Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream by H. G. Bissinger Page B

lost that innate confidence in himself. The gift was always there, but he began to
question it, doubt it, brood over it. When he hit three homers
in a game once, he didn't go back to the bench feeling exalted.
"Why in the hell can I hit these home runs?" he asked himself.
"Why could I do it when other kids couldn't?'
    There had always been something inward and painfully shy
about Mike, but the death of his father forced him to grow up
even faster than he already had. He knew Billy was in pain and
he also knew that only death could stop it. "It was hurtin' 'itn
and there was nothin' they could do," he said. "You don't want
nobody to die, but you don't want him hurtin' all the time
either."
    After Billy died, Mike's life didn't get any easier. He had a brother who was sent to prison for stealing. At home he lived
with his mother, who worked at a service station convenience
store as it clerk. They didn't have much money. His mother was
enormously quiet and reserved, almost like it phantom. Coach
Gaines, who spent almost as much time dealing with parents as
he did with the players, had never met her.

    Mike himself almost never talked of his mother, and he was
reluctant to let people into his home, apparently because of' its
condition. "He never wants me to come in," said his girlfriend,
DeAnn. "He never wants me to be inside, ever." When they got
together it was over at his grandmother's, and that's where his
yard sign was, announcing to the world that he was a Permian
football player.
    "Me and him talked about not havin' a nice home or a nice
car and how those things were not important," said Joe Bill. "I
told him, you make your grades and stay in sports, you'll one
day have those things."
    Mike persevered, a coach's dream who worked hard and became a gifted student of the game of football, just as he had in
baseball with his father. The one ceaseless complaint was that
he thought too much, and he knew that was true, that whenever he threw the ball he didn't just wing it, go with his instincts,
but sometimes seemed to agonize over it, a checklist racing
through his mind even as he backpedaled-be careful ... get the
right touch now ... watch the wrist, watch the wrist! ... don't overthrow it now, don't throw are interception... on....
    He started at quarterback his junior year at Permian, but his
own obvious lack of confidence caused some of his teammates
to lose faith in him in a tight game. When the pressure was off
and the score wasn't close, it was hard to find it better quarterback. When the pressure was on, though, something seemed to
unravel inside him. But now he was a senior and had had a
whole year to process the incredible feeling of walking into a
stadium and seeing twenty thousand fans expecting the world
from him. He seemed ready, ready for something truly wonderful to happen to him.

    He didn't dwell much on his father's death anymore. It had
been four years since it happened and Mike had moved on
since then. But he still thought about him from time to time,
and he said he had never met anyone more honest, or more
clever, or more dependable. He smiled as he talked about what
a good "horse trader" Billy was, and how he loved animals, and
how he had bought him every piece of sports equipment that
had ever been invented. When he had had trouble with his
baseball swing, he knew that Billy would have been able to fix it
in a second, standing with him, showing him where to place his
hands, jiggering his stance just a tad here and a tad there, doing
all the things only a dad could do to make a swing level again
and keep a baseball flying forever.
    And Mike also knew how much Billy Winchell would have
cherished seeing him on this September night, dressed in the
immaculate black and white of the Permian Panthers, moments
away from playing out the dream that had kept him in Odessa.
The two-a-days in the August heat were over now. The Watermelon Feed had come and gone, and