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41 4 A Neighborhood Could Play with One Ball People talk about basketball now as black America’s game