At 4:30 p.m. on Novem­ber 12, 2004, a rock­et pro­pelled grenade (RPG) blew through a Black Hawk helicopter’s plex­i­glass chin bub­ble at the feet of its pilot, Cap­tain Tam­my Duck­worth, and det­o­nat­ed in her lap, vapor­iz­ing her right leg, blow­ing her left leg up into the instru­ment pan­el, and shred­ding her right arm. The chop­per went into a steep descent. Going in and out of con­scious­ness, Duck­worth grabbed the stick with her left hand and tried to guide the craft to a safe land­ing, but with­out legs she couldn’t press the floor-ped­al controls.

Co-pilot, Dan Mil­berg, unin­jured in the blast, brought the chop­per down safe­ly in a small clear­ing about five min­utes flight time from the Taji, Iraq, air­field. It hit the ground hard in an upright posi­tion, its rotor blades jolt­ing to a stop. When Duck­worth reached for the lever to shut off the engine, she passed out.

Behind Duck­worth and Mil­berg in the cab­in, the copter’s oth­er two crew mem­bers were seri­ous­ly injured. The RPG tore apart Sergeant Chris Fierce’s leg, and an AK-47 round hit door gun­ner Kurt Han­ne­mann in the low­er back.

Mil­berg knew they had to get out of there because the Iraqi insur­gents, who shot them down from a grove of palms about 500 yards away, would be run­ning as fast as they could to the clear­ing to fin­ish them off.

In Iraq, Black Hawks flew mis­sions in pairs. Mil­berg jumped out of the cock­pit and fran­ti­cal­ly waved down the com­pan­ion Black Hawk hov­er­ing over­head. It imme­di­ate­ly land­ed in the clearing.

Han­ne­mann stum­bled out of the downed chop­per. As the door gun­ner, his job was to “defend the perime­ter” while the oth­ers made a run to safe­ty. With the entire back of his uni­form soaked in his own blood, light­head­ed, and going into shock, the 23-year-old sol­dier stag­gered across the clear­ing and placed him­self and his M4 between the chop­pers and the expect­ed arrival point of the bad guys.

Mil­berg helped Fierce out of the Black Hawk and turned to Duck­worth. Her list­less body slumped for­ward into her shoul­der har­ness, her right leg gone, her left leg sheared at the shin but hang­ing on by a thread of flesh, the skin and mus­cle of her right arm pul­ver­ized, its bones shat­tered, her tor­so and face rid­dled with hot shrap­nel, blood drench­ing her uni­form. Tammy’s dead, Mil­berg thought.

The Amer­i­can Soldier’s creed is unequiv­o­cal: “I will nev­er leave a fall­en com­pan­ion.” Even a dead one.

Mil­berg pulled Duckworth’s life­less body out of the cock­pit. He and Matt Back­ues, of the res­cue copter’s crew, draped her arms over their shoul­ders and ran for the wait­ing Black Hawk. She was so slick with blood they dropped her, picked her up, and dropped her again. Mil­berg then saw that Fierce couldn’t walk on his crushed leg and peeled off to help him while Back­ues grabbed the shoul­der strap of Duckworth’s flight vest and dragged her across the clearing.

Han­ne­mann retreat­ed from the perime­ter and climbed on board the res­cue copter. Back­ues hand­ed Duckworth’s tor­so up to him, and he lift­ed her into the cab­in, her left leg flop­ping along behind, that thread of flesh still hold­ing it on. The oth­ers scram­bled in, and the Black Hawk took off.

As it sped toward Taji, Fierce stared at buck­ets of blood slosh­ing around on the floor. Where did all that blood come from? He’d applied a tourni­quet to his man­gled leg, and it had stopped bleed­ing. Hannemann’s wound had stopped bleed­ing, too. Sud­den­ly, it dawned on him. Duckworth’s heart was still pump­ing. He shout­ed to the oth­ers that she was alive! The pilot radioed Taji to have a Medi­vac copter ready to speed her to the sur­gi­cal hos­pi­tal in Baghdad.

The Medi­vac touched down in Bagh­dad at 5:24 p.m., less than an hour after the RPG explo­sion. As the nurs­es trans­ferred her to a mobile gur­ney, she regained con­scious­ness. She remem­bered the shoot­down, but noth­ing after that.

