Nearly sixty years later, there was another story about the Ocean State Bisons in the Los Angeles Times.
Lucas’s mom was the one who told him, because the story had popped up on her phone. Without telling him, she had been doing some research of her own about Gramps and his teammates and the scandal, trying to find out if there really was more to the story. So she had set a Google alert. If there was a mention anywhere about the Bisons, she found out about it right away.
She got the alert on Gramps on Sunday morning.
The story wasn’t really about him. It was really about Tommy Angelo, who was eighty years old by now and close to dying.
“He’s living in an assisted living facility outside Los Angeles,” Julia told Lucas after she’d read the story. “It’s where elderly people who can’t take care of themselves on their own end up.”
Somehow the reporter had found Tommy Angelo through his wife. She sat in on the interview, because Tommy didn’t remember things as well as he once had. But the story talked about what he had done when he was at Ocean State, how he’d been the player who ended up in prison along with a couple of the gamblers involved, what he’d done with his life after prison, finally ending up working as a church custodian. The story also mentioned that two players who’d taken money to manipulate the point spreads, had died a long time ago.
Lucas’s mom showed him the story. Lucas read it, and saw that in the middle, the reporter mentioned that a fourth player, Joe Samuels, was now living in Claremont, having changed his name to Sam Winston.
Mr. Winston, it said in the story, had declined to be interviewed about what the players had done, and the life he’d led since Ocean State.
“It was all my fault,” Tommy Angelo said down near the bottom of the story in the Times. “But they never forgave me.”
Lucas and his mom sat at the kitchen table. After Lucas had finished reading, he read it again.
“He never said anything to me about getting a call from a reporter,” Lucas’s mom said. “What about you?”
“I would’ve told you,” Lucas said.
She closed her laptop. Lucas imagined her shutting a door by doing that, making the story just go away. But he knew that wasn’t happening.
“Do you think Gramps knows about this?” Lucas said.
“Maybe the reporter gave him a heads-up,” his mom said, “and gave him one more chance to comment.”
“But he might not know,” Lucas said.
“He certainly won’t know by seeing a story online,” she said. “The only paper he reads is the Claremont Telegraph, and only when it’s in his hands.”
“He’s going to find out,” Lucas said.
She blew out some air, loudly, and ran a hand through her long hair.
“I’m afraid everybody is about to find out,” she said.
Lucas’s phone blew up for the rest of the day, but he didn’t answer any of the calls, or return any, not even the ones from Maria. His mom had been right, of course. By the time he was back in school the next day, everybody knew. His classmates knew. His teammates knew. So did their parents. He felt as if the whole world knew.
So did Gramps’s paper, the Telegraph. They ran a story of their own about the one in the Los Angeles Times. And the news that Gramps had wanted to stay buried in the past was bigger than ever.