Chapter 29

David
The last two days had found David taking tests. He had a natural talent for Communications and Marketing, so tests in those classes were no problem. David also saw the value in his Economics and Accounting courses, which meant he thought those went well too. The class that David was learning the most from was Applied Business Statistics.

One of his first homework assignments had been to figure out, based on buying patterns, whether a woman was pregnant. The assignment bothered him a bit because it felt somewhat invasive to dig into someone’s personal life for financial gain.

Then he saw the business side of it. If you knew that a member of a household was pregnant, you could market differently to them. A mattress store that wanted to sell cribs could save a lot of money by only mailing out flyers to women about to have babies instead of to all homes.

After everyone turned in their papers, their professor told them that Target had actually hired a statistician to figure this out using only a computer. He developed a mathematical model that was able to predict not only which women were pregnant but what their expected due date was.

This taught David that you could figure out just about anything using stats. From that point on, he was hooked.

His mind went immediately to sports and how decisions were increasingly being made based on statistics. He was reminded of the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, which had been turned into a movie.

It chronicled Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane and his staff in the 2002 season. They used stats to figure out which players were undervalued by other baseball teams. That knowledge informed their choices in both the draft and when signing free agents. When you considered what they were up against, it may have been their only way to compete. In 2002, the Athletics had a player budget of $44 million while teams like the Yankees spent upwards of $125 million on player payroll.

David’s mind began to spin as he thought about how statistical analysis could apply to both baseball and football. For example, in baseball, what percentage of the time did Player X hit to the right? At what point would it make sense to shift your pitching and/or defense to take advantage of that knowledge?

The truth was, it was being done right now. What intrigued David was the notion that they’d just scratched the surface of how statistics could be used. The key would be to capture the data and then be smart enough to interpret what it all meant.

As far as studying for tests, David had discovered that what he’d heard about cramming was true. With everything else going on in his life, there just weren’t enough hours in the day to do the thorough day-to-day prep he felt was warranted to get ready for taking his exams. That meant he was up late into the night studying on Wednesday and Thursday.

What saved him were his life goals and his work ethic. At first blush, that probably made no sense.

When David entered high school, he’d spent the preceding summer at his uncle’s farm. It hadn’t been voluntary.

He’d gone off the rails in middle school and had gotten involved with the wrong crowd. David had experimented with drugs and alcohol. His close friends had tried to get him back on track, but he hadn’t listened, to the point they didn’t want anything to do with him.

David’s best friend growing up was Tami Glade. They did everything together, along with the two other members of their group, Alan Douglas and Jeff Rigger. David still had nightmares about the time Tami had become so frustrated with him that she screamed she didn’t want anything more to do with him.

Shortly after that, it had all come to a head at a party he had thrown in one of his mom’s vacant house listings. One of the girls at the party had been drugged. Combined with the alcohol she’d consumed, she’d passed out and almost died.

David’s mom was so mad that when the police finally released him, she wouldn’t allow him to come home. He was sent to his uncle’s farm and became his slave labor for the summer, digging fence-post holes by hand. It wasn’t until the end of the summer that David learned his uncle had a post-hole digger attachment for his tractor.

Uncle John had a degree in child psychology. Long story short, he recreated David over the summer. He went from a chubby middle schooler to a taller, physically fit high school freshman as his growth spurt and hard work did their magic. The transformation hadn’t ended there. Uncle John gave David the tools he needed to help him make better decisions and begin to grow up. Part of that was writing down his life goals.

What that did was help David focus on what was important to him and on the long-term, not just what was fun at the moment. Over the last few years, those goals had changed because of circumstances. Having kids would do that.

His current life goals were:

1. Financial Stability
a. Comfortable Life
b. Good Education
2. Physically Fit
3. Solid Moral Foundation
a. Religion / Faith
b. Man of Integrity (Man of my word)
c. No Gossip
d. Think before saying ‘yes.’
e. Learn to say ‘no.’
4. Healthy Sex Life
5. No Regrets (meaning, he did not want to look back on his life and not have done something he could have—within reason)
6. Make a Difference
7. Be a Great Dad
8. Be True to Who I Am

The primary reason he thought his life goals were helping him survive his first round of tests was the Good Education goal. When David made it a priority, he did stuff like being prepared for class by reading ahead. When David didn’t understand something, he utilized his tutor. And most importantly, when the baseball team had wanted to get together Wednesday nights, David had been a good boy and cracked his books instead.

David realized the work ethic he’d developed was a second major reason he was doing okay. That work ethic had been with him from the time he started high school. But it had been further reinforced by David’s experience filming three movies back-to-back-to-back, all on compressed shoot schedules. His average workday had lasted 16 to 18 hours. Even then, one of the critical elements of good acting was the ability to bring the same energy and presence to each scene, be it eight in the morning or three at night.

Developing and then utilizing that ability to focus, regardless of how tired he was and what time of day it was, served him well now. In short, he thought, he’d honed the critical skills to accomplish what he needed to by learning time management and by refining his ability to focus on the task at hand. That was also one of the reasons why he was considered an elite athlete.

Once he’d handed in his last test of the day, in Applied Business Statistics, David had gone home and taken a two-hour power nap. That was so he’d be ready to play baseball that evening.

