before, so he knew exactly how to work his way from the tracks through the massive building to the front door that led to the cab line. It was a cold but sunny November day, and he could see the enormous white dome of the Capitol building shining in the distance-impressive.

He got a cab to the Washington Post offices, as Kelleher had instructed. When Stevie had called the day before to say he could come, Bobby had explained the details of the project to him.

“We started combining some coverage with the Post about a year ago,” he said. “The point is to save money, really. Instead of both papers sending people to cover a mid-May road game for the Nationals in Chicago, one reporter goes and files for both papers. If someone writes a day story on how Maryland is getting ready to play Wake Forest in football, both papers may use it.

“This is different, though. We both want to do blow-out coverage of Army-Navy because it’s never been in DC before and because both teams are good this year. We got lucky with that. But we don’t have as much staff as we used to before the economy slammed us and both papers had buyouts. A lot of talent walked out the doors. So the editors decided we’d work together. Which means we can team you and Susan Carol.”

Stevie certainly liked that idea. She was the prettiest girl he’d ever met, scary smart, and she knew more about sports than he did-which could actually be a little annoying, if Stevie was honest.

Still, she kept him on his toes, and there was nothing more fun than hanging out with her at a major event-even if they did seem to get into trouble most of the time.

His father had once likened them to Pigpen, a character in the old “Peanuts” comic strip who went around in a swirl of dust and dirt. “That’s you and Susan Carol when it comes to trouble,” he had said. “It just follows you wherever you go.”

The cab ride only took about ten minutes, and when he arrived at the Post , Stevie called Matt Rennie. Rennie had been Kelleher’s editor at the Washington Herald but had moved to the Post when he had been offered the number-two job on the Post ’s sports staff.

“Steve, glad you could make it,” Rennie said. “I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

Rennie walked him through security and then brought him up to the newsroom on the fifth floor.

“You’re the first one here,” Rennie said. “Bobby, Tamara, and Susan Carol are on their way in from Potomac. If you want, I’ll give you a quick tour.”

Stevie loved that idea. He had recently read All the President’s Men , the book written by Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about the fall of President Richard Nixon, much of it stemming from reporting they had done after the infamous 1972 break-in at the Watergate Hotel office building. He had been fascinated by the story of how Woodward and Bernstein slowly pieced the story together, beginning on the day after the break-in, when it had appeared to be little more than a routine burglary attempt.

He knew the newspaper business had changed a lot since then, but just being in the Post newsroom gave him a thrill. It was massive-and oddly quiet.

“Not a lot of people in this early,” Rennie said. “The dot-com people are here, and a few editors and reporters, but Sundays are normally like this. I think Woodward’s in, though. Bobby told me you wanted to meet him.”

“Bob Woodward’s here?”

“He was on Meet the Press this morning. He sometimes swings by for a little while on Sundays just because it’s so quiet.”

They were walking between desks toward the back of the newsroom and Stevie was getting a little nervous. He’d met a lot of famous athletes and coaches, but Bob Woodward was the epitome of what Stevie hoped to someday be. He knew he’d never be an NFL quarterback or an NBA point guard. A top-flight journalist? Maybe.