The Game of My Life
I’m not much of a pack rat, nor the sentimental type, but for more than thirty years, through countless moves and downsizings, this photograph has stayed with me. I came close to tossing it a year ago, when we were packing up the house ahead of a major renovation. Instead, I threw it in a box marked “Dan’s Memorabilia,” which landed in the basement next to a similarly marked, yet decidedly larger box belonging to my wife.
The graininess of the photo gives away its age, as do the polyester uniforms and scruffy grass field in the background. But the composition is timeless: two boys standing shoulder-to-shoulder, medals hanging from their necks, the thrill of victory captured for posterity.
“You were the best player on the field that day,” Jay said to me recently, over lunch at a midtown restaurant a few blocks from Grand Central Station. In the photo, he’s the mop-topped kid with his back to the camera, number 9. We’ve been friends since age 7, when our New Jersey town’s travel soccer team, the Westfield Hotspurs, brought us together.
It was a talented group, one that would ultimately win the 1991 Group IV state championship for Westfield High School. Jay went on to play for Brown and had a stint with Major League Soccer. Chris, another Hotspur, earned All-American honors, captained Harvard’s soccer team, and played professionally in Europe. Then there was Jeff, the blond-haired boy in the photo, whose blazing speed and thunderous left foot made him one of the school’s all-time leading goal scorers.
Lunch with Jay at a midtown vegan joint.
As Jay and I talked more, the faded memory of that day started to come back into focus. It was the finals of the 1986 Westfield Memorial Cup tournament, the host Hotspurs against the team from Hamilton Township. We’d given up two goals in the first half. Jay’s dad, who coached the team and was known for his raging halftime speeches, lit into us good.
We took the field and I scored a quick goal. A few minutes later we equalized on a penalty quick. In the final quarter, I netted the game winner. Over lunch, Jay dwelled on the penalty kick. “None of us wanted to take it,” he said. “You stepped up and buried it, and that was all we needed. Me, Chris, Jeff—you were better than all of us that day.”
I felt a swell of pride, but also an undercurrent of regret. Because as far as I can tell, that hat trick in the finals of the ‘86 Memorial Cup, a few months shy of my twelfth birthday, represented the high point in my career. Though I made the high school varsity squad a few years later as a freshman, alongside Jay, Chris, and Jeff, and we had our glorious championship run as seniors, I was never the best player on the field again.
We finished lunch and I made my way back to Brooklyn. I went down to the basement, opened the memorabilia box, and pulled out the photo. I thought about Jeff, whose supreme athleticism was matched by his good looks and boundless charisma. At the time the picture was taken, I’d been his best friend for maybe a year. It had been an unexpected anointment. Before another year was up, we’d be drifting apart, though only one of us was really moving.
Looking closely at the photo, I notice the yellow scratch mark across my face, delivered with a fingernail in a moment of adolescent self-loathing. I wish I could airbrush it away, along with the feelings of fear and insecurity from that time. But they’re all indelible now, so the best I can manage is acceptance, and a shift in perspective.
I turn the frame around and see a long-forgotten inscription from Jeff. “Danny, you only get this for scoring three goals,” it says. Then in big block letters: “CONGRATULTIONS!”
I decide to take the photo upstairs where it can be seen, an image of two boys and their medals, one of whom was the best player on the field that day.