“Where are my guys?” she shouted.

“Just relax,” they told her. “We’ve got peo­ple tak­ing care of them.”

But she wouldn’t relent, demand­ing infor­ma­tion about the wel­fare of her crew all the way into the oper­at­ing room. When a nurse began to give her anes­the­sia, she grabbed him by the scrub, pulled him to her, and looked him dead in the eyes. “You bet­ter take care of my guys!” she said. Then she fell back, and every­thing went black.

In 2010, I’d con­tributed time and mon­ey for a decade to Los Ange­les Pub­lic Coun­sel, the nation’s largest pro bono law firm, rep­re­sent­ing more than 25,000 low-income chil­dren, adults, and fam­i­lies. In 2009, I helped Pub­lic Coun­sel launch a Cen­ter for Vet­er­ans’ Advance­ment to aid vet­er­ans over­come pover­ty, employ­ment bar­ri­ers, home­less­ness, and phys­i­cal and men­tal health issues.

Each year Pub­lic Coun­sel throws a big fundrais­ing ban­quet and gives an award to an indi­vid­ual who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to its caus­es. In 2010, Pub­lic Coun­sel gave its annu­al award to the Unit­ed States Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Vet­er­ans Affairs.

Because of my involve­ment with the Cen­ter, Pub­lic Coun­sel gave Cindy and me seats beside the hon­oree. When we arrived at the Bev­er­ly Hilton Hotel’s ban­quet room for the awards cer­e­mo­ny, the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary was already there, her wheel­chair pushed up close to the head table. We sat down next to her and intro­duced ourselves.

“Tam­my Duck­worth,” she said, shak­ing our hands. “It’s an hon­or to meet you.”

She hadn’t received much press back then. I only knew bare-bones facts about her. Born in 1968 in Bangkok, Thai­land, to a Thai-Chi­nese mom and a U.S. Army dad, and raised in Hon­olu­lu, Hawaii, she joined the Army in 1992 and became a heli­copter pilot. After the RPG attack, she spent a year reha­bil­i­tat­ing from her injuries in Wal­ter Reed Hos­pi­tal in Bethes­da, Mary­land. While there, she helped oth­er patients secure ben­e­fits. That sparked an inter­est in gov­ern­ment ser­vice on behalf of vet­er­ans, which even­tu­al­ly led to her appoint­ment to the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs.

Flash­ing a pix­ie grin, upbeat, and fun to talk to, she gave me sug­ges­tions about the Cen­ter and some con­tacts who could help us, but she wasn’t all busi­ness. She asked about our chil­dren and beamed as we bragged on them. It was obvi­ous she loved kids, but at 42, she was child­less. I won­dered if her injuries were the reason.

When they pulled her chair away from the table to wheel her back­stage for the award pre­sen­ta­tion, I saw the extent of those injuries for the first time. Her right leg was ampu­tat­ed up high near the hip; her left leg was gone just below the knee; and her right arm was laced with fleshy skin grafts.

Mike Far­rell, a U.S. Marine Corps vet­er­an and the actor who played Hawkeye’s side­kick on M*A*S*H, intro­duced her. She emerged from behind the cur­tains, walked across the stage on pros­thet­ic legs, and took her place behind the lectern, main­tain­ing that pix­ie grin all the way.

Speak­ing with­out notes in a con­ver­sa­tion­al tone, she talked about the shoot­down, focus­ing on the hero­ics of the 23-year-old door gun­ner, Kurt Han­ne­mann. Scared out of his mind, in great pain, and bleed­ing pro­fuse­ly, he put his life at risk, she said, to defend the perime­ter and pro­tect the crew. Pub­lic Coun­sel makes that same stand, she told us. “You rep­re­sent the voice­less, the pow­er­less, the poor, and the dis­abled. You’ve been run­ning to the fight for years, mak­ing a stand, say­ing ‘You’re not get­ting through me. I’m here to defend these peo­ple and the val­ues I believe in.’” She empha­sized the impor­tance of our work for vet­er­ans. “Tonight, there are young brave Amer­i­can men and women strap­ping on body armor right now. They need to know you’re on that perime­ter. They need to know you’ll be here to help them when they return.”

