All possibilities were scattered within three baseball hats. He was in the first hat every month from January to December. In the second, every number from 1 to 31. And in the third, every year from 1970 to 2019.
The idea, stolen from Gene Weingarten’s book “One Day: The Incredible Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America,” was to piece together one day with the help of three caps and then write about what happened in the world of sports. . There were a total of 17,885 options hidden inside the hat. But choice by choice, the day began to come into focus:
It was a midsummer Wednesday, but there were still headlines: Randy Moss signed a $75 million contract with the Minnesota Vikings, making him the third highest-paid player in the NFL behind Drew Bledsoe and Brett Favre. . That morning, Andruw Jones testified in court that he had sex with two women from the infamous Gold Club in Atlanta; he walked three times that afternoon against the Reds. Wisconsin Badgers running back Erik Bickerstaff was arrested after a bouncer refused to let him go with a fake ID — the old ID of former Wisconsin running back Michael Bennett, the Vikings’ No. 1 pick that year.
But in many ways it was an ordinary day, which meant there was life and death and the blessings and curses of a routine existence. At 2:10 p.m., an 18-year-old in Gainesville, Florida said goodbye to his twin brother. At 8:59 p.m., a husband and wife in Philadelphia welcomed a boy who would one day raise the Heisman.
Two huge major leaguers were happy to get out of Milwaukee for no other reason than they were terrified of their hotel. The young quarterback at a small private college in Rhode Island went to sleep completely unaware of the great heights that awaited him. And in Philadelphia, a bombastic NBA executive resigned from his position, setting him on a journey to discover the remains of a long-lost shipwreck.
Even the most random day has secrets and surprises waiting to be discovered.
Eric Gagne doesn’t know if he believes in ghosts, but he knows that he once convinced himself that he did.
It all started with veteran catcher Chad Kreuter. Kreuter was in his 14th season in 2001, so he’s been everywhere and seen everything. Before the Dodgers’ three-game series in Milwaukee, he told the 25-year-old Gagne about an old downtown hotel where visiting teams always stayed.
It was called the Pfister Hotel and it was long rumored to be haunted.
Opened in 1893, Pfister has all the spooky elements: whimsical chandeliers, stained glass windows, Victorian artwork. Over the years, guests have claimed to have seen the hotel’s founder, Charles Pfister, standing on the grand staircase and looking down into the lobby.
Chad Kreuter had his own story to tell Gagne. A few years earlier, Kreuter swore he went to sleep with the door locked and the lights off, but when he woke up the next morning, all the lights were on.
Gagne has always been afraid of scary movies, so when he arrived at Pfister on July 22, 2001, he was on high alert. He tried to distract himself, going to the casino “a little bit every night” and staying out as late as possible in the hope that he would crash when he got back to his room. It did not work.
His teammate Adrian Beltre told reporters that the ghosts kept him awake until sunrise by turning on the lights and tickling his toes. Gagne reported nothing so extreme; he only changed rooms three times during his three nights.
“Two little scared baseball players who weighed 240 pounds,” Gagne says now.
Stephen King was asked after a lecture in 1979 if he believed in ghosts or paranormal activity, a natural question for someone who has done extensive research into these areas. King said no, but added when he “was alone, late at night, yeah, always.”
At least Gagne and Beltre were in good company. And in the years since, many MLB stars have spoken about their own disturbing experiences at the hotel.
On July 25, the Dodgers lost to the Brewers. But it was a day game, as well as the last game of the series, which meant one thing: Gagne went straight from the ballpark to the airport, leaving behind the horrors inside Pfister and his own mind.
Robert Autin was happy for his brother, but part of him felt like a ghost. That’s how he described it.
Robert was a freshman at Louisiana Lafayette, while Eraste, his younger brother by a minute, was a freshman on scholarship at Florida. It was an exciting time, those first wonderful weeks of college when possibilities flow from a limitless faucet of hope.
