Kate Asher: Don’t tell me to play fair. I’m going to do whatever I have to do to get an interview with hard-partying football star Sean Donovan, even if it means dressing up like a hooker and playing bump-and-grind with him on the dancefloor.
Sean Donovan: On the field, I play fair, but in life, it’s anybody’s game. The second I saw her red hair and red lips I knew that I’d be making a forward pass. And when she flashed that cleavage, whew man, it was game over!
She wants to get inside my head and I want to get inside her pants. I think it’s time we talk about a trade…
Kate Asher
“Forget it, Kate, he’ll never talk to you,” Walter said, shaking his bald head slowly and making the squinty face that reminded me of that old cartoon character, Mr. Magoo.
I was doing my best to keep the whine out of my voice. Walter hated whiny women. I said, “But I don’t understand why I couldn’t at least try to contact Sean Donovan and—“
He gave me a dismissive wave, like he was shooing away a bad smell. Walter was in his late fifties and had drank like a fish and smoked like a chimney for decades. His voice was gruff and irritating, especially when he was dealing with what he considered to be overeager young journalists who were pitching him silly story ideas.
He said, “It would be a total waste of time and resources, so just forget it. Sean Donovan is still pissed at us for posting that video of him having a three-way with those two groupies in Chicago. Our people can’t even get past the guards at Kings Stadium anymore. We have to cover their home games by watching them on TV or listening to them on the radio.”
I blew out a long breath and bit my lip. Arguing with Walter Thompson was like having a battle of wits with a brick wall. No matter how sound your argument, there was no way to convince him that your idea had merit once he decided that it did not. And Walter rarely gave merit to any idea I came up with.
I was a girl.
A chick.
A broad.
Hired to keep the EEOC off his back.
I should have been off writing for Glamour or Modern Bride. Professional sports reporting was no place for girl, at least in Walter’s mind. He’d never say it out loud, of course, because it would get his ass sued off. But I had worked for Walter since getting out of journalism school two years ago. I knew exactly how he felt about women journalists in sports, even good ones like me.
Walter was my editor at Sports Insider Online. He was the guy who assigned stories to writers and decided what went in the magazine, what went online, and what went in the trash.
Walter was an old-school sports guy, always reminiscing about the “good old days” and how things used to be, i.e. when all sports reporters were male. Walter was also a sexist pig who thought that “little girls” like me should be on the sidelines in slutty cheerleader outfits rather than on the field covering the game with the boys.
I sat in the chair across the desk from him and silently fumed for a minute. I’m not sure what I expected when I came in to pitch Walter the idea of me doing an exposé on Sean Donovan, the New York Kings star running back.
Hell, I didn’t even know if there was anything left to expose at this point. Sean Donovan had more dirt floating around the internet than Charlie Sheen, yet the good old boy sports reporters and TV analysts painted him to be a god.
The fans loved him, and who could blame them?
He averaged two touchdowns per game. And in football, that was all anyone cared about. As long as he wasn’t abusing women or kicking puppies, his off-the-field antics were more or less ignored.
Just boys being boys.
Blowing off a little steam.
It helped that he looked like the proverbial All American Hero.
Sean Donovan was six-three, packed with muscles, and could run the 40-yard dash in 4.5 seconds. He had caught more touchdown passes than any other Kings receiver in the past five years and was considered a shoe-in for this year’s Pro Bowl.
Why should anyone care about the testosterone-driven fights with other players on the field, or the drunken bar brawls with fans of other teams? Or the numerous sex videos floating around the internet? Jesus, this guy’s junk was on display more than Michelangelo’s statue of David. And Donovan’s junk was much bigger, if you know what I mean. I’d seen all the videos… for research purposes, of course.
But then there was the other side of Sean Donovan.
The side that donated millions of dollars to charity every year.
And the side that visited children’s hospitals in every city where the team played.
And the side that worked with inner city kids in New York City.
And the side that seems like a genuinely nice guy in TV interviews.