Read Away Games: Science Fiction Sports Stories for Free Online Page B

scored twenty-three points.
    And I was thinking: Sure, Jeremy, the kid’s not ready for the big time. Sure, bartender, he can’t shoot and he can’t jump and he probably can’t move to his left. Sure, guys. I’m just wasting my time coming here to recruit him.
    And then, on a hunch, I looked around the playground and saw maybe two dozen adults had stopped by to watch Damika Drake through the fence. Ten or twelve more were looking out from the windows of a nearby decrepit apartment building.
    I suddenly realized that most of them were looking at me . And their faces didn’t say, Can he be the One? No, it was He is the One, our last chance, our only chance. Please don’t take him away from us. We’ve waited four hundred years for him. We’ll make him happy, we’ll treat him like a king, hell, we’ll make him king if he asks us to … but leave him here. All you need is a player. We need a savior.
    I didn’t have to watch the rest of the practice. This kid was everything he was cracked up to be, and more. I’m surprised I couldn’t see wings on his back, given the way he flew to the bucket. He’d missed two shots the whole time I was watching him, which meant he hit at better than a 90% rate. The kid who led our conference last year was a 52% shooter, and everyone thought that was phenomenal.
    But that kid’s planet was flush with gold and plutonium deposits, it had some of the best farmland in the sector, and it was the banking center for a dozen nearby worlds. They were proud of him, but if he vanished tomorrow, life there wouldn’t miss a beat. No one was asking him to bring back the self-respect that had been missing for four hundred years. If adults watched him practice, it was because they were fans of the game, and no other reason. He didn’t come from an almost-deserted school on an almost-deserted planet with an almost-proud history that was cut short ten seconds before it came to fruition.
    As I took an aircar back to the spaceport, past the derelict buildings, the forgotten dreams, the dashed hopes of a world, I felt my options disappearing one by one. They were gone by the time I reached the tiny spaceport and contacted my school’s athletic director via the subspace radio.
    “How’d it go?” he asked.
    “Easy trip,” I replied. “I should be home tomorrow.”
    “So what about this kid?”
    “He’s okay in the bush leagues,” I said, “but he’s not what we’re after.”
    “Ah, well, I suppose it was worth the trip. On your way back, stop off at Odysseus in the Iliad system. They’ve got a seven-footer there who’s supposed to be pretty hot stuff. Greenveldt’s after him, but he hasn’t committed to them yet.”
    “Will do,” I said, and signed off.
    I turned and looked back at the decaying city.
    Okay, I thought, I’m giving you your future, at the cost of some of my own. You damned well better make the most of it.
    That’s a hell of a burden to put on any kid. Still, he’s got the right name for it. Maybe I’ll see him again, in the finals if we get that far. There’s no question that he’ll be waiting for us there.
    Him and a forgotten world.
    ***

Monsters of The Midway
    Author’s Note: Football
    This one was written for an anthology titled The Ultimate Frankenstein . I have never been able to take the tropes of horror stories or movies seriously, so when it became time to write about man-made men, I remembered growing up in Chicago, where the Bears were known as the Monsters of the Midway, and the story practically wrote itself.

    SURPRISES ON TAP? July 12, 2037 (UPI) Coach Rattler Renfro, in his initial press conference, has promised fans that his Chicago Bears, coming off a pair of 1-and-15 seasons, will sport a new look this season. When asked to explain why training camp will be closed to both the press and the public, Renfro merely smiled and said, “No comment.”
    • • •
    BEARS TAKE OPENER, 76-0 September 4, 2037 (AP) The “New Look” Chicago Bears