However, it was the first time they were apart. They shared the same friends, the same teams, even the same room; he wrestled over a jar of peanut butter, argued over who got the top bunk and clashed in football practice.
Eraste loved technology and built a device that allowed him to turn off the lights and record episodes of “Seinfeld” without getting out of bed. Robert’s side of the room was filled with books, encyclopedias and maps.
In high school, Robert was good enough to start at linebacker and tackle, but Eraste was gifted: a 6-foot-2, 245-pound brick who mimicked Tampa Bay running back Mike Alstott. Alabama, Arkansas, Northwestern and Tulane wanted him. But when Eraste committed to Florida at the end of his senior year, it came as little surprise.
“I just didn’t tell a lot of people about it,” he explained to the (Lafayette) Daily Advertiser, “because I didn’t want people to think I was just bragging if I didn’t end up going there.”
Shortly after graduation, Robert headed to Lafayette for summer training. Eraste headed to Gainesville in June. He did a full physical and started his first day of summer classes, wowing his new teammates with his strength and work ethic, his desire to finish first in every drill.
To Robert’s delight, Eraste declared pre-med as his major, as did his brother.
On July 20, Eraste lifted weights for an hour in the afternoon. Then he took the field with the other freshmen for his tenth offseason practice. He warmed up for 10 minutes and stretched for five, then jumped between four agility stations. Eraste took a water break and finished with a series of gassers: two sets of 200-yard sprints, two sets of 150 yards, two sets of 100 yards and, finally, another 200-yard sprint.
It was 88 degrees with 72 percent humidity and a heat index of 102, a typical Florida afternoon. The training lasted 50 minutes.
Afterwards, Eraste ran from the practice field to the locker room. No one saw him fall, but a teammate found him on the sidewalk, alone and unconscious, his face pale. A local dentist at the scene poured water on Eraste’s face in the hope of cooling him down. A campus police officer called 911. Paramedics arrived at 5:26 p.m., and he was admitted to Shands Hospital on the Florida campus at 5:47 p.m.
Robert returned home when his father, a urologist, received a call. When Robert heard the words “heatstroke,” he didn’t think much of it. After all, his dad suffered from heatstroke a few years ago and was fine. Eraste was younger, stronger and in top condition. However, Robert’s dad seems to have understood the seriousness immediately.
According to Roberto, Eraste was combative and disoriented when he arrived at the hospital, and to calm him down before the CT scan, doctors gave him a sedative. Eraste had a heart attack. Doctors fought to revive him for 20 minutes, by which time Eraste fell into a coma.
Robert is now a general surgeon so rarely a day goes by without seeing intubated patients. But then he was an 18-year-old college freshman who walked into a hospital room to find his big, powerful twin brother — “the epitome of muscle” — attached to a ventilator, a breathing tube to his mouth, his face swollen.
Florida coach Steve Spurrier and his wife visited the hospital. So did Eraste’s teammates. Back home in Lafayette, Eraste and Robert’s high school held prayer groups and vigils.
On July 25, Robert hugged and kissed Eraste. He told his brother that he loved him and would miss him. Then at 14.10 Eraste Autin died. His parents and sisters flew home with his body. Robert drove his brother’s car nine and a half hours from Gainesville.
The loss hit all members of the Autin family hard, but David Autin, Robert and Erasta’s father, worried about Robert the most. Robert wore his brother’s number 40 during Lafayette’s first game that year, but left the team midway through the season.
“My brother is in the tomb,” Robert told a South Florida Sun-Sentinel reporter. “I just couldn’t be a football player anymore.”
Twenty years later, Robert still wears the scapular that Eraste wore around his neck and the black tag that Florida players wore on their jerseys. There is the Eraste Autin Fighting Heart Award at their old high school and two scholarships in his brother’s name.
