The Keeper: A Life of Saving Goals and Achieving Them (7 page)

Then we did it some more, and I began to save the majority of them.

I hyperfocused, like I did when I was a kid. I measured myself against Tony, and I saw the gap between us closing.

I marked off my progress. I dove. I reached, I stretched.
Whether I saved it or watched it billow the net, I got up and walked back to my line, ready to do the whole thing again.

K
eepers can shine when their team is losing . . . and the MetroStars gave Tony plenty of opportunities to excel.

In August, though, Tony argued a little too vehemently with a referee late in a match against the Miami Fusion. He was fined $1,500 for “major misconduct” and slapped with a one-game suspension. Until then, he had played every minute of the season’s previous 24 games. Now he’d be missing the home match in Giants Stadium against the Colorado Rapids. The MetroStars would have to rely on the number two goalkeeper to save the day.

I was that guy.

When I get nervous or excited, my tics go wild. In the moments leading up to the game, I probably cleared my throat about five hundred times.

Then, in the locker room, on my stool, was a handwritten note:

There’s pretty much a single moment I remember from that game. It was the 63rd minute, and the MetroStars were ahead when Jamaican striker Wolde Harris, one of the top MLS scorers back then, came racing toward me. He was yards from the goal when he fired a hard shot a few feet to my right. It’s almost impossible for a striker to miss from that close in, but Tony had been launching rockets at me for five months. My reflexes were sharp. I reached out my right hand and stopped that thing, dead.

All these years later, that was the one. That was the
singular moment: my hand touching the ball, and knowing that I’d blocked a point-blank shot in my MLS debut.

A half hour later, we walked off the field, victorious. Tony stood in the tunnel, dressed in street clothes. He ran toward me and wrapped his arms around me. It was like getting hugged by a grizzly bear.

“You did good, Tim,” he said. His voice was so animated, so happy—so unlike the Tony who’d been giving me one-word answers. “You did really, really good.”

From then on, Tony became like a big brother—always tough, always direct, but also always looking out for me. When we were on the road, we’d go out to dinner and dissect every one of Tony’s saves, every angle of play, from whatever game the MetroStars had just played. At the end of the meal, he always reached for the check.

“Keep your money,” he’d say, waving away my cash with a bulging arm. “I’ve got this one.”

T
he MetroStars slumped badly as the season progressed. We led the league in ejections, with nine, and we ranked third in yellow cards.

Then our head coach, Alfonso Mondelo, was abruptly fired and replaced by Bora Milutinovic, who may have led four countries into the second round of the World Cup—Mexico in ’86, Costa Rica in ’90, the U.S. in ’94, and Nigeria in ’98—but had no idea what awaited him in Jersey.

Bora had his work cut out for him.

B
efore the next season started, Bora gave the MetroStars a makeover. He traded Tony and Alexi to Kansas City. Tony was
replaced with Mike Ammann, an irreverent guy, beloved in the locker room for his off-the-cuff imitations and attempts to wind up Tab.

But Bora’s efforts were no more successful than any other coach’s had been. By June 1999, our record was 4–9, and we were dead last in the Eastern Conference.

On June 20, we played the Kansas City Wizards; with a record of 3–10, they were the bottom team in the Western Conference. This was the polar opposite of a championship match; we were battling it out to see which of us was the worst of the worst.

They embarrassed us, 6–0.

Ordinarily, after a thrashing like that, we’d tuck our tails between our legs and try to move on. But there was something about this particular humiliation. Something that said we were a club that couldn’t get it right.

We had hours to kill before our flight home from Kansas City. “Get food,” advised Bora. “Go shopping.”

The bus dropped us off in downtown Kansas City. Bora and Mulch went off to Barnes & Noble. Tab went shopping alone.

The rest of us piled into an Irish pub called O’Dowd’s. There, we drank.

And drank.

It turns out people can drink a lot—a whole lot—in a few hours in Kansas City, especially after taking a thumping on the field. By the time we headed to the team bus, some of the players were stumbling drunk.

