The Underdogs by Mike Lupica

ten players.
    They had all talked up the team to their classmates. They had posted a sign-up sheet and had everyone on the team add their name to get the ball rolling. Ten names on Tuesday.
    By Friday?
    The same ten names.
    One kid from last year’s team, Carlos Estrada, had decided he wanted to play soccer this year, not football. “Where?” Will asked him. “On what team?”
    â€œCastle Rock.”
    â€œDude, you’re killing me,” Will said.
    But there was no talking him out of it. Carlos had been a soccer player growing up in the Dominican Republic and he was happy to be playing again.
    So he was gone and Bobby Carrington was gone, and thirteen had become eleven. Brendon Donelson, their center from last season, was the next to go. He had broken his arm at the skateboard park over in Castle Rock at the beginning of August and was still in a cast. He was just hoping he’d be ready for basketball season.
    Ten guys. Nobody new wanted to play.
    It was beyond amazing to Will.
    â€œYou sure you talked to everybody?” Chris Aiello said.
    â€œI talked to every jock in the middle school,” Will said. “I talked to baseball players, basketball players, I even tried to hijack some of Carlos’s new friends on the soccer team. Nothing.”
    â€œWe just have to find one more guy,” Tim said. “How hard can that be?”
    Will said, “How hard can it be? Let me ask you something: how we lookin’ so far, big boy?”
    There was another long silence while they ate. Every so often you would hear the sound of Tim’s cell phone buzzing. He was the only one of them who had one. Will wondered who could be calling him when his best buds were right here in this room.
    â€œAnd think about it,” Will said. “Say we do find another guy. We’re gonna try to play the whole season with eleven? Really? What if somebody gets hurt? We’re right back to where we are right now. I can see it now: Mr. DeMartini shows up to see us play only we don’t that day, because it turns out to be a stinking forfeit.”
    â€œThey wouldn’t have this problem in Castle Rock,” Tim said. “They have to cut kids over there.”
    â€œNot just football country over there,” Will said. “A whole different football planet.”
    He could hear Ben Clark’s voice inside his head again, clear as a bell, right after Will told him they had the money for the team and Ben had said, “In Forbes ?”
    Will started to take a bite of pizza, then tossed his slice into the box, no longer hungry. The week he’d just had felt like a whole game of hard hits. And he still couldn’t believe they were in this kind of fix. It had been a perfect plan. As Tim loved to say, Will felt as if he’d absolutely crushed the whole idea of getting their team back together.
    Now this.
    â€œWe gotta figure something out,” he said.
    â€œYou know what this all means? That we drove the ball down the field and couldn’t push it across.”
    Will turned and glared at him, but Tim gave him a wave-off, standing up now, not just addressing Will, addressing the whole group.
    â€œLet me finish,” he said. “And by the way? That glare of death from you doesn’t scare me nearly as much as it used to.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, we’ve been all over the place tonight. I think what we need to do right now is prioritize.”
    Will couldn’t help it; as frustrated and angry as he was feeling, he barked out a laugh.
    â€œYou don’t even know what that means,” he said.
    â€œDo too,” Tim said. “I made my mother use it in a sentence at breakfast.” He said to Will, “Do I have your permission to continue?”
    Will nodded.
    â€œThis is only my opinion, but before we think about finding another player, I think we have to make sure we’ve got somebody to coach us. Because they won’t let