Fathers, Sons, and Surrogates

This is part two of a three-part series by Neil Swidey, who followed the Charlestown High boys basketball team on its hunt for a state title. The series explores bonds that transcend race and one coach's drive to push players beyond their troubled neighborhoods and into college.

Sweat is everywhere. On the face of the point guard. On the back of the coach's neck. On the court, in invisible, slick puddles. The same white Gatorade towel is used to wipe away the moisture in all three places. High school basketball is seldom pretty. But, at its best, it's intense, riveting, and gritty.

This is one of those nights.

The gym at East Boston High is standing room only for this early February rematch between the city's two best basketball teams. Eastie, whose state-title dreams had been repeatedly shot down by Charlestown, is desperate to prove this year will be different. Charlestown, which was embarrassed by Eastie six weeks earlier, is anxious to quiet all the talk in Boston proclaiming that its dynasty is dead.

Seventeen seconds into the game, Charles-town's Ridley Johnson muffles the Eastie crowd by sinking a 3-pointer, the type of clutch play that has earned the co-captain a scholarship to play Division I basketball in the fall. Lamar "Spot" Brathwaite, a senior making his return to the starting lineup, rediscovers his confidence, hitting shots and pulling down rebounds. Charlestown races to a 12-2 lead.

An argument erupts when a Charlestown assistant coach accuses East Boston's official scorer of deliberately undercounting the number of fouls called against Eastie's star player. "And it's not the first time!" the usually reserved assistant coach yells to a referee.

"Don't you ever accuse me of cheating," the scorer shouts back.

The scorer is in his 60s and black. The assistant, 30 years old and white. The standoff has obvious racial overtones. But mostly it's just a reflection of how charged everything about the game is.

In the second half, Eastie comes back, closing the lead to 4. But then Charlestown co-captain Jason "Hood" White takes over, slicing through defenders to get to the hoop and finishing with 20 points. Charlestown wins by 13.

The players rush off to the locker room, jumping to bump their chests in the air. Jack O'Brien, Charlestown's 47-year-old head coach, strides in a few minutes later. "Great job, guys," he says, "But I've got to get this out of the way." He walks over to LeRoyal Hairston, a sharp-shooting sophomore. The player had loudly complained to one of O'Brien's assistant coaches after being subbed out during the game. LeRoyal thought he'd been pulled for missing a couple of jumpers.

"You should never, ever act that way in your life!" O'Brien yells, just inches from LeRoyal's face. "Understand something. We don't substitute for missed shots!"

Leroyal stares straight at the floor.

"Look at me!" O'Brien continues. "You could go 0-for-40, and I wouldn't care, as long as you were playing as hard as you can."

O'Brien takes a few steps back and lowers his voice: "We're in a battle here. You have to be thinking, `I've got to protect my family!'"

Before they break their huddles, the Charlestown players yell, "One, two, three - family!" O'Brien tries to compensate for his players' often chaotic lives by building a rigid team structure that offers the trappings of home. Before Christmas, he sends out holiday cards featuring a team photo. Every spring, he invites his former players back to the Charlestown gym to play against the current team. All season long, he turns one of the locker-room walls into his "refrigerator door," clipping and posting newspaper articles about his players and awarding gold stars for achievements that never make the papers, like improving grades.

But what makes the experience most like a family is O'Brien's steadfast, nagging, supportive, smothering involvement in his players' lives. Most players don't take to him right away.

"They say, `Who's this white man who's trying to be my daddy?" says Olivia DuBose, Charlestown High's former assistant headmaster. She worked with O'Brien for his 11 previous seasons at Charlestown before she retired last fall.

Give him a chance, she'd tell the boys. "A lot of them have been yelled at their whole lives. But they haven't seen the difference between someone scolding them and someone molding them." As a black woman whose husband is the pastor of a prominent black church, DuBose became O'Brien's guide and confidante. "I've never seen anybody like him in my whole life," she says. "It's almost a calling, a ministry for him."

While O'Brien has a brother and sister, nieces and nephews, his only immediate family commitment is looking after his mother in the home they share.

About eight years ago, O'Brien, a Catholic, began coming to worship with DuBose and her husband at their New Hope Baptist Church, bringing some of his players with him. Intensely private, he eventually opened up to her, telling her his girlfriend had just died. "She passed out of his life, somebody he really loved," DuBose says. "I don't know if he's gotten over it."

O'Brien admits he hasn't. He says she died of breast cancer, and that it's still too painful for him to discuss. He's dated some in the years since but says, "It's almost that you don't want to have a relationship that deep again."

People tell him all the time that he'd be a good father. He doesn't disagree. "But you go a different route."