She almost died defend­ing her coun­try. For most of us in the audi­ence, our only sac­ri­fice was writ­ing checks and vol­un­teer­ing in our spare time, and yet she closed her remarks by thank­ing us for our ser­vice to the nation.

I’ll nev­er for­get that speech. This coura­geous sol­dier, who lost both legs, a big chunk of her right arm, and half the blood in her body, stood before a crowd of rich lawyers dressed in thou­sand-dol­lar suits and silk ties, sit­ting in the lap of lux­u­ry in Bev­er­ly Hills, our bel­lies full from a ban­quet fare of filet mignon and choco­late souf­fle, and made us feel like we were the real heroes. Her grace, brav­ery, and good humor made me want to give back so much more.

As Mike Far­rell said at the end of the cer­e­mo­ny, “By God, she’s inspiring!”

Tam­my Duck­worth is now the junior Sen­a­tor from Illinois.

I’m glad I was wrong about her injuries. In 2014 at age 46, she had a baby girl, and in 2018 at age 50, she became the first Sen­a­tor to give birth while in office, anoth­er baby girl.

In 2020, she made the short list of poten­tial run­ning mates for Joe Biden, but he wor­ried that Repub­li­cans would attack her eli­gi­bil­i­ty because she was born in Thai­land. “I’ve beat­en every ass­hole who’s come after me with that,” she told Biden. He chose Kamala Har­ris instead. I can’t help won­der­ing what course his­to­ry would have tak­en if he’d cho­sen Sen­a­tor Duckworth.

Polit­i­cal pun­dits say that Democ­rats are search­ing des­per­ate­ly for a leader and that those who have stepped for­ward so far haven’t gen­er­at­ed much enthu­si­asm. Sen­a­tor Duckworth’s name nev­er comes up.

I don’t write polit­i­cal posts, main­ly because pol­i­tics makes me sick (see Polit­i­cal Angst for more on that), but I’ll break my rule here to say this.

The epi­graph to Sen­a­tor Duckworth’s 2021 mem­oir, Every Day is a Gift, is the U.S. Army War­rior Ethos: “I will always place the mis­sion first. I will nev­er accept defeat. I will nev­er quit. I will nev­er leave a fall­en comrade.”

If you’re look­ing for a leader, you might want to con­sid­er an Amer­i­can hero, who has lived her whole life by that creed.

A horse lay on his side on the pave­ment at the inter­sec­tion of Clear Val­ley Road and Long Val­ley Road. He wore the signs of old age, a scruffy brown coat, bloat­ed girth on a skin­ny frame, pro­trud­ing ribs and hip bones. A crowd of about 20 peo­ple had gath­ered around him. A man pulled on his reins while oth­ers pushed him and prod­ded him. “Come on, Papa! Up now! Get on up! Up you go!” The old horse lift­ed his head fee­bly, let it fall back to the con­crete, and heaved a long slow breath.

Wear­ing rid­ing breech­es and boots, a gaunt woman with close-cropped dark hair and tat­tooed arms stood over the horse, scowl­ing. “There’s noth­ing wrong with him,” she said. “He’s stub­born. He just doesn’t want to get up.”

I parked my car across the street from the crowd and got out. Lon­na, a horse own­er and long-time mem­ber of the Hid­den Hills Eques­tri­an Com­mit­tee, ran over to me with her cell phone in hand. “I’ve been try­ing to reach a vet, but no one’s avail­able. Do you have some­one you can call?”

My call to my vet went straight to voice­mail. “Hey, Doc. This is Ken Oder. It’s an emer­gency. A horse is down on Clear Val­ley Road in Hid­den Hills. Call me as soon as you can.”

Lon­na tried anoth­er num­ber and raised a vet’s assis­tant. Her boss was in the field, but she said she’d try to reach him. “The horse is 38 years old,” Lon­na told her. “I’m afraid we may need a hauler, too.”

I walked over to the horse. His head lay list­less­ly on the pave­ment, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, a small pool of blood under his muz­zle. His breaths came in irreg­u­lar heav­ing gusts.

I knelt beside him. The blood came from a cut on his low­er lip. It didn’t look seri­ous. I didn’t see any oth­er wounds. I ran my hands over his legs and ribs. I felt no breaks. No swelling.