Before heading to the ball field, David grabbed some food in the cafeteria. He’d sent a text to his crew to let them know his plans. Alex was off doing some soccer activity, but David was happy to see Kirk and Jamie already downstairs.

The fallout from the previous weekend’s excitement had finally settled down. It had been tense at first because Kirk and Jamie were hurt that Lindsey would share information with Veronica. Veronica was equally mad at Lauren, which made her an outcast as far as her group was concerned.

David made it a point to be seen eating with both Lindsey and Lauren. Jamie was the first to get over it and, by mid-week, joined David and the girls for breakfast. Kirk was still mad at Lauren because it was due to their breakup that the whole prank war had begun. Seeing that Jamie had brought him tonight made David happy.

“‘Sup?” David said as he sat down.

“You’re too white to pull that off,” Kirk said.

“How would you know?” David asked.

“Because I’m too white to be cool enough to pull off the head nod and ‘‘Sup?’ as a greeting,” Kirk admitted.

Lindsey and Lauren came to the table tentatively. Kirk glared at both of them for a moment.

“Have a seat. Jamie made me promise to be nice,” he said.

There was a lot of awkward silence, but part of that was due to David. He was still feeling the effects of taking all his tests over the last two days, so he wasn’t his usual talkative self. Once they were done eating, David counted it as a win that they got through it. It was a positive step toward getting everyone back together.

“You look like Mason after a three-night bender,” Andres said when David came in.

“Just sleep-deprived. My professors decided to have exams the last couple of days.”

“You all done?”

“Yep. Took my last one this afternoon,” David shared.

“Catch me after the game, and let me show you the proper way to relax after a bout of tests.”

“Drinking is probably not a good idea,” David said to push back.

He honestly just wanted to play the game and then sleep for twelve hours.

Andres laughed.

“While my prescription usually involves copious amounts of alcohol, I think we can come up with something that will make all that hard work worthwhile. Trust me. I remember my first round of exams in college, and they kicked my butt. Let my years of experience ease your path.”

David decided to not reject Andres out of hand. He would at least wait to hear him out, and then he would go home to bed. First, though, they had a game against Arizona State.

The USC fans had come out in force tonight, and the stadium was nearly full. Andres shared with David that they hadn’t seen that many people for a home game since UCLA, their hated rival, had come to town last year.

By the time the game started, David was ready.

Arizona State jumped ahead with four runs in the second, getting a couple of early walks and then scoring on an error and a three-run double.

USC managed to bat around in the sixth inning, scoring five runs on four hits and taking advantage of a pair of Sun Devil errors. Bill Woodall hit a sacrifice fly to get the Trojans on the scoreboard, and then Scott Martino singled home a second run. Micah Briggs followed with an RBI groundout. David put the Trojans ahead with a two-run single to right field. From there, USC never looked back.

Tucker Frost hit a solo home run in the eighth, and Andres Barrera sacrificed home the game’s final run to make the final score 7–4.

An interesting tidbit was that USC used six different pitchers in the game. Coach Deneau somehow knew when to pull each one before things got out of hand. The win moved the Trojans to 5–3 on the year, while the Sun Devils fell to 2–6.

As soon as they made it into the locker room, David sat down on the seat before his locker. He’d decided to pass on whatever Andres was offering. Andres found him before he had to go talk to the press.

“I was wondering if...” was all David got out before he was interrupted.

“No. You don’t want to hurt yourself by having any kind of complicated thoughts after studying so hard. Plus, you have an obligation to the team. I’m warning you, if you don’t come through for them, they are going to be upset,” Andres said seriously.

David let out an exasperated gasp and motioned for Andres to tell him what he meant.

“You’ve probably noticed that after a game, jock bunnies are waiting at the players entrance.”

David gave a slight nod.

“It’s come to my attention that you’ve not partaken. Frankly, I’m disappointed in you. Truth be known, the whole team isn’t happy because you’ve not fulfilled your obligation to our fans,” Andres said.

By now, both Allard and Seamus had come to their lockers and were listening to Andres weave his bullshit to David.

“Boy Scout,” Allard said under cover of a fake cough.

“It’s a woman you’re needing,” Seamus added.

“I told the team that tonight, you get the pick of the litter. They can’t take a bunny home until you pick one,” Andres said with a straight face.

“Bullshit,” David said as he barked out a laugh.

“I put the word out to the Alpha Mus that you would be participating in the bunny hunt tonight,” Andres said.

“There’ll be bunnies lined up for days,” Allard predicted.

“I don’t think so,” David said.

“Mother of Jaysus, David. You don’t shag a girl with your brain. Stop thinking. I’m done with your hard-neck cheek, boyo. Get your head out of your arse and shag a bunny, yeah?” Seamus added.

’Someone needs to get laid,’ David thought.

“I’ll sweeten the deal,” Andres said with a smile. “Mason moved out, and we cleaned up his room. There are new sheets on the bed, so you won’t have to worry about catching anything.”

The three of them stared David down. Oh, what the hell. Getting laid would help him get to sleep.

“Fine,” David conceded.

’Operation “Keep My Dick In My Pants” has just gone out the window’ was his last rueful thought before he was dragged to the locker room entrance.