DuBose says O'Brien is doing the Lord's work by "filling the space in these boys' lives." They, in turn, fill the space in his. But she prays he'll find a wife someday. "Sometimes," she says, "I feel he's forfeiting a lot in his life because of what he does."

O'Brien is careful not to refer to himself as a father to his players. If their dads make efforts to get back into their lives, he encourages his players to accept them. "Sports can do that," he says. "Maybe it provides an opening, a chance for them to have a relationship with their fathers."

That never happened in his own life. O'Brien's father died 12 years ago, at the age of 64. They'd never been close. O'Brien's early coaching success did nothing to change that. His father, who was born in Charlestown, worked as a laborer at a Malden cemetery. For a long time, he suffered from depression, his son says, and got into an argument one day with his own mother - O'Brien's grandmother - and ended up killing her, calling the police after seeing what he'd done. He was committed for a time to Bridgewater State Hospital.

O'Brien's mother, a warm-hearted, round-faced woman named Theresa, says the experience helps explain her caring son's devotion to his players. "You know what I think?" she says. "He likes helping them because his father got very sick, and he really didn't have a father."

Ridley McClary Johnson shares his name and good looks with his father, but, until recently, not much else. There are no name mix-ups, because everyone calls his father McClary. But when a few of Ridley's friends found out his middle name, they began calling him Mac. "I hate that," Ridley says.

On a Tuesday night in the middle of February, McClary walks into the Charlestown High gym to watch his son's final regular-season home game, against Lawrence. The articulate man, a native of Honduras, works as a technician for a medical equipment company. He has short hair, squarish at the top, and a closely cropped beard.

Like most of his teammates, Ridley lives with his mother and has had a distant relationship with his father over the years. But his story is different. Ridley is McClary's only child, lives just a few miles away from him, and has never been in any trouble.

This season, McClary has been taking the first steps toward reestablishing closer ties with his son. He comes to the games and usually gives Ridley a ride home.

"I've never really come before this year," McClary says. "But he was doing well in school, in basketball, so I thought it would be good to come show my support."

But Ridley wonders why the support is only coming now. "I don't really pay attention to it," he says. "I just see that he's there." And, clearly, when he's not. "He's only missed, like, three games all year."

McClary's regular attendance may have something to do with Emily Hunter-Coleman. A personable 24-year-old with small glasses and long hair, Emily is Ridley's aunt, his mother's youngest sister, and the adult Ridley opens up to most.

Before the season began, Emily had laid it all out to McClary. With Ridley headed to the University of Toledo next fall, she told him, this year might be his last chance to connect with his son. She sees how McClary and Ridley are still stiff around each other. McClary "hasn't been there for a long time, so you can't expect somebody will open up." But mostly she remains hopeful that the relationship will blossom and that Ridley will benefit. "He needs to learn how to be a man."

During the game, Emily calls McClary on her cellphone, waving to him from across the court. Sitting next to her is Ridley's mother and McClary's former wife, Rebecca Johnson.

Emily spots a cute Cape Verdean girl sitting on the other side of court. Ridley's new girlfriend, Ashley. Not much happens in his life without Emily knowing about it. "How come she hasn't come over to introduce herself to me yet?" she asks, smiling.

Emily is used to being a constant in Ridley's life. She and her husband, Hugh Coleman, fill the same role for the whole Charlestown program. They're at every game. Hugh, who played for O'Brien before graduating from Charlestown in 1997, is now there as an assistant coach; Emily's there to cheer on her boys. There are plenty of them. In addition to Ridley, there's another nephew, Paul Becklens, who is the sophomore starting point guard. Then there's Hugh's younger brother, Bernard, a junior. Last year, when Paul and Bernard were struggling in school, Emily and Hugh took them in, looked over their homework every night, got them on track again. Paul is back with his mother now. Bernard briefly returned to his mother's place before moving in with Ridley. Before Bernard, there was another Coleman brother on the team, Derek, who is one of the only players to have been on all four of O'Brien's Charlestown state-champion rosters. He's now playing Division I ball on scholarship at Robert Morris University, outside Pittsburgh.

This all began with Hugh. Warm and energetic, he has a smile for everyone he sees. Except perhaps the older man sitting behind Emily, trying to make funny faces with Emily and Hugh's 2-year-old daughter, Jordyn. "That's Hugh's father," Emily whispers.

Hugh doesn't see it that way. His dad was AWOL in his life for too long. Now that he's back some, Hugh sees him more as a distant uncle. When Hugh was a student at Bowdoin College and O'Brien would drive to Maine to visit him, he would introduce his coach as the man who had done the most to help him get to college. "This," Hugh would tell friends, "is my father."

