Seventeen

THE NEXT AFTERNOON I was seated across from Joel Abrams, the NFL commissioner, at a table big enough to serve as a helipad. We were in the dining room of the presidential suite at the Mark Hopkins Hotel. I had told him we could meet at the stadium, but I could tell he wanted this to be a command performance and on his own turf.

I had already gotten an earful about his having gone back to New York after my father’s funeral and now having had to fly back here.

I wanted to tell him that I knew he had a Learjet at his disposal. Joe Wolf had habitually referred to him as a glorified bean counter, a world-class ass kisser, and one of the phoniest people he’d ever met.

He was short and round and balding and had always reminded me of a dumpling. He nodded now at the liquor cart at the other end of the table and almost proudly said, “Dedicated concierge service.”

“Good to know,” I said. “Better to have.”

He asked if I wanted something. I said I was fine. He got up and poured himself a Chivas on the rocks, drank some on the way back to his seat.

“You can’t possibly want to do this,” he said when he sat back down.

“This?”

“Run the team.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you have never spent a day of your life being part of the football operation,” he said. “Because being a high school football coach doesn’t make you a Glazer or a Kraft or a Rooney or a Mara. And mostly because a family controversy over the team couldn’t come at a worse time.”

“And why is that?”

“We’re starting to make some progress on getting the Wolves a deal on the new stadium,” Abrams said.

It had become the longest-running sports drama in town. The city had been fighting my father on a new stadium for the past few years, putting up one roadblock after another, even as he kept telling them and anybody who would listen that he just wanted the same kind of new-stadium deal that other owners in other cities had gotten. But the board of supervisors had fought him every step of the way, getting more dug in as time went on, continuing to raise the amount they expected him to kick in to get the thing done. They said they were looking out for the taxpayers. Joe Wolf called it a shakedown. So there had been no movement from either side for months, even though everybody knew that a new stadium, once built, would mean a Super Bowl for San Francisco.

In pro football, that was the Holy Grail.

“What does this have to do with me running the Wolves?”

“Your brother can get this done,” Abrams said. “He’s quietly repairing bridges your father burned.”

“Golden Gate?” I asked. “Or Bay?”

Abrams sighed.

“How does my brother plan to come up with the money my father said he couldn’t afford?”

“Ask him.”

“Asking you, Commissioner.”

“Let’s just say he’s more amenable to outside assistance,” Abrams said. “Being transactional, so to speak.”

“It’s still a shakedown.”

“You sound just like him,” Abrams said. I could see him starting to get exasperated, as if he were conditioned to getting his own way. “He stopped negotiating in good faith a while ago, even though he knew better than anybody else how much the Wolves need a new stadium.”

“But at what price?”

He drank some Scotch.

“At whatever price it takes to get the deal done.”

“There has to be another angle here. With all due respect, of course.”

I thought something might have changed in his eyes. But only briefly.

“What makes you say that?”

“Because there’s always another angle with guys like you.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“I can’t imagine why in the world you would.”

“You need to give this up,” he said. “It will save you the embarrassment of not getting approved by my other owners.”

My other owners.

I wanted to tell the little jerk, You’re the dedicated concierge.

“I don’t have to be approved,” I said. “The team is staying in the family. Nobody had to approve John Mara with the Giants when his father died or Steve Tisch when his father died. We both know the list of children inheriting teams is longer than that.”

He gave me a smug look.

“They told me you think you know everything about everything,” he said. “But your father must have neglected to inform you that we added some language to the bylaws about inherited teams a few years ago. It was after the software guy bought the Saints. Remember that? His idiot son inherited the team, hired all his frat buddies, then thought it would be cute to let fans call plays over the internet.”

The kid in New Orleans ended up selling the team, under what I recalled was rather massive pressure from the league. Keegan something. He’d still made a couple of billion dollars from the sale.

“Now it doesn’t matter whether it’s a son or daughter or widow,” Abrams continued. “If the person inheriting the team hasn’t had any previous role in the football operation, he or she has to be approved the way an outside owner would. By a three-quarters vote.”

He looked so pleased with himself that I felt as if I should give him a treat.

“Maybe your father was drunk the day the ownership committee changed the rules,” Abrams said. “Or was off bad-mouthing me to somebody from ESPN.”

“I’m not quitting.”

“You don’t have to quit. You can keep some kind of title. Just step aside, for the good of the team and the city and the league.”

It sounded as if he’d been practicing that part.

I shook my head.

“I’ll take my chances with the other owners. I’m a lawyer, I’m a teacher, I’m even a coach. And I’m a woman, Commissioner. Hear me roar. And take your best shot.”

It was as if he hadn’t heard me.

“You don’t even have to call a press conference,” he said. “All you have to do is issue a statement that this is what’s best for all concerned. We can even write it for you, if you’d rather.”

“My father always told me how often you forgot that you worked for him and not the other way around.”

“He earned the right to think that way, honey.”

I tilted my head just slightly and smiled. “Honey?”

“Oh, don’t start with that MeToo shit,” he said. “Are you really going to fight me on this?”

“I thought we were getting to know each other. But you already seem to have made up your mind about me.”

“Like father, like daughter.”

He slammed his glass down on the table.

“You have to know that if you fight me on this, I will crush you.”

“You sound an awful lot like my brother.”

“The league meetings are in a month or so in Los Angeles,” he said. “That gives you plenty of time to change your mind and get on the right side of this.”

We sat there in silence for what felt like a long time, until I finally said, “You know what? You’re the one who’s right.”

I got up then, walked down to the liquor cart, saw that it held a bottle of Grey Goose. Joe Wolf’s drink of choice. I put some ice cubes in the glass, poured just enough vodka, walked back down to him, and said, “I just thought about it.”

I touched my glass with his.

“Here’s to the National Football League,” I said, and drank.

So did he.

“So we’re good,” the commissioner said.

I laughed.

“Of course not.”