Long Shot Read Free

their faces.
    Luis Morales said, “Are you absolutely sure of this thing you tell me, that you love basketball more than soccer?”
    Pedro said, “It’s not that I don’t love soccer. I just love basketball more.”
    “How could such a thing happen?” his dad said. Pedro turned his head slightly and saw that his father was still smiling, his face as bright as the morning.
    “It just happened,” Pedro said. “I couldn’t help it.”
    “Ahhh,” his dad said. “It’s like a prettier girl has come along to steal your heart.” He sighed and said, “So the Americanization of my boy is complete.”
    “You always tell me that you can be anything you want to be in America,” Pedro said. “Well, I’ve decided I want to be a great basketball player.”
    His father sat up now. “Then you must work at it, my boy,” he said.
    “You know I work, Papa,” Pedro said. “Not as hard as you. Nobody works as hard as you. But I work at sports and I work at school. I want to make you and Mom proud of me.”
    His mother, Anne, had been born in Vernon, had spent her whole life there except for college, and now worked a few days a week at the best clothing store in town, True Blue. She wasn’t Mexican-American, just what Pedro thought of as American-American, with blond hair and blue eyes.
    “It is a fine thing, wanting to make your parents proud,” Luis Morales said. “But it is much more important to make yourself proud.”
    It was another thing that Pedro loved about Saturday mornings. It was as if he and his father saved their best talking for the soccer field.
    Pedro sat up now, because he wanted to make sure his dad knew that he had his full attention, like this was his favorite class and Luis Morales was his favorite teacher in the world.
    “I don’t just want you to look for the best in sports,” Pedro’s dad said. “I want you to look for the best in your self .”
    “I will,” Pedro said. “You know I will.”
    “The more you love something,” his dad said, “the harder you work at it. And then, if you are lucky, you finally learn the secret that I remember every time I walk through the door to what will soon be my restaurant.”
    “What secret?” Pedro said.
    “That being there isn’t work at all.”
    Pedro could see how excited his father was, saying these things, and it made him excited, too, made him feel as if the morning sunshine had somehow gotten even brighter.
    “If you have the talent and you have the will, then nothing is out of your reach,” his dad said. “When I was working as a busboy in New York City, some of the other busboys would laugh when I told them I would have my own restaurant someday. Well, if they could see me now, they wouldn’t be laughing.”
    He moved closer to Pedro and put his hands on his son’s shoulders.
    “I don’t know if you have greatness in you as a basketball player,” his dad said. “That is between you and basketball, because sports sorts these things out eventually, tells us all whether we are good enough to be great or not. But nobody can stop you from being a leader, my son. Just watching you on the field, I see already that you are a leader. I wish your mother and I could take credit for that, but it’s something I believe in my heart you must be born with.”
    “I just do my best,” Pedro said.
    “It is more than that,” his dad said. “Even the other leaders on your teams follow you.”
    Pedro smiled. “You’re prejudiced.”
    “No,” Luis Morales said. “I just know a great leader when I see one. And you know what I say about great leaders , don’t you?”
    He did.
    Pedro smiled again at his father, because he did know what he always said, because he knew what was coming next. He always knew, the way he knew the soccer ball would stay between his dad’s shoulder blades when his shirt came off, every single time.
    “In this country,” Luis Morales said, “great leaders can grow up to be president.”
    “I know,