By age five, he was a member of a youth basketball squad and a T-ball team (Mike and Chris are still bewildered by the time Sam, playing first, caught a soft pop fly, tagged the base and then threw a runner out at second for a triple play-something they didn’t think their son knew existed). “I went to pick him up,” says Chris, “and I’ll never forget the woman handing him to me, saying, ‘I just can’t do him anymore.’”īy age four, Sam was participating in taekwondo to burn off steam. “My parents,” the quarterback says, “wouldn’t have allowed it.” It’s not uncommon for a quarterback to play Pop Warner, then a season of flag and then spend the summer under the watchful eye of a $200-an-hour passing guru. In Orange County, it’s not uncommon for a nine-year-old pitcher to throw sliders and curveballs nine or 10 months of the year-with a father behind the backstop holding a radar gun. The Darnolds’ Capistrano Beach household is in the heart of south Orange County, where there are youth sports leagues atop leagues atop leagues, and private coaches atop private coaches atop private coaches. When the season ends, I’m done with baseball.”
“Dad, I’m not gonna quit,” Sam says afterward. The coach calls him back to the bench for a pinch hitter. Second at-bat, Sam belts a ground-rule double that bounds over the right-field fence. It is power-deprived San Clemente’s first home run of the season. First at-bat, Sam smashes a moonshot to the opposite field. His Tritons are playing at Capistrano Valley High, and Jordan Bocko-a future UC Irvine pitcher-is on the hill. Finally, 20 games into the season, he is platooned in right field. So Sam holds a pencil and scribbles down baseball’s etchings-K and 2B and BB. “Keep score,” he commands-a euphemism for “Damn you for not living and dying with baseball.” So now, even though he possesses a rocket for a right arm and Ruthian heft in his bat, one of the biggest, strongest, most athletic boys in school is being punished. That’s why he joined the team late-because he had to wrap up the basketball season. Unlike nearly all of the other players, he has not imprisoned himself in a single sport. Sam is 14 years old and a member of the freshman baseball team at San Clemente High. It’s always better to be open and honest.”
“Tell him how the yelling makes you feel. “I’m not trying to miss them.”Ĭhris looks at the boy, stunned at the rare emotional outpouring. “Does he think I’m missing them on purpose?” Sam asks between heaving breaths. Now, alongside his mother, the tears won’t stop.
#Gone home sam locker free#
A game just ended, and the head coach has ripped into his star forward for bricking free throws. He is sitting in the front seat of the Darnolds’ car, weeping uncontrollably. Sam is 12 years old and a member of a local rec league basketball team. Chris, a middle school physical education teacher and his wife of 23 years, is across the way on a blue couch, nodding. As he opines from a chair inside the living room of his Capistrano Beach, California, home, he dips one corn chip after another into a small bowl of green guacamole, taking meticulous nibbles off the corners. He is a stocky 53-year-old medical gas plumber with short hair and a soft-spoken manner. “I hate it,” says the quarterback’s father. That they become one with a chosen sport. There’s a playbook, written long ago and perfected lately by LaVar Ball, that demands our offspring live and die with a gilded mojo and chosen sport. In the modern world of Sports Mythology: 101, Sam Darnolds are increasingly rare specimens. “That’s Sam,” says Chris Darnold, his mother. Whether discussing last season’s thrilling Rose Bowl win over Penn State or if he’ll declare for the 2018 NFL draft (he’s noncommittal), his vocal tone remained at the same level.
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