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A Pint-Size Publications Product |
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By William Meiners
Through 22 years now, we’ve given some space and pages to very serious-minded poets and writers. You’ll find Rus Bradburd, Robert Lipsyte and Dave Zirin interviews on our A to Z page under the “I” link. Not one of these “sports writers” has steered clear of controversial causes. Muhammad Ali, who graced our “22nd Summer” issue, still available, stood toe to toe with the most pressing societal issues of his day. Yet, Ali almost always did that with great humor. So it’s within this seriousness below, that we repurpose a wonderful poem from Paul Hostovsky (published last summer) and one of our all-time favorite essays from Michael McColly (published in the summer of 2000). Both subjects remain timely, I think. I hope you’ll read and think about them, too. If you’re in a Celtic nostalgic mood, check out this famous 30 seconds and one of the best announcer calls in NBA history. In far less seriousness, and in honor of March Madness, here’s my top five nicknames for the Commander in Cheetos who likes to dish out nicknames.
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Clutch Steal by Paul Hostovsky “This John Havlicek, he is Czech,” says my father who is Czech and doesn’t speak English all that well and doesn’t know what a lay-up is, or a free-throw, or a pick. We are sitting on the paisley couch watching the Celtics play the 76ers. It’s 1965. I hate to tell him, I tell him as I steal the bag of potato chips from him, but John Havlicek isn’t Czech. He’s from Ohio. Born and raised. My father was visiting someone in Belgium when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia — someone who set a pick for him, someone who saw it all coming — and he escaped to Paris, then Madrid, then Lisbon, then New York. Always one step ahead. He was lucky. He was more than lucky. He was — what’s the word in English? — charmed. And he lived. He lived, unlike his own father, and mother, and brothers and sisters — his entire team. All lost by the time that nightmare was over. Twenty years later, he’s sitting with me on a paisley couch in a house in New Jersey, watching the Celtics play the 76ers, the announcer’s impossible English sprinkled with Havliceks: “Havlicek for two.” “Havlicek from the corner.” “Havlicek under the boards.” And then John Havlicek steals the ball — a clutch steal in the closing seconds of that game, clinching the Eastern Conference Championship and immortalizing Havlicek forever. My father steals the potato chips back and says, “I am liking this John Havlicek. He is maybe from Ohio. But he is Czech. And he is charmed.”
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Christmas City, U.S.A. by Michael McColly In 1966 my family moved from the little farm town where I was born to Marion, Indiana, where my father took a job as a high school teacher and basketball and baseball coach. Marion was a factory town that manufactured TV tubes, automobile frames, glass jars, and plastic Christmas decorations. In fact, Marion churned out more plastic Santas and reindeer than any other town in the world. Christmas City, U.S.A., a sign boasted outside of town, dwarfed the other two markers that announced its other two claims of notoriety: the birthplace of James Dean and home to the State Basketball Champs of 1926. Unwritten on the water towers and welcome signs on the highways, however, was any mention of the August night in 1930 when a mob stormed Marion’s jail, dragged two black teenagers accused of murdering a white man out to the courthouse square, strung them up in a tree, and tried to burn their bodies, giving Marion the infamous distinction of being the site of the last known lynching above the Mason-Dixon line. We lived in an old farmhouse on the south side of town in a working-class neighborhood populated by both blacks and whites who’d moved up from the South for factory work. There wasn’t much on our side of town except the VA Hospital, the town dump, 38th Street Park, and the Christian College, where Methodist missionaries taught Christian mathematics and Christian biology to their converts from poor countries I’d never heard of — like Ghana and Honduras. Walking home from school I passed by the campus and gawked at these foreign students, innocent smiles locked onto their faces, dressed in ill-fitting secondhand clothes. To me they looked like someone’s prized doll collection come to life. But when they looked back at me, and the broken, queer sounding words came out from their lips, I felt like mountains or giant trees from a jungle had popped up out of the monotonous middle-American landscape. Summer evenings, coming back from the grocery store, my father would drive slowly by the park to keep tabs on his black players at 38th Street Park, which was where they all hung out. He pulled up to the curb, leaned his head out the window and studied their play. Sometimes, if he was in a good mood, he might holler out something to one of his guys, more for his sake than theirs, forcing my sister and me in the back seat to duck for fear of being seen: “Hey Pettiford! You got any feet? Use ‘em!” Thank God he never got out. I watched him watching them, his face softening from its usual hardened stare, as these black young men ran the court like they were some part of his youth that he could never have back. For my father, too, had played basketball in college and baseball in the minor leagues until he had to quit when age caught up with him. The year Bobby Kennedy campaigned in Marion for president I made the fifth-grade basketball team. We had uniforms, an electric scoreboard, referees with striped shirts, cheerleaders, and everything. Our team was half black and half white. I played forward, two other white kids played at guard, and two black guys who were cousins played center and forward, James and Clayton Stanton. Often my mom took some of my teammates home from the away games, and since James and Clayton lived down the street, they came with us. I don’t remember getting a ride with their parents, not that they didn’t come; they did. Sometimes I could see James’ mother sitting in a big old coat off by herself in the corner of the gym with his little sister. James lived across the street from the RCA plant where his mother worked. I often wondered, since she worked there, if they had TVs in every room of their house. If he had a lot of TVs, I never found out because he never invited me inside. But I did discover that in James’ house, as it was in my dad’s, there was no father. Read more...
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