As we stepped onto the bus, the song “Jack and Diane” by John Mellencamp was playing. As soon as Mike Ammann heard it, he started singing along. He tripped as he made his way to the back of the bus, but he didn’t stop singing.

The rest of the O’Dowd’s crowd, following him, all joined in. By the time we were seated, we were all belting out the lyrics as if we were a bunch of middle school kids on a field trip.

Bora turned around and looked at us. A bunch of the guys were rocking out the drum solo, waving invisible drumsticks in the air.

You could see the exact moment Bora realized his players were plastered; his face went white, then turned red. He was livid.

Behind him, Tab stared out the window, his jawline hard.

When the next song came on, the drinking crew sang that one together, too—sloppy and loud.

Tab whipped around and snapped, “Would you shut up?! We lost six–nothing.”

But of course we knew that. We hadn’t simply lost. We’d proved that we weren’t just the worst team in the Eastern Conference. We were the worst team in the whole damned MLS.

There was nothing to do but burst out laughing at Tab’s fury.

It was like the bus was divided right down the middle. The boys in the back were obliterated, crooning and laughing. The front of the bus sat there stone-faced, pretending not to hear any of it.

It was a moment that could have only happened in the MLS. It sure wouldn’t have been tolerated on any of the national teams where Bora had once coached. First of all, those teams would have traveled by private plane; they wouldn’t have had hours to kill in a
bar in the first place. But beyond that, getting this hammered in public would have resulted in fines; we’d have lost a month’s salary easily.

Fortunately, the MLS in those early days was like nowhere else in the world.

M
ike Ammann came and went, and by 2001, not long after I turned 22, I became the starting keeper for the MetroStars.

That was the year I grew up—the year I became a man.

By this point, it had been years since I’d sat in a classroom trying to hide my tics. I was tired of running from TS, tired of hiding my symptoms.

I’d been thinking a lot recently about Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. It had genuinely helped knowing there was someone else out there with TS—a pro athlete at that, succeeding at the highest level in his field. But Abdul-Rauf had left the NBA in 1998, and I knew of no other athletes—no other public figure at all—with TS now. Who was out there to prove to today’s kids that TS didn’t have to hold a person back?

I approached the MetroStars publicity director and said I wanted to come out publicly with TS. He did a double take, as if he didn’t understand what I was saying. My guess is that he—like most people—thought of TS primarily as a “cursing disease.” Then I saw the lightbulb go off for him.
Oh,
that’s
what’s going on.
That’s
why he’s always clearing his throat.
That’s
why he’s so damned twitchy.

I told him something else, too: I told him I wanted to start working with kids in the community who had TS. I asked if he could help me find an organization that would be open to my involvement.

He put me in touch with Faith Rice, a New Jersey native who was launching a new nonprofit aimed at assisting Jersey families affected by TS. Faith and I spoke first by phone. She told me that her own son, Kim, had TS, and that she’d spent two decades running herself ragged trying to help him.

Kim was 27 years old now, finally settled in a job where he felt comfortable. But it had taken too long, Faith said, and there hadn’t been nearly enough support. She had big plans, a crummy basement office strewn with discarded office furniture, and not a whole lot else.

But she was determined. “As you know, Tim, kids with TS are going to have to stand up for themselves every day for the rest of their lives.”

We met for lunch—me, Faith, my mom, and Faith’s son Kim.

Faith was an itty-bitty thing, but she charged into that restaurant like a miniature pit bull. I could tell from my first glimpse of her that she had plans for me as well as for herself—plans for the whole wide world, even.

Kim’s symptoms were pronounced. He jerked his neck and shoulders dramatically. He grunted, and once in a while let out a loud yelp, as if he’d been kicked. The restaurant wasn’t crowded enough to be noisy; the few customers present couldn’t help but hear him. Strangers made eye contact with each other, as if to say,
What’s up with
that
guy?

Kim noticed and shrugged. “I’m used to it. Mom and I were at Costco recently; she could hear me from one end of the store to the other.”