Robert is not a particularly spiritual person, but growing up he was taught to pray before eating and before sleeping, and he maintains that tradition. He thinks about Eraste all the time, but he has work and sometimes his days slip away. So at night he lies in bed and says his prayers: Hail Mary, Our Father, Glory be, and Act of Repentance.
He then prays to see Eraste again that night. His dreams are always the same: there is Eraste, with his dark hair and dark features. He’s a doctor, just like Robert. Usually there is a bit of fog, a bit of distance, as if Eraste was sick and absent, but now he is well and home again.
In the end, it doesn’t matter what happens in the dream. Robert is always glad to see his brother.
The visitors who have packed Bryant College dormitories every summer since 1976 arrived earlier than usual.
The New England Patriots stumbled on their way to a 5-11 record in 2000, Bill Belichick’s first time as the franchise’s head coach. And even though Hall of Famers, superstars, future cult figures and last-second heroes dotted the list, no one knew it at the time. The 2001 Patriots were still just a group of names trying to figure out what went wrong and how to avoid becoming long-term AFC East cellar dwellers.
The summer of 2001 was the peak of post-Y2K pop culture. It was another summer of NSYNC and O-Town. MTV’s “Total Request Live” dominated living room televisions. The original “Fast and Furious” debuted, as did Reese Witherspoon’s Elle Woods in “Legally Blonde.”
Tom Brady’s last anonymous summer featured what you’d expect from a 23-year-old: epic games of “Tecmo Bowl” on an original Nintendo system in his Boston apartment with roommates and teammates David Nugent and the late Chris Eitzmann. Brady always chose the San Francisco 49ers, his hometown team. In addition, the summer of 2001 was spent in quiet offseason workouts at home in the Bay Area, at fields in the greater Boston area and, finally, at a private Civil War-era campus in northern Rhode Island.
July 25 was the eve of Patriots camp. Drew Bledsoe recently signed a 10-year, $103 million contract in March 2001, then the largest contract in NFL history. The battle for his endorsement was a trivial campaign story compared to the Patriots’ real problems.
At Bryant, Brady, like all his teammates, slept in a dormitory equipped with two beds and each day he made the long walk from the concourse, where fans circulated the hot, humid air in the locker room, down a dirt path that led half a mile to the practice field.
Brady and other young players lugged helmets and pads down the dirt track after practice. Veterans like cornerback Ty Law rode electric scooters. At night, some players carried flashlights into Bryant’s campus pond and hurt the bullfrogs; team chefs cooked frog drumsticks as a trophy delicacy.
Offensive lineman Joe Andruzzi recalls the tall, lanky and slow running back spending his free time watching highlights of Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw and Phil Simms. Nugent said safety attorney Milloy was the first veteran mainstay to express Brady’s rapid rise during defensive team meetings.
“It was like he was preparing for his moment,” Nugent said. “He didn’t know when it was going to happen, but he knew it was going to happen.”
Photo galleries highlighting training camp on the team’s website show every running back in a red practice jersey except No. 12. There is one photo of Andruzzi showing assignments. The number 12 is visible behind him, but the image shows the severed head of the man who would go on to become the most successful running back in NFL history.
“Back then, nobody knew the future,” says Andruzzi.
On the night of July 25, the world went to sleep not knowing who Tom Brady was. Brady, in his bed in his steamy dorm room at Bryant, admittedly, didn’t know what was coming next either.
“I’m glad the pain is over,” Joy Fawcett said after giving birth to her third daughter, “and I’m looking forward to slowly getting back on the field.” (Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)
On the day Joy Fawcett gave birth to her third child, a 7-pound, 7-ounce baby girl she named Madilyn Rae, she released a statement through her professional soccer team, the San Diego Spirit.
“I’m glad the pain is gone,” Fawcett said, “and I’m looking forward to slowly getting back on the field.”
Anyone who knew Joy Fawcett knew that last part was a lie.
