WITH OR WITHOUT A PRAYER
With six seconds remaining in the football game, fourth down, his team four points behind, Chip the quarterback calls time and jogs over to his coach on the sideline. The coach, his cap mud-stained from having thrown it to the ground several times, stares midfield toward the goal post. In his Deep South way of speaking, he says to the quarterback: "Honey, you know what you have to do, throw the
Hail Mary. Wing it down there and pray it gets caught by one of ours."
"Coach, who's gonna block?"
"Listen to me, son. It's the same situation Doug Flutie faced back in '84. Even the score's the same, Boston College down 45 to 41, the ball on Miami's 48, six seconds left to play. Little Doug hit his roommate, boy name of Gerard Phelan, and won the game 47-45. Run it off the shotgun, Chipper. Drop back, give your people time to get down
there and put it up."
"I drop back," Chip says. I'm throwing the ball 60 yards. And I'm getting rushed."
"same as Flutie, and you're bigger'n he is."
"Coach, it's raining, the ball's wet-"
"Son, Flutie had rain, mist and a high wind. He went back to near his own 40, scrambled, threw the ball into a 30-mile-an-hour gale and pulled the game out. You know what his coach said? He
said, 'Mary was definitely listening to us as we sure needed that one.'"
"We actually say a Hail Mary?"
"It won't hurt you none. Go out there and I'll pray you got the arm."
In the huddle - a circle of gold helmets and face guard, chin straps hanging, a grumble of pain-inspired obscenities - Chip calls the Hail Mary and tells the players," Let's put our hands in here and we'll say it
together."
Three of his teammates, believers in the efficacy of prayer, start right in. "Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou-"
"Hold it - time out," says one who has never prayed in his life and isn't going to start now. "Leave me out, man. Prayin' ain't my style."
Chip says to him, his running back: "Come on, Scoot. We're a team."
"Hear what I'm sayin' to you, Chippy. I score, it's me doin' it, not some lady showing me the holes."
A voice representing the five players who do
pray but without hope of reward offers, "We can try it, but who says a Hail Mary's gonna work?"
"even when it does," another doubter adds, "how do you know it was the prayer that made it happen...READ MORE 
