Character Analysis
Steve's mom, dad, and brother, Jerry, are the home team, cheering Steve on no matter how bad it gets. But not all fans are the same.
Mrs. Harmon
Mama is the die-hard fan. Even when her team loses more games than they win, she wears the baseball cap and keeps ironing the jersey.
That's how she sees her boy Steve. Mama declares, "No matter what anybody says, I know you're innocent, and I love you very much" (13.33); she leaves fresh clothes and underwear for him to wear in the courtroom.
But that doesn't mean it's easy for her. She takes a while to come visit Steve in jail, "and she tried to explain to me why she hadn't been here before, but she didn't have to. All you had to see were the tears running down her face and the whole story was there" (13.25). The woman is absolutely heartbroken.
That's it, though: He's her son and he's innocent, period. When Steve takes movies of himself at home after the trial, she doesn't understand it, but she doesn't care either—she's just happy he's home and not in prison. Win or lose, Steve will always be her innocent boy.
Mr. Harmon
Dad's still a fan, but the more his team loses, the more he wonders if rooting for them is such a good idea. They sure make some stupid choices. As a result, he doesn't always know what to believe.
That's how it is with Steve. Dad roots for him, visits him in jail, sits in the courtroom… but he doesn't know his son anymore. When Steve was a baby, he "never thought of seeing you—you know—seeing you in a place like this. It just never came to me that you'd ever be in any kind of trouble" (8.82). Whereas Mama is heartbroken, Dad is blindsided.
In Mr. Harmon's defense, he's found himself in an intensely difficult situation, not allowed to hold his son's hand when he starts to cry and struggling to give Steve the assurance he "has always seen there" (8.83). All he can do is weep himself.
And that breaks Steve's heart because "it's like a man looking down to see his son and seeing a monster instead" (9.1).
We want to say that there's no way that Mr. Harmon sees a monster when he looks at Steve, but his decision to move away after the trial makes that tricky. Why does he leave his family? Is it to escape a monster? To escape his broken dreams? Or just because the trial ripped away the assurance he always felt in his son?
Jerry
Jerry's the fun-sized fan who really doesn't care if the team wins or loses. He's a fan because his mom, dad, and especially his big brother, are die-hards. Nothing can tear him from his team, not even being too young to visit his big brother in jail.
Jerry idolizes his big brother. When Steve says he wants to be Superman, Jerry argues that he should be "Batman. Then I could be Robin" (4.69). Aww…
We don't know much more about Jerry than that, but we do know that Steve's relationship with Jerry makes him think long and hard about why he's in the slammer. He wants to be Jerry's Batman, but superheroes don't wear orange jumpsuits. He even waves to Jerry standing on the street outside the jail when he knows his little bro can't see him. In the end, he decides that the Batman advice he needs his Robin to live by is "Think about all the tomorrows of your life" (17.9).
We can only hope Jerry will learn from his big bro's mistakes.