It was David’s turn to chuckle.
“In high school, I had a reporter who I learned to trust. We made a deal that when something was said off the record, that was where it stayed unless it had to do with something I’d done wrong. Then he was allowed to use it. He helped me navigate several minefields, and he kept his word,” David said.
“And if he’d turned on you?” Chip asked.
That made David smile.
“I know hundreds of clichés and can talk for a long time without saying anything. If you want to hear that bullshit for the next few years, I can give you what I give every other sports reporter.”
“I don’t think either one of us wants that,” Chip said, and then he had an idea. “How about we do this. We don’t talk about USC. Tell me about you. Tell me how you ended up playing for the Trojans.”
Their pizzas came, so David related the twists and turns of his recruitment while they ate. He left out the parts about the NCAA and shoe-company troubles. By the time David’s spiel was winding down, Chip was kicking himself for promising to keep everything David shared off the record. That was especially so when David explained what had happened for him to change his initial Michigan commitment. And then again when he described what caused him to pull out of the one made to Oklahoma.
“What made you pick USC?” Chip asked.
“My family moved to Malibu. Being at USC lets me see my kids on Sundays. Besides, USC was in my final three when I picked Michigan,” David answered.
“I still don’t get why you’re playing defense. From what I saw in the spring game, you could very well start at quarterback,” Chip said.
“Now we’re venturing into an area I’m not ready to share with you,” David said.
“Is there something you can tell me about USC that I probably don’t already know, that is just about you?” Chip asked.
He was clearly working to see if he could dig something out of David.
“I’m not on a football scholarship, even though I was promised one.”
David was still miffed about that. He figured if Chip was going to be a problem, it might as well be for reporting something like that. It would only affect David and not the whole team.
“You have to tell me how that happened,” Chip pressed.
David pulled a Dawson and just stared at him, not saying a word.
“I bet your reporter friend from your high school days hated you,” Chip complained. “You can’t leave me hanging like that.”
“At first, he didn’t care one way or another about me. I grew on him, though,” David said with a twitch of a grin.
“What if I find out some other way than using you as a source?” Chip asked.
“A deal’s a deal. Unless we agree upfront, what I say off the record has to stay that way.”
“But if someone else tells me?”
“Then come to me for a comment, but I better not find out that you take what we talk about and use that to do your job. If I think you’ve done that, I’m done. By the way, something you should know about me is that if I think trust has been broken, it is nearly impossible for it to be regained,” David said. Chip could see he was dead serious.
“But I have to do my job,” he shot back.
“I understand that, and I won’t tell you stuff that will make your head explode, I promise. I want this to be a two-way street. For that to happen, we have to be honest with each other. I don’t expect you to cover my ass, but if I tell you something off the record, I expect it to stay that way. If we go down a rabbit hole and you think it needs to be written about, tell me first. I will listen to you. I’m not saying I can’t be swayed,” David explained.
“What exactly do you want from me?” Chip asked.
“To give me advice. I have a PR team that’s very good at handling my image and the like for movies. What they don’t fully understand is the sports side of my life, and specifically sports in the LA market. In return, I’ll give you info first, if I can. We can also do the deep background stuff.”
“Do you promise to always give me the scoop?” Chip asked.
David shook his head ‘no.’
“Full disclosure time. I have a good friend in the USC journalism program. If I can help her, I will.”
“Maybe I could talk to him, and we could come to an understanding,” Chip ventured.
“First of all, it’s her. He’s a she. If you’re willing to play nice, I’d be willing to bet she would work with you. It would suck, though, if the Daily Trojan were to scoop you,” David teased.
Chip gave David a hard look and then relaxed. David could tell Chip thought that he could get a story before a college kid did. The man had no idea what Tracy was capable of.
They said their goodbyes. David was impressed when Chip picked up the tab. Now all he had to do was wait and see whether or not Chip was a man of his word. David figured he would learn that soon enough. He suspected that Chip thought he could find someone else who would be more pliable if need be. College football organizations were big enough that someone would talk.
Chapter 70
Tami
The previous evening, David had talked his teammates into giving up their tickets for the game so that Tami could bring her dorm floor to watch her best friend play baseball. At one point during her first semester, the topic of David had come up. The majority of her dorm-mates hadn’t believed that she knew an Academy Award-winning actor. She had let them think what they wanted until they arrived at Stanford’s Sunken Diamond.
Before the game, the stupid boy had climbed into the stands when he spotted her. That had almost caused a riot as fans tried to get close to talk to him. Being David, he soon had them all settled down. Tami had been disappointed when he took the time to let them take pictures and get autographs.
Over spring break, David had shared with her that he’d stopped giving out autographs at games. His head of security had threatened that if David continued to do that, his security would begin following him around again.
Tami had grown up watching her friend play baseball. They’d been teammates when he began with Little League. She’d also seen him play in the Pan Am games. What she saw that evening showed that he hadn’t sat on his laurels and coasted.
It’s tough for one player to dominate a baseball game because of the number of players and the vast field. No one player can cover everything defensively.
David showed he was the exception.
One play stood out. In the bottom of the third, the Cardinal (referring to the color, not the bird) had a baserunner at second when their best hitter came to the plate. He’d worked his way to a two-and-two count when he hit a sharp grounder that evaded the shortstop and rolled into left field.
Instead of watching the ball, Tami had focused on David. He’d sprinted to left field to back up the play in case his teammate missed the ball. It appeared the left fielder would beat him to it, and David had taken a path behind him. Then Tami had been mystified when David called the left fielder off the play and made it himself.
From where she’d been sitting, it should have been a routine play where Stanford’s runners would have ended up at first and third. The left fielder would have thrown the ball in to the second baseman to prevent the runner at first from stealing an extra base.
David had charged forward and, with what looked like one continuous motion, fired the ball to home on a rope. David had noticed that the player heading to third hadn’t slowed down and had tried to pick up an easy score. If the left fielder had thrown to second, the man running home would have made it. Instead, David, with a better view of the field, had taken charge. His throw had gunned down the runner at the plate.
The hitter, seeing the ball go home, had decided to get cute and take second. The Trojans’ catcher had put the tag on his guy and then had thrown out the hitter for an unconventional double play.