The storyteller always knew he had the makings of a good tale. He was writing about a good kid, a promising football player and an unbelievable back story. In many ways, he had found the perfect character.
But the most surprising thing - for the storyteller and especially for his subject - turned out to be the ending.
"It's so seldom that things work out the way they're supposed to work," author Michael Lewis said, "that I'm a little shocked."
Lewis profiled Oher in The Blind Side, the 2006 New York Times bestseller that is being turned into a movie. You hear Oher's story, you swear it's fiction. At times, you wish it were.
But for Oher and everyone connected with him, every event - the tragic, the difficult, the unfair - they all made Saturday's NFL draft feel that much sweeter. There Oher was in New York City, probably the last place anyone ever envisioned him. The Ravens traded up three spots to select the 6-foot-4, 309-pound offensive tackle with the 23rd pick in the first round. Oher was the last player in the green room at Radio City Music Hall, but he didn't seem to mind a bit.
"Where I'm from, nobody makes it out," Oher explained later.
Growing up with a mother addicted to crack and a father who was shot to death and tossed off a bridge, Oher had little stability as a youth. He bounced around Memphis, Tenn., staying with friends, crashing on floors. Football didn't exist then. School was barely an afterthought.
"It would have been so easy for him to give himself an excuse to fail and to not listen to people, to rebel," Lewis said Saturday night.
The author found that Oher had been enrolled in 11 different institutions in his first nine years of schooling. He repeated the first grade. And the second. There were semesters where he was absent as many as 50 days.
Eventually Oher found himself at a small private school called Briarcrest Christian, where Hugh Freeze, the football coach, wasn't quite sure what he was looking at. Standing before him was a giant of a boy - a mountain of flesh, but still very much a boy. Freeze said Oher was shy, meek, subtle.
"He wouldn't even raise his head to look you in the eyes to talk with you," Freeze said. "He's come miles since then."
Oher was soon taken in by a bighearted Memphis family. Sean Tuohy was an athlete himself, the star point guard at Ole Miss who was later drafted by the New Jersey Nets. He owned a chain of fast-food restaurants, and he and his family had much to share. The Tuohys gave Oher a roof, clothes, tutors, everything he needed.