Although Kim’s symptoms started at age seven, he wasn’t diagnosed until 17. “I never knew it was an actual condition,” he said. “I just knew I was different. I asked friends sometimes if they ever had these urges. When they said no, I felt really, really alone.”

“And I felt so alone trying to help him,” Faith added. “Doctors couldn’t tell us what he had. Once we finally figured it out, we couldn’t find information, we couldn’t find guidance, we bounced from doctor to doctor trying to find someone who could help.”

I glanced at my mom; I felt sure she was thinking about how hard she’d worked to find information, how little there had been.

As Faith spoke, my eyes kept drifting toward Kim. This was the first time I’d ever spent time with anyone else who had TS. Although Kim’s vocalizations were louder, his motor tics more pronounced than mine, I saw myself in him. There were so many similarities between our stories: the inexplicable urges . . . wondering what in the world was happening . . . feeling alone.

My mom, I could tell, glimpsed her own mirror image in Faith.

Driving home that day, Mom said, “Kim’s symptoms were pretty severe, huh? I didn’t realize how lucky we were that your symptoms are mild.”

Then I was silent. I knew Mom hadn’t meant any harm, but there was something wrong with that word.
Mild
. Nothing about TS had ever felt mild to me. It was a condition I’d spent half my life trying to hide, trying to conquer.

But no matter how hard I tried, TS had won, every time.

“Mom,” I finally said. “I know it may seem like that to you. But I don’t imagine TS ever feels mild for anyone.”

She thought about that for a while. Then, without speaking, she reached over and took my hand.

W
hen the MetroStars released the news—a starting keeper with Tourette Syndrome!—it got picked up by the New York
Daily News
, the Newark
Star-Ledger
,
USA Today
. I got a feature in the
New York Times
, a profile in
Sports Illustrated
.

Faith put me right to work, too. I began hosting events for kids with TS after MetroStars games. I’ll never forget my first one. By now, I’d signed hundreds of posters. I’d given dozens of interviews. I’d already received and responded to countless letters from children, always telling them the same thing:
You can do anything anyone else can do.

But this was the first time I was in a room full of people with the same condition I had.

It’s a funny thing, looking out at a crowd of kids with TS. You see movement—head jerks and quick arm motions, leg kicks and eye blinks. You hear coughs, hums, hoots, yelps.

TS is equal opportunity. Which means every sort of kid was there in that room: every color, every background, every age. They wore hoodies and jeans and baseball caps, like all kids do. They had crew cuts and ponytails.

If they were remarkable at all, it was for how wonderfully ordinary they were.

“I’m Tim Howard,” I said to that fluttering room. “I have Tourette Syndrome. I live with TS. I try to excel with TS. What I don’t do is suffer from TS. And you don’t have to, either.”

S
ome other things were happening that season, too. I was playing well, but I became aware of a new sort of pressure. I was
beginning to understand what an emotional roller-coaster ride I had signed on for—the way your whole world, your whole sense of self, could rest on the outcome of a single game. Win, and you feel euphoric. Lose, and it’s like a punch to the gut—it knocks the air right out of you.

Mind you, as athletes go, I was small-time—earning my keep with a losing team in a league where few Americans could name more than a handful of players. But still, I heard a faint voice inside my head warning:
Don’t rely on winning for your peace and comfort. Find something else. When you find it, cling to it with all your might.

I thought about my Nana, the inner peace she’d always projected. It was exactly what I craved for myself.

I called her.

“Hey, Nana,” I said. “I’d like to go to church with you this weekend, if that’s okay.”

“Well, Tim,” she replied, “you know that’s more than okay with me.”

I loved going to Mount Zion. I loved that it brought me and Nana closer together. It felt like there was no hierarchy in place, no egos raging. Pauper or millionaire, the place welcomed everyone with open arms—all those hugs from congregants, each of whom sought and often found their own spiritual refuge there. Not one of them cared if I’d won or lost my last game.

A
teammate and I started a Bible study. Once a week, a group of us met at a Barnes & Noble to read and discuss passages that moved or puzzled us.