Fawcett was many things – a devoted mother, a two-time World Cup champion, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and a determined defender, the type of person who was called bad more than a few times in her life. One thing she was not: patient, at least not when it was necessary to return to the field. Just two and a half weeks after giving birth to Madilyn in June 2001, Fawcett wrote in an online diary that it was “time to get back in shape”.
Fawcett has always had two dreams. The first was being a mother. The second was to play football at the highest level. Before her first child was born, she had no idea if she could do both. She swore to herself and her teammates that if football ever got involved, if she ever felt the sport was harming her children, she would give it up without regret.
Throughout her first pregnancy, she pushed her physical limits: she ran up the stadium steps, lifted weights, ran with her teammates until her belly got so big they stopped playing with her. Sometimes she alarmed her doctor, but he didn’t have much wisdom for an athlete mom either.
Katey was born in May 1994. In July, the national team played at the Olympic Sports Festival in St. Louis. Fawcett brought her daughter and arranged to babysit during practices, games and team meetings. But when she got there, festival administrators told Katey she couldn’t stay in the athletes’ village.
“I was in tears,” Fawcett wrote. “What was I going to do?”
Luckily, the couple overheard the conversation and offered their master bedroom.
When Fawcett was pregnant with her second daughter, Carli, born in May 1997, she intensified her workouts, adding more weights and training at UCLA when she was nine months pregnant. So by her third pregnancy, in 2001, her attitude was, “OK, let’s go.”
Fawcett was always hard to sit and watch, but she felt a special urgency to return in the summer of 2001. Intoxicated by the 1999 World Cup, John Hendricks, president and CEO of the Discovery Channel, launched a professional women’s soccer league, the Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA ), the first high-level professional league in America, 2001.
Fawcett played for the Spirit, and to get back, she ran daily in a stroller and sneaked in sit-ups and sit-ups while her daughters napped. On the Fourth of July, she took the day off, enjoying her girls poking their heads into piles of whipped cream in search of hidden raisins.
On July 25, the Spirit played the first place Bay Area CyberRays. The whole Fawcett family was there. In the 45th minute, Fawcett’s teammate, Julie Foudy, took a corner kick that was met by Shannon Boxx, who headed the ball to Fawcett, who put the ball into the net just one month and 20 days after giving birth.
“That goal was not lucky,” teammate Brandi Chastain told reporters after the game. “She was in the right place to get the ball and she took advantage of it. That’s the thing about Joy.”
At halftime, Fawcett listened to her coach while nursing 7-week-old Madilyn at the same time. She then handed off her daughter and ran onto the field, intent on closing out the win.
We know it was 90 degrees, though the humidity easily made it feel like 100; that the game was played at Burks Park, just outside of Tampa; and that Stuart Tapley pitched a shutout. What we don’t know is where Will Blankenship was that day. He played all that season: a little right field, some left field, a little third base and catcher.
Will’s best guess? If he was in left field. Either way, he watched Stuart, one of his closest and oldest friends, throw an eight-strikeout, four-inning no-hitter to keep the Apopka, Fla., Little League World Series dreams alive.
Stuart Tapley and Will Blankenship have been friends since they were 5 years old, or as long as they can remember. Stuart laughs as the popup misses Will’s glove and smashes his face; Will laughs at Stuart’s childhood nickname, “Milkbone,” which he got after one of their teammates challenged him to eat a dog treat. Stuart not only ate it, says Will, he enjoyed it.
Apopka won the sectional, then the state, then the regional tournament. The team didn’t stop winning until the Little League World Series, when they faced a Bronx team anchored by a left-handed ace with a killer fastball: Danny Almonte pitched a headline-grabbing perfect game against Apopka; it was only later that he hit the headlines for the wrong reasons.
Apopka advanced through the consolation bracket for a rematch against the Bronx in the American Championship game. This time, Almonte couldn’t take the mound because he was pitching in the previous game. Stuart, Will and their teammates won 8-2.
