The Muddled Male

Basketball Hero

By Bob Stevens, The Muddled Male

            I always wanted to be an athlete, but I was built wrong.  I was short and skinny.  And I was slow and had no muscles.  By “no muscles” I mean that instead of a “six-pack” for a stomach, I had a half-pint that was shaped a little like a cardboard carton.  I tried tennis for a while and wasn’t bad, but instead of finesse I preferred to smash the ball, usually into my side of the net.  I tried to play center in football, but I always ended up face down in the mud with a gorilla standing over me the instant I hiked the ball.  Besides, I didn’t have enough strength to hike the ball clear back to the punter on fourth down.  There was no soccer in my day, so I decided to focus on basketball.

            Now you probably think that for a short, wimpy guy to focus on basketball doesn’t make much sense.  But I figured that if I worked really hard and learned to dribble fast and close to the floor I could just dribble right under those tall, gangly guys that thought that all they had to do on defense was to stand under the basket and bat the ball away every time the opposing team took a shot.  And so began my effort to upgrade my basketball skills to the point that the coach would consider moving me from the spot where the bench-warmers sat, to a place next to the coach and reserved for critical players who were sent into the game whenever a do-or-die moment presented itself.  I worked, and worked, and worked until, finally, I heard those words coveted by every up and coming basketball player, “Way to drive, Stevens…..Way to drive.  Take it to the basket Stevens…..The rest of you take note.  That is the way I want you all to play the game,” or something like that.  He was so happy with my performance that he picked me to start our game the next Friday.

            I should probably explain about our high school basketball facility.  Those of you who remember the days of North Rich and South Rich will know what I mean.  Our basketball floor was barely regulation in size, and was surrounded by roll-back benches.  When the benches were extended to provide seating for paying fans the benches came to within three or four inches of the out-of-bounds lines for the court.  When a player was assigned to throw the ball in from out of bounds the fans would have to clear a spot for the player to stand by lifting their feet up onto the bench where they were sitting.  The ball player would then have to stand with his toes pointed straight out to each side to avoid standing inside the playing area.  There were no such things in our gym as fancy glass backboards hanging out over the floor.  We had a solid backboard bolted to the side of the student balcony at each end of the floor.  I don’t mean to demean our meager facility.  There was a lot of good basketball played there, like the Harlem Globetrotters who played a game in that very gym at the behest of the local Lions Club.

            Well Friday came and we were scheduled to play Tooele in their brand new sports complex.  Before we left the locker room the coach said, “Stevens, you’re starting.  Get out on the floor and show everybody how to play the game,” or something similar.  When we came out of the locker room and stepped onto the floor to warm up, the place looked like a gigantic cavern.  I had never seen a gym that large.  It appeared to be big enough to house three basketball floors, and there were glass backboards jutting out toward the floor all over the place.  There was no balcony behind the backboards to help me judge distance, and the beginning of the bleachers seemed to be ten feet back from the edge of the court.  There were a jillion lights shining down onto a brightly lit floor, and the bleachers were so large that they extended up and out of sight into the darkness of the arena.  I completely lost my sense of distance and I couldn’t even figure out where I was on the floor.  My basketball career lasted a little less than thirty seconds before the coach jerked me from the game and sent me back down to the far end of the bench where he promptly forgot I was the same guy he was praising earlier in the week.

            Luckily Ann, my wife, didn’t know me then.  Had she known that I couldn’t play basketball and I also couldn’t dance she probably would have turned me down when I asked her for a date.  As it was she didn’t get to know me until I was that cool cat from Devils Slide with a zebra shirt, a duck’s derriere haircut, and an awesome underslung car with pipes and a neckers’ knob.  She couldn’t resist me then.  Just ask her.  On second thought maybe you should just keep it as our little secret.