Most trou­ble­some was his posi­tion, lying flat on his side. Hors­es can’t stay down for long. They sleep stand­ing up in the “stay” posi­tion, three legs locked with a back leg bent at the hock and fet­lock, ready for instant flight if a preda­tor approach­es. They can lie down for short breaks to take pres­sure off their legs, but if a horse is recum­bent on its side for too long, its weight restricts blood flow to vital organs and com­press­es the lungs.

Hors­es rarely make it into their late 30’s. A 38-year-old horse is rough­ly equiv­a­lent to a 100-year-old man. This old horse was liv­ing on bor­rowed time before he went down. If we couldn’t get him up soon, he would cer­tain­ly die.

The gaunt woman in rid­ing gear stood a few feet away talk­ing with anoth­er woman.

“What’s his name?” the oth­er woman asked.

“Casey.”

“What hap­pened to him?”

“Hell if I know. I was lead­ing him down Long Val­ley when he fell down for no reason.”

The horse was bri­dled. No hal­ter. No lead line. A sad­dle lay beside him that the men who tried to get him up had tak­en off him to ease his breath­ing. The woman wasn’t lead­ing him when he fell. She was rid­ing him. About 5 feet 4 and bone-thin, she was a light load, but still heavy enough to break down this old geld­ing. It angered me. No one, not even a small child, should have climbed on this old horse’s frail back.

A truck pulled up behind me, and my vet got out. I was great­ly relieved to see him. He’d worked mir­a­cles for my hors­es, and Casey need­ed a miracle.

“Thanks for com­ing so quick­ly,” I said.

“I came as soon as I got your mes­sage. I was afraid it was one of your horses.”

“Not mine, thank God, but I hope you can help him.”

The vet looked Casey over. “First thing we have to do is get him up.”

“They tried. He couldn’t stand.”

“Prob­a­bly because his head’s down­hill on this lit­tle slope. He can’t get his back legs under his weight. We have to turn him around.”

No small feat. Hors­es weigh 1000 to 1200 pounds on aver­age. I asked the strongest-look­ing guy in the crowd to help me, and togeth­er we man­aged to pull Casey slow­ly around by his tail until his back legs were down­hill. When we let go of him, he rolled over on his bel­ly into a sit­ting posi­tion like a Sphinx, his head up, his legs tucked under him. I twist­ed his tail and pushed him, but he wouldn’t stand.

“I’ll get him up,” the vet said. He unspooled a hose from a bar­rel of water in his truck bed and sprayed it over Casey’s head. “They hate this,” he said. “It always works.”

Sput­ter­ing and shak­ing his head, Casey got his rear hooves under him and pushed his hindquar­ters up in the air, but he was still down on his knees in front, like he was pray­ing at the altar of the god of old hors­es. With a great effort, he lift­ed one front leg and got his hoof on the ground, then the oth­er leg, heaved his front end up, and stood on all fours.

The crowd cheered.

“Let’s see how he walks,” the vet said. I led Casey across the road and back. His gait was slow, but regular.

While the vet went to his truck to get his bag, I stood beside Casey, stroking his head and neck. His big brown eyes were dull, and he didn’t look at me.

The vet checked him over, then gave him a shot of Banamine, a pain reliev­er that reduces inflam­ma­tion. The vet told the woman wear­ing rid­ing gear that Casey was exhaust­ed but not seri­ous­ly injured.

Think­ing I’d offer to help her take him wher­ev­er he was stalled, I asked her where she was head­ed with him.

She snatched the reins out of my hands. “Well, I’m not tak­ing him any­where after the trick he pulled! He’s going straight back to the barn!”

She stormed away with­out a word of thanks to the men who tried to get him up, Lon­na, me, or the vet.

“If she doesn’t pay you, I will,” I said to the vet.

“That woman’s the train­er,” he said. “I know the own­er. She’ll pay.”

As the vet and I watched her lead Casey up Clear Val­ley, I won­dered what kind of train­er would think it was a good idea to ride a 38-year-old horse. Casey plod­ded along behind her, breath­ing hard, his head down. They turned onto a trail­head and dis­ap­peared behind a hedgerow.

I thanked the vet again for com­ing so quick­ly and for sav­ing Casey’s life. We shook hands, and he drove away.