As they got older, Stuart went to one high school, Will to another. Stuart played baseball at Florida State, Will at a Division II school in West Virginia. When Stuart married his high school sweetheart Lesley in October 2013, Will was at his wedding.
On New Year’s Eve 2014, they were hanging out with a group of friends, including Lesley’s sister Ashley. Will packed on a few pounds after college. Ashley was a big fitness freak, so the morning after the party, Will overcame his hangover to join her for a three-mile run, damn near killing himself. Later, Will and Ashley team up to plan the gender reveal for Stuart and Lesley’s first child.
Will and Ashley tied the knot in 2017. Stuart had the ultimate view of the ceremony. After all, in addition to being one of Will’s oldest friends, he was now his brother-in-law.
On July 25, 2001, Pat Croce resigned as president of the Philadelphia 76ers, citing disagreements with majority owner Ed Snider.
Croce grew up in Philadelphia, where he became a physical therapist in his hometown, working for local sports franchises like the Flyers and 76ers. After working his way up the chain of physical therapy jobs, he became a minority owner and team president in 1996 and lobbied to draft an undersized guard named Allen Iverson No. 1 overall.
Forty-three days before his resignation, Croce climbed the nearly 400-foot span of the Walt Whitman Bridge to help hang a 5-by-70-foot banner that read, “Go Sixers, Beat L.A.,” walking along one of the suspension bridges. bridge the cables to come up. If Iverson and the 76ers beat the Lakers in the 2001 NBA Finals, he planned to drop the team’s flag over the Hollywood sign.
Then he disappeared from basketball in a flash.
Away from sports, he relied on his expertise in taekwondo (he holds a black belt), taught himself Kanji and opened a pirate museum. “I’m a businessman with a passion for pirates,” Croce once told CNN, “and I want to do something about your passion.”
So it was not surprising that Croce ended up leading a group of divers and archaeologists who claimed to have discovered both the Elizabeth and the Delight – Sir Francis Drake’s long-lost ships – off the coast of Panama in 2011.
You remember Drake from world history class. A legend in his homeland, Drake went from a decorated naval officer to a pirate and even a slave trader during the 16th century. King Phillip II of Spain set a bounty on Drake’s head, which today amounts to $8.5 million. Elizabeth and Delight were scuttled – sacrificed to the sea – after Drake’s death from dysentery in 1596. In 1977, archaeologists began searching for the ship that had circumnavigated the planet. In 2021, Spanish explorers discovered four more sunken ships linked to the Drake.
Like Drake, Croce was never destined for mediocrity. Like all true pirates, he left the 76ers in search of something no one before him could find.
Mario Encarnacion readily accepted the trade, but Marcos Breton did not. The first sentence of his column in the Sacramento Bee the next day was telling: “There is no loyalty in baseball.”
Breton admits that objectivity has long since left him. How could you not? He met Encarnacion five years ago, when Breton started a book on Hispanic baseball players, and Encarnacion was a prized prospect in the Oakland A’s farm system.
Back then, Encarnacion was baseball’s most desirable unicorn: a five-tool player. But Breton was attracted to Encarnacion because of his personality. He had a “poetic soul” and spoke “almost lyrically”. An honest, complex young man, Encarnacion could talk about the fear and anger inside him. As Breton would write: “You loved him as he was, not the player he should have been.”
Breton watched Encarnacion’s promise explode in the minors, as soon as pitchers realized he couldn’t touch their curveballs and sliders. Breton was there the night Encarnacion hit three straight. After the last time, Encarnacion returned to the dugout, slammed his bat into the concrete wall and screamed. “As if,” wrote Breton, “he was bitten by a wild animal.”
While Encarnacion struggled, Miguel Tejada, one of his close friends, flourished. In many ways they were opposites. While Encarnacion was haunted by setbacks and failures, Tejada thought only about the next pitch, the next hit, the next game.
