The Game's The Thing

IN THE autumn of 1987 Bo Eason was a heat-seeking All-Pro safety for the Houston Oilers, one of the NFL's most feared—and loathed—players. The Oilers were scheduled to play the Patriots in Week 5, presenting a problem for Bo: New England's quarterback was Tony Eason, his older brother by 17 months, meaning Bo would be expected to intercept, blitz and otherwise bring misfortune upon his blood kin. As the showdown neared, Bo was so conflicted, he told SI, that he thought, "Maybe, if I remove my contacts, I won't be able to see Tony's face and no brotherhood can creep into the game."

NFL players went on strike three weeks before that game, preventing an Eason-versus-Eason encounter. But Bo, now 46 and an actor and a playwright, kept wondering what would have happened if the game had gone on. He explores the possibilities grippingly in the one-man play Runt of the Litter, which he wrote and stars in. Runt—now having a successful Off-Broadway run—is set an hour before a fictional AFC Championship Game: Eason plays Jack, a cocksure Oilers safety about to take the field against his older brother, Charlie, "the greatest quarterback of all time." In a series of stirring locker-room soliloquies and animated family anecdotes, Jack explains that he is the runt of six siblings, an undersized scrub who compensated by waking up at the crack of dawn to catch 1,000 balls every morning for 20 years. It was all done to keep pace with Charlie, for whom everything came easy, and to fulfill their father's NFL dreams for his sons.

Eason's script strays into tangential, Warren Sapp--style rants (such as five minutes on the illegitimacy of the Hall of Fame). But Eason's performance is powerful, and Runt is a touching study of a player's dueling allegiances to family and team. The choice isn't as clear-cut as you'd think. "I will color the field red with [Charlie's] blood and drown him in it," Jack bellows, spewing decades of frustration and sibling rivalry. Bo Eason seems to think that mentality might have gotten the best of him in 1987: At one point Jack hisses, "I am blinded." It's a startling moment, and it's easy to envision Tony Eason cringing—and giving thanks that he never peered into the opposing backfield and saw Bo.

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