The next day I rode Jack­son on Hid­den Hills’ trails, search­ing for Casey’s barn. I found him stand­ing in a cor­ral below High Ridge Road. He was up and eat­ing hay. Over the next few weeks, I returned to his cor­ral twice more. He seemed okay.

On a Mon­day morn­ing in late March, I rode Marge up that same trail. When I came to the cor­ral, it was emp­ty, and the fence was down.

A young boy wres­tled with a post-hole dig­ger, set­ting new posts along the old fence-line. Know­ing the answer, but hop­ing against it, I asked him what hap­pened to the horse that was penned in the corral.

“The man say the lady’s old horse, he die,” the boy said.

I stared at him for a few moments, grip­ping Marge’s reins tight­ly, my jaw clenched.

“I am sor­ry, señor.”

“Gra­cias,” I said.

I rode Marge back to my barn. I gave my hors­es extra treats that day and lin­gered with them longer than usual.

I was read­ing Paulette Jiles’ nov­el, Stormy Weath­er, the day I learned Casey had passed. That night I came to the part where Ross Everett advis­es his girl­friend not to become emo­tion­al­ly invest­ed in her horse, Smoky Joe. “Don’t get attached to a horse, Jea­nine. We always out­live them. Except the last one.” I set the book aside and thought about that passage.

I bought my first horse sev­en years ago. I have five now. I’m 77. Wil­son is 25. Arthri­tis is eat­ing away at his spine, and he has trou­ble con­trol­ling his back legs. Lily is only 15, but she has equine melanoma, arthri­tis in her hocks, and old injuries that nev­er healed right. Wil­son and Lily will prob­a­bly go before I do. Jack­son and Marge are 17. I hope to give them a close race to the fin­ish line. Dol­ly is 10. She’s prob­a­bly that last horse.

I haven’t fol­lowed Everett’s advice. I’ve giv­en my hors­es my heart. It will break when they leave me and the wound will nev­er heal, but I don’t regret forg­ing my bond with them. When they’re gone, I’ll still have sweet mem­o­ries of our part­ner­ship on thou­sands of great rides, the nick­ers that greet me when they see me com­ing, the nuz­zles on my shoul­der, the sense of peace, the com­mu­nion, the love giv­en and returned. The good times far out­weigh the immense, over­whelm­ing grief that will fall over me at the end.

I ignored Everett’s coun­sel with Casey, too. I bare­ly knew him, but some­times you can feel the spir­it of a horse with the touch of your hand. When I stroked Casey’s head and face, I sensed he was a good old soul, who had tried hard to do what was asked of him. The day he fell, he was worn down, sad, and strug­gling to find the will to make a come­back. I’m glad he suc­ceed­ed, if only for a few weeks.

His pass­ing cost me some pain, but I don’t regret lay­ing hands on him. He deserved affec­tion and respect. He was a good horse to the end.

Rest in peace, old boy.

Open­ing Day, 1981 T‑ball sea­son. Yan­kees v. Red Sox. Top of the first inning.

Bob, the Yan­kees tall gan­g­ly head coach, knelt beside his lead-off hit­ter and son, Ste­vie, a wiry lit­tle kid with sandy hair and two miss­ing upper front teeth. Bob placed the ball on the tee and guid­ed Ste­vie into a bat­ting stance, feet spread apart, back elbow up, front elbow down.

In the field, Arnold, the Red Sox head coach, a short mus­cle­bound for­mer col­lege wrestler, stood on the pitcher’s mound behind his son, Arlo, a freck­le-faced red­head with two miss­ing bot­tom front teeth. Since the bat­ter hits the ball off a tee in T‑ball, the “pitch­er” doesn’t pitch, but he is the most impor­tant field­er because most “hits” trick­le off the tee into the infield a few feet beyond home plate. The pitcher’s job is to rush in, grab the ball, and throw it to first base.

“Fielder’s crouch,” Arnold said to Arlo. Arlo bent his knees and pound­ed his fist into his glove.

At the tee Bob stepped back from Ste­vie. “Give it a lev­el swing.”

Ste­vie launched a mighty twirl. Thunk! The bat struck the tee a foot below the ball. Near­ly decap­i­tat­ed, the tee fell over like a dead sol­dier and spilled the ball into foul ter­ri­to­ry. Bob hopped for­ward, col­lect­ed the ball, and reset the tee. “This time keep your eye on the ball all the way through the swing.”