After the buzzer, Hood leads his teammates into a huddle in the corner of the gym, away from the coaches. "Yo, this one is for the guys who lost last year." It's February 19, the first day of the Comcast Tournament. Charlestown has just beaten Salem, avenging last season's loss that ended its reign of four straight state titles. The next night, Charlestown, facing number-one-ranked Newton North, brings back its suffocating full-court press and plays like a team on a mission. Hood and LeRoyal are dazzling and combine for 49 points. Charlestown walks away with an 81-70 win.

In just two weeks, O'Brien's team has beaten Eastie, Lawrence, Salem, and Newton North - the best teams in the state. No one would have predicted that after Charlestown's brutal home opener. But now everyone on the team is smiling. Except Troy Gillenwater, the 6-foot-5 sophomore who didn't score the whole game. As he walks off the court, Troy is shaking his head, complaining that he didn't get enough opportunities to shoot.

During the post-game award ceremony, O'Brien is beaming as Hood is named MVP of the tournament, and hard-working, low-flying senior George Russell, who just found out he'd been accepted to Salem State College, receives a $300 scholarship.

In the locker room, O'Brien gives the team trophy to Ricardo "Robby" Robinson. Robby has a tattoo of a python with the words "Fear No One" on his left forearm, and one of a cross with his mother's name, Maud, on his right upper arm. In the fall, O'Brien had given him the last spot on his roster, even though Robby was a senior and wouldn't see much playing time. O'Brien liked his attitude and felt Robby would be a good off-the-court role model for the other players. When Robby was 3, his father was fatally shot. When he was 15, his mother died of a brain tumor. He essentially lives on his own now and can rattle off the costs of each of his monthly utility bills. Robby is determined to honor his mother's memory by going to college. He, too, had recently been accepted to Salem State, but he was more excited about Radford University, a Virginia school he stumbled across while surfing the Internet.

Robby walks out of the locker room, clutching his new hardware, grinning. "I leave trophied up. Coach says I play hard and I never complain."

Spot sits in his bedroom on the Wednesday of February vacation, playing NBA Live on his PlayStation 2. He shuttles between his mother's place in Dorchester and this two-family home in Brockton where his grandmother and uncle live. Mark Brathwaite, Spot's 37-year-old uncle, walks into his room. Spot says that, growing up, his father spent a lot of time in jail and that his uncle filled the void. "I consider him like my father. He's tough on me, wants the best for me. I can talk to him about anything - girls, whatever."

His uncle played high school ball for Cambridge but had two kids by the time he was a senior. He recalls pushing his oldest in a baby carriage to day care before he could get to school. So he doesn't hold back when talking to his children and nephews. "I tell them, `Don't come home with no babies.' I talk to them about condoms and all that stuff, because no one ever really sat down and talked to me about it."

Spot's cellphone rings. "What's up, Coach?"

Spot twisted his ankle in the Newton North game, and O'Brien is calling to see how he's doing and to let him know he's made an appointment for him with a physical therapist. Spot likes the way Coach never begins a phone call talking about basketball. O'Brien likes the way Spot never finishes one without first saying, "Thanks, Coach."

They've come a long way since Spot's sophomore year, when O'Brien kicked him off the team after repeated complaints that he was acting up in class. In the fall, O'Brien had taken him to visit colleges and prep schools. Now, even though some colleges are still showing mild interest, O'Brien is recommending that Spot do a postgraduate year at a prep school. A transitional year studying and playing basketball at a private high school would allow Spot to boost his grades and improve his game, positioning him for a Division II athletic scholarship.

Spot, who trusts O'Brien's lead, still hasn't figured out why his father is suddenly coming to his games. "Coach told me, now that I'm doing good, it's kind of like bringing the family closer together. I guess you can say that. He looks at it in a positive way. I look at in a negative way sometimes. Like, `Now that I'm doing good, you wanna be here.'"

David Siggers, the East Boston High School coach, stands at the side of the gym in Roxbury's Shelburne Community Center. It's February 24, the semifinals for the City League Championship. If both his team and Charlestown win in separate games today, they'll face off to morrow in the finals. Siggers keeps his eyes fixed on O'Brien, watching him pace and shout, even though his guys are up by 30 points.

Siggers shakes his head. "Before Jack, there was parity in Boston."

O'Brien is not particularly popular with his fellow Boston coaches. Many look at him and his impressive record and assume that all he cares about is winning. "You hear around the city how players are being directed to Charlestown," says Abner Logan, the coach at Jeremiah E. Burke High School.

O'Brien dismisses the criticisms as jealousy. And in Boston, where middle school students get to pick their top choices for high school, there's no evidence that he is doing anything different from most other coaches in the city. Except, of course, spending all of his time on his program and his players.

