Some kinds of silence are like drowning. The thing itself is not nearly as awful as that which comes before: the panic, the struggle, and, finally, the inevitalbe limbless despair that opens its mouth wide to a darkness that is thick and gagging. Imagine the silence of thirty thousand people becoming this way, flowing from loud folly and life into deep muffled whispers and then a massive release of tragic, heavy breath. An entire arena had just hit rock bottom, so to speak, and had become silent in this way.

 

Billy Watson stood on the stage that was the center of this damp and massive lull. His hands still held the machine, but his blonde head was bowed; his stature was limp; and his face had gone pale. The thirty thousand stared unblinking at the large screens above, from which they could see the watery blue eyes of Billy stare into a black hole of a playfield. His rebel's energy, his general’s pride, and even his very soul poured from those watery orbs into the great recess of the machine.

 

Billy exhaled, and his breath roared through the stadium like winter wind through a stone tunnel, like water falling from above. His strong fingers fell away from their prolonged touch on the flipper buttons; he turned his broad back on the machine; and he walked back to the bench very slowly. Each footstep echoed hollow on the floor like an emcee tapping a microphone to make sure that it's on.

 

This story begins at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. Billy Watson was the captain and great hope for the US National Pinball Team, a small group of young men that was as Cinderalla as a it was charming, determined, and, frankly, electryfing. "Billy," the press was on a first-name basis with him, had consistently defined new moments in professional sports history during this tournament. Moments like the 38,000 Ball 1 that he opened with against the favored Swiss team in the first game of the competition. With that single ball, Watson created a points gap from which the Swiss never recovered and a moment in pinball that would never be forgotten. Billy beacme an overnight national sensation; his handsome Aryan face had been a constant presence on the TV and in the newspapers for nearly a week thereafter, and before the tournament was not even over, Billy had been flooded with spokesman contracts for everything from Wheaties to Preparation H.

 

Despite the current Olympic miracles, the US Pinball Team was young, had achieved only average results in international play, and had only known each other for a short amount of time. No one had predicted them to get to even the second round, but "Billy's Boys," as they were now affectionately known, had since sparked the imagination and emotions of the entire world by defeating first the Cubans in an exhausting, thrilling slugfest and then then the strong Swiss with an efficiency and flaire that suprised even the athletes themselves. During the bench-clearing brawl that erupted after that match, Billy actually knocked out one player cold and broke another's nose, further adding to the embarrasement and shame of the Swiss and the streamrolling popularity of Billy himself.

 

America's impossible dream continued when, in their final match of Round One, the US defeated the powerful and precise Clockwork Orange of Holland, a team that many experts had predicted for Gold. It was an upset match of international proportion, like France winning the Olympic Baseball Title, like Ecuador winning the World Cup of Soccer. And again it was Billy, whose three late extra balls had given his team the necessary leverage to sqeak out a victory. The victory made the headlines of the New York Times, Le Globe, The London Examiner, El Pais, and others. Billy's Boys smiled like children for the cover of TIME magazine in that fabled week, with Billy Watson himself sitting deadcenter and twinkling his blue eyes for all of the millions of dollars they were soon to be worth. The short paragraph on the contents page read:

 

Billy's Boys: The team that wasn't supposed to win a single match will play for Gold this Saturday against the Soviet Union, the grand royalty of international pinball. Although the Soviets have won each of their matches by at least 20,000 points, a margin unprecedented in the history of pinball, US captain Billy Watson remains confident that the US has got "the right stuff".

 

The Soviets were so good, so exacting, that rumours had spread that they took drugs to improve their reflexes and to decrease their eye focusing time. Regardless of how they developed their abilities, the prowess of the Soviets was uncontestable, and although the rest of the world was sure that they would win with ease, Billy, and many other Americans had thought that the US could take the Gold, or at least put up a good fight.

 

But, like a bird that rides a warm jet stream of air, these fans had been riding a dream. Vultures from the press and rabid fans had ...