Stevie’s sec­ond wind­mill grazed the top of the ball and flipped it off the tee to drib­ble five feet down the third base line where it rolled to a stop.

Both Arlo and Ste­vie froze, star­ing blankly at the dead ball.

“Go!” Arnold shout­ed, shov­ing Arlo. Arlo stum­bled for­ward, then charged the ball.

“Run!” Bob screamed at the top of his lungs. Ste­vie flinched, pan­icked, and took off toward third base.

Arlo scooped up the ball and wheeled toward third.

The third base­man, Rob­by, a drifty tow­head­ed kid, stood on third base at parade rest, grin­ning vapid­ly at a pigeon fly­ing over right field.

Arlo hurled the ball at Robby.

From the bleach­ers Robby’s mom bel­lowed, “Rob­by! Get in the game!”

Star­tled, Rob­by snapped to atten­tion and spot­ted Arlo’s fast­ball zoom­ing direct­ly toward his face just in time to raise his glove instinc­tive­ly in self-defense. Pop!

Bar­rel­ing up the third base line like his life depend­ed on it, Ste­vie ran through the bag at the same instant the ball hit Robby’s glove.

“Out!” Arlo yelled, pump­ing his fist in the air.

“Was not!” Ste­vie cried. “Safe by a mile!”

“Great catch, Rob­by!” Robby’s mom yelled.

Dazed, Rob­by stared at his glove, won­der­ing how the ball got there.

Coach Bob wan­dered out to the mound and joined Coach Arnold. “What just hap­pened?” Bob said.

“Your kid ran to third instead of first,” Arnold said. “My kid field­ed the ball and threw him out.”

“Actu­al­ly, Ste­vie beat the throw.”

“You kid­ding me? It doesn’t mat­ter if he beat the throw. He’s auto­mat­i­cal­ly out. He ran to third instead of first. He played the game backwards.”

“Your kid did, too,” Bob said defensively.

Arnold looked at Arlo and Rob­by and sighed. “Yeah, they did every­thing right except for the back­wards part. How the hell we gonna explain this to them?”

“It’s too com­pli­cat­ed,” Bob said. “Let’s start over. I’ll make Ste­vie run to first this time.”

“Deal,” Arnold said.

In 1981, Bob was my bar­ber. Dur­ing a hair­cut in his shop in the LA Bonaven­ture Hotel, I told him I’d signed up to coach my son’s T‑ball team. He emit­ted a low whis­tle. “Tough­est job I ever had.” He told me the Yan­kees-Red Sox open­ing day sto­ry. “Too many rules and not enough action,” he said. “I almost went crazy.”

Bob was right. Even with five dads help­ing me, we couldn’t keep the Phillies on track. Dur­ing drills kids wres­tled each oth­er, wan­dered off aim­less­ly, or sprawled in the grass and gazed at the clouds. Only con­stant vig­i­lance pre­vent­ed play­ers from prac­tice-swing­ing their met­al bats with­in range of anoth­er player’s head. The sud­den appear­ance of a fly­ing grasshop­per would bring a game to a com­plete halt, and if there was a patch of mud any­where on the field, the play­ers always found it before the coach­es did.

I didn’t go total­ly crazy, though, and I got to spend a lot of time with my son, so I vol­un­teered to coach K‑division soc­cer in the fall. Like T‑ball, a mud pud­dle or a stink bug could stop a game cold, but oth­er­wise coach­ing soc­cer was a lot eas­i­er. Not as many rules, and no dead time. You throw the ball on the ground. The kids mob it and scrum up and down the field with no idea what they’re doing. If the ball coin­ci­den­tal­ly rolls into the goal dur­ing a game, the par­ents and kids go wild.

I coached my kids’ teams for sev­er­al years after that. All their teams were good, but the best team rel­a­tive to its lev­el I ever coached was my daugh­ter Devon’s 1986 K‑division soc­cer team, the Green Meanies.