But by the summer of 2001, Encarnacion’s stock had fallen to an all-time low. He was 25, almost 26 years old. On July 25, he was awakened by a phone call from his friend and Triple-A teammate, Jose Ortiz.
“We’re getting out of here,” Ortiz said.
Encarnacion was part of a three-team trade that sent Jermaine Dye to the A’s, Neifi Perez to the Royals and Encarnacion, Ortiz and another prospect to the Rockies. Breton drove to Encarnacion’s apartment and watched him pack his clubs, 15 pairs of shoes and enough clothes that he paid $225 at the airport to ship to Colorado. The Rockies called and told Encarnacion to join the major league club in Denver. After six years in the minors, after leaving his home with the weight of his family on his back, he finally made it to the majors. The first thing he did was call his mom who was crying. Then he called his wife.
An hour later, the Rockies returned the call. An error occurred. He was supposed to report to the Triple-A team in Colorado Springs.
“He did not have the heart to call his mother so soon,” wrote Breton.
Breton drove Encarnacion to the airport that day. Before they left, Encarnacion smiled and handed Breton one of his clubs.
“For old time’s sake,” he said. “Thanks for being my friend, Marcos.”
Encarnacion reached the major league in 2001. He played three more games in 2002 and then it was over. He jumped around the minors in 2003, he was suspended once for hitting a referee. He played in both the Mexican league and the KBO in 2004 and in the Chinese professional baseball league in the fall of 2005.
He tested positive for steroids in Taiwan and was suspended for two weeks. He complained to his wife about severe stomach pains. On the field, he hit 17 homers in 66 games, but he drifted so far from his dream that he could no longer see it, even as he refused to believe it wasn’t still there.
“The last thing a player ever loses is hope,” he told Breton the last time they met, in 2003, over lunch in a cafeteria in Sacramento.
Then one day in Taiwan, Encarnacion didn’t show up for practice. His teammates went to his dorm room. They found the lights on, the refrigerator door open and Encarnacion unresponsive on his bed. He just turned 30 years old.
In the years that followed, Breton would feel many things: sadness, anger, guilt, confusion. He never found out how Encarnacion died, never found answers to his questions. All these years later, he still thinks about Encarnacion. Breton doesn’t like to own – he drives a 20-year-old pickup truck – but in his office, off-limits to his children, is a bat that Encarnacion gave him, a gift from his friend.
For years, Craig Young wanted the relationship with his father that he idealized in the TV shows he watched growing up. His parents separated when he was 5 years old, and while he moved west with his mom and sister to Los Angeles, his dad stayed in Philadelphia.
He saw his dad in the summer and on holidays, but for most of his childhood and youth, Craig wanted more. So one night, after a high school football banquet, he and his best friend vowed that when they had children of their own, they would do everything they could for them and their dreams.
That became his promise: He would do it differently. He would be different.
Craig wanted so much for his son. More than anything, he wanted to see no limitations, no false horizons. This meant that when his son was old enough, Craig would train him to ensure he always got a fair chance. And when his son showed flashes of elite talent as a lanky young quarterback, he’d scout the best coaches, the best trainers — whatever it took to help him get better.
Most of all, it meant that his son would always know that his dad would go to the end of the world for him.
Sometimes he would have to check himself; there is a thin difference between support and superiority. He didn’t want to be a caricature, a Soccer Dad stereotype, but sometimes he could feel himself sliding in that direction. If he were to challenge that line, his wife, Julie, would ask: Do you want to sacrifice your relationship with him to train him? And he would admit that, yes, he had to change, he had to let his son breathe.
But back at 8:59 p.m. On July 25, 2001, when Alabama’s future Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young came into this world, Craig didn’t think about what kind of father he wanted to be. He already knew.
(Illustration: Wes McCabe / The Athletic; Photos: Rick Loomis, Robert Gauthier, Vreeland/ClassicStock, Bill Greene / Getty Images)
