Like tens of thousands of impressionable younger brothers, 6-year-old Keon Lattimore would follow his big brother out to the backyard for some football pointers. And like tens of thousands of older brothers, Ray Lewis -- nine years older, already a young man -- would cooperate, handing Lattimore a football and sending him off toward the other boys in the backyard. "Just run into 'em," Ray Lewis would say. "Go hit somebody."
More than a decade later, Lattimore is again wandering onto Ray Lewis's field of play. The Maryland sophomore is part of a stable of running backs expected to be used Saturday against Navy -- at night, under the lights, on the same M&T Bank Stadium turf claimed by the Ravens' all-pro linebacker. Lattimore has sat in a skybox on the 50-yard line and watched his brother play countless times in that purple-
infused stadium; now Lewis will be the spectator and Lattimore the performer. And the older brother's injunction this time is equally demanding.
"He knows the situation, I know the situation," Lattimore, 21, said. "We talked about it a long time ago. And now that the time has come, it's just, 'You know what you've got to do, little bro.' "
Lattimore, of course, has been hearing such instructions and the inevitable comparisons to Lewis since those backyard games. That talk accelerated when Lewis became a high school star in Florida and then at the University of Miami.
When Lewis was being interviewed by men holding television cameras, he'd point to Lattimore and tout his advancing skills. The cameras would turn, and the new question would be, "Well, what do you have to say about that, little brother?" Lattimore recalled.
Even after Lewis became an NFL star and relocated his mother and siblings from Florida to Maryland, Lattimore was convinced he'd follow his brother's path to Miami, which recruited him as a defensive back. He even told Mike Working, his coach at Mount St. Joseph High, that he didn't want to be recruited by any other schools, that he bled orange.
"But as I got older I got tired of being in my brother's shadow, you know?" Lattimore said. "I wanted my own name. I wanted my own fame."
The name is not a problem; the brothers had different fathers and thus different last names, a fact that never diminished their relationship. The fame, though, is a different issue, and not just because of the brothers' resemblance.
In high school basketball and football games, "everybody knew who Keon's brother was," Working said. "Everybody in Baltimore knows who Keon's brother is."
Nothing changed during a year of post-secondary school at Hargrave Military Academy, where Lattimore went after failing to get a qualifying SAT score.
"Kids would play against him harder," Hargrave Coach Robert Prunty said. "When people know that your brother is Ray Lewis, everybody wants to get a hit on you."