The first day of prac­tice, I asked the kids what name they want­ed to give the team. This is not always a good idea. The Bloody Mag­gots, for exam­ple, but this time it worked out well. Our uni­forms were green. Devon said green rhymed with mean, and that sparked the name. The team Mom, Cindy, made a dark green team ban­ner cen­tered with the big round head of a blond-haired kid, his face con­tort­ed, his teeth bared.

The name and ban­ner soon became infa­mous with­in the K‑division. Youth sports leagues strive to achieve bal­ance among com­pet­ing teams by using skill rat­ings to select ros­ters of approx­i­mate­ly even tal­ent, but five-year-olds have no track record, so place­ment in the K‑division is ran­dom. Ran­dom place­ment usu­al­ly works out okay at that age any­way, but that was not the case with the Meanies.

That team was loaded. Five of them, includ­ing Devon, would grow up to become high school soc­cer all-stars, and even the less­er tal­ents on the team were good lit­tle ath­letes. Most of them had been play­ing soc­cer in their back­yards since they were tod­dlers. In the first prac­tice, they passed the ball, drib­bled with con­trol, and shot accu­rate­ly with both feet. I didn’t have to teach them anything.

In the sea­son open­er, they faced the Red Drag­ons. Jor­dan scored a goal for the Mean­ies on the kick-off. Thir­ty sec­onds lat­er, Chris scored. Then Mar­cus hurled the ball into the goal from mid-field on an out-of-bounds throw-in. Devon scored. Jor­dan again. Then Tay­lor. Rob­by. Chris again.

Green Mean­ies 8 – Red Drag­ons 0. And that was only the first quarter.

The rules of the K‑division are designed to make every kid feel like a win­ner. There are no goalies to make it eas­i­er to score. Coach­es roam the field to pro­vide instruc­tion and praise. There is no score board, and no one keeps score. Except, of course, the par­ents, who have neon score­boards inside their heads.

Dur­ing the first quar­ter break, the Drag­ons’ coach jumped me. “Back off, man! You’re run­ning up the score!”

“I didn’t mean to run it up, ” I sput­tered. “It all hap­pened so fast.”

He rolled his eyes.

Ok, sports­man­ship first, I thought. I held three of the super­stars back near our goal to start the sec­ond quar­ter. The oth­er two super­stars prompt­ly scored. I pulled them back, too, where­upon Mar­cus pow­er-kicked a goal the entire length of the field. “Don’t aim for the goal,” I told the phe­noms. “Just pass the ball to the Mean­ies up front.” On an aver­age team the Mean­ies up front might have gone the whole sea­son with­out scor­ing a goal, but with per­fect pass­es from the back field, each scored mul­ti­ple goals in that first game. Near the end of the third quar­ter, my inter­nal neon score­board blew a fuse. Some­where around goal 20 I lost count. Mean­while, with the five super­stars play­ing back, the Drag­ons couldn’t advance the ball past mid­field. They goose-egged the game.

That first game set the tone for the Mean­ies’ sea­son. They mowed down every team they faced, scor­ing more than ten goals in every game while nev­er giv­ing up a sin­gle oppos­ing goal, and that was with me doing every­thing I could to hold them down.

At the end of the sea­son, I didn’t have to make up pos­i­tive stuff in my speech­es when I pre­sent­ed them with tro­phies. I couldn’t praise them enough. They were all great play­ers and great kids.

The Green Mean­ies ruled the K‑division forty years ago. They’re all grown now, and I don’t know where they are or what became of them.

Except for one Meanie.

Half-time, last game of the South Pasade­na K‑division 2024 sea­son. I stood beside Logan, grand­son num­ber two and star of the Teal Rap­tors. He drained his water bot­tle and looked up at me. “We nev­er lose,” he said in a pur­pose­ful­ly deep voice with a grave­ly seri­ous expres­sion on his face.

“You ever hear of the Green Mean­ies,” I asked him.

He nod­ded. “Mom told me.”

“They were real­ly good,” I said.

“We’re real­ly good, too,” he said.

Logan ran back on the field and scored two goals in the sec­ond half.

No one keeps score in the K‑division, but I hap­pen to know the mighty Teal Rap­tors won that game and every game they played that sea­son. This should be no sur­prise to any­one. After all, the Rap­tors were mere­ly uphold­ing a win­ning tra­di­tion hand­ed down to them from the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion. Coach Devon, you see, was a proud Green Meanie.