While coaches are prohibited from recruiting players from other communities, Ken Still, the athletic director for the Boston public schools, says it's fine for Boston high school coaches to talk-up their programs to city middle school students and their parents, as long as they do it responsibly. "They're all Boston school kids," he says.

O'Brien does his homework. But often the prospects find him. Of his current starting lineup, Hood is the only one O'Brien approached as an eighth-grader, at the suggestion of Hood's middle school coach. He spoke with Hood's mother, Pearl White. She had special worry for her boy, given the dangers all around him. At age 2, he had both legs broken when a neighborhood crackhead ran over him. In middle school, he began writing "R.I.P. The Sqad" on his sneakers to remember his two cousins lost to gang violence. Willie Barnes, Hood's camera-toting father, is now a stable presence in his life, but that wasn't the case back then. Pearl saw such good in her son and thought O'Brien could provide exactly the direction he needed, so she decided Hood would go to Charlestown.

Without question, O'Brien, like all true believers in a cause, can sometimes be tiresome. Without question, he hates to lose. But if all he cared about was winning, he would be doing things differently. Like steering his best players to the easiest classes rather than the more challenging ones. Like forgetting about his former players rather than staying rooted in their lives. Like cutting his tallest player a lot of slack rather than tossing him off the team on the eve of the playoffs.

February 25. Ridley sits in the bleachers at UMass-Boston. His jeans and T-shirt are freshly pressed. He had stood at the ironing board in his kitchen a few hours earlier, getting the wrinkles out. He is wearing the Charlestown team jacket from last year, the one that says "2004 City League Champions." It was the first year in a while that the guys couldn't have "State Champions" printed on their team jackets, but at least they had the city title.

Tonight's game against Eastie will decide the City League champion for 2005. It's all about bragging rights, since both teams will play in the state tournament. But no one on the team wants to think about what the jackets this year will say if Charlestown loses tonight and in the states.

Ridley's father approaches him and extends his hand. "Good luck tonight," he says. "Thanks," Ridley replies. His father walks away.

Another big game against Eastie, another Charlestown big man missing. But unlike the last time, when 6-foot-4 Terry Carter had disappeared and no one could find him, this time there is no mystery. At the start of practice two days earlier, O'Brien had pulled aside Troy Gillenwater, his tallest player. The 6-foot-5 sophomore has a lot going for him - he's funny, a great rapper, a good ball player. But O'Brien felt his self-centered style of play was dragging the team down. He'd been warned and suspended, but nothing changed. Troy's complaints about not getting the ball enough in the exhilarating Newton game persuaded O'Brien to toss him for the rest of the season.

Eastie sets the tone early in the game, blazing out to a quick lead. Besides Ridley, every Charlestown player seems off. Especially Hood. And that's not good, because an assistant coach from Adelphi University in New York is in the crowd scouting him.

At halftime, Eastie is up by 6.

Once again, Hood comes alive in the second half, leading Charlestown to tie the game with two minutes to go. O'Brien is going crazy on the bench, yelling "Rebound!" and "Rotate!" and flapping his arms furiously.

Eastie has the ball with 16 seconds left. Sophomore point guard Tyrone Hughes, who had transferred to Eastie from Charlestown earlier in the school year and who hadn't scored the whole game, unleashes an off- balance jumper. It dances around the rim for an eternity before going in. Eastie is up, 73-72.

Charlestown pushes the ball up court. With the final buzzer about to sound, Hood tosses up a jump shot from the foul line. The entire crowd is standing, watching the ball bounce around the top of the rim. Another eternity, except this one ends with the ball bouncing out.

The Eastie players and coaches pile on one another in a center-court explosion of joy. Hood stands by the Charlestown bench, frozen. The locker room is silent as O'Brien walks in.

"Hey. Look at me now," he tells the players. "Great, great job. Great, great effort getting back into a game we probably had no business being in." He then reminds them to hold their heads high when they walk out the door. "Don't listen to no hate."

After the last player leaves, O'Brien leans against the wall, flipping through the green score book, replaying the final seconds. Eastie's last shot had looked short to him. Hood's had looked promising. He slaps the score book shut. "Damn!"

The next day, O'Brien keeps his phone turned off, barely gets out of bed.

By Monday afternoon, the mourning is over. He leads his team into a cramped storage room off the Charlestown gym. There, determined to pump them up, he tells his players something he'd resisted telling all of his title-grabbing teams in the past. "We're going to win the state championship."

Next week: "End Game."

Neil Swidey is a member of the Globe Magazine staff. He can be reached at swidey@globe.com.