![]() In the fall of 1998, on his way to a delivery in Baton Rouge, Lewis heard a commercial for the Bayou Beasts of the now-defunct Indoor Professional Football League. He felt haunted by his giving up in high school, by his father giving up his dreams for his son. Sitting in the front seat, he'd watch footballs from the Saints fields shoot through the sky like birds taking off. The younger Lewis used to pull into work each afternoon at Budweiser in his 1989 champagne-colored Buick Regal. I watch that boy run, I see his moves, I know where he got 'em and I think, 'That's me playing ball out there.'" "This has been a dream come true for me, too. "And now that boy has made it - for both of us - and I love him for it," says Mike Sr., 47, who works in medical waste management at a New Orleans hospital. As a teenager, Lewis could sense his father's football frustration and he would always turn around, after rushing out of the house to football practice, and promise, "Daddy, I'm gonna go to the NFL!" Mostly, they spoke about his father, Michael Lewis Sr., a standout wide receiver at Bonnabel High in the early 1970s, who gave up his dreams of playing college ball when as a 16-year-old he fathered Michael. Here, at his grandparents' white clapboard home - nicknamed the White House - Lewis learned of his family's gift of blazing speed by wandering out to the garage and listening in as the old-timers sipped beer, tinkered with their cars and told tales. Mike has All-Pro talent."īefore finding a home in the NFL, Lewis lived in Kenner, a hardscrabble neighborhood just a few deep patterns from the Saints practice facility. "Now they see he can play and win games and go to the Pro Bowl. You know, the Beer Man and nothing else," says Saints player development director Ricky Porter. "At first I think people took Mike as a joke, a mascot. The coach wanted Lewis to understand that, sometimes, the real work begins after your dreams come true. You're a professional now, he told Lewis, not a sideshow. No more pictures or TV interviews in front of your old truck. That's when Haslett put the Beer Man gimmick to rest. In the 43-27 win over the Redskins, Lewis rocketed a kickoff return 90 yards for a TD, returned a punt all the way from his own 17 and added two catches for 70 yards to finish with 356 all-purpose yards. In Week 6 Lewis became the seventh player in NFL history, and the first in 25 years, to return a kick and a punt for touchdowns in the same game. Just don't call him the Beer Man around Saints coach Jim Haslett. Not just the average-Joe fan, but the players, too. "Mike's tale is a hero's tale," says a Saints teammate, RB Fred McAfee. So he's not buying a dream house as much as he's getting a home built on dreams. Now he's 31, and fans have made him the leading vote-getter among kick returners in this season's Pro Bowl balloting. At the NFL-ancient age of 29, with just a year of JV high school football and no college experience, Lewis began his journey through the darkest recesses of professional football like some kind of Dante character in shoulder pads. In less than two years, the 5'8", 165-pound bayou waterbug has gone from driving a beer truck, schlepping kegs for a Budweiser distributorship two doors down from the Saints practice facility, to leading the NFL with 1,950 total return yards (1,504 kickoff, 446 punt). "Well, dreams are a lot of hard work, big guy." "This is your dream house, right, Mike?" he asks. The trooper intervenes, offering his own pen. "Ya'll are killing me now, baby," he laughs. Lewis leans over the deed of sale, takes a deep breath and signs his life away to the bank for 140 big ones, forcing himself to break the habit, just this once, of adding No.84 next to his autograph. It is now well past 8.įinally, the closing attorney hurries in, apologizes for the delays and hands Lewis a pen. Earlier in the day, Lewis retrieved a voice mail from the phone in his red Escalade instructing him to come straight to the closing after the Saints' practice ended at 4:30 p.m. Notarized and a small mountain of paperwork that is still missing Lewis' signature. There are termite reports to review, several pages regarding "truth in lending" that need to be At this rate that may be sometime next June. That's right, the seller just happens to be a cop and, well, he's not handing his home over until everything is just right. They're perched on top of a giant wood conference table and guarded by the meaty hands of a Louisiana state trooper. The keys to Michael Lewis' dream home have been sitting there, just out of reach, for the past 3 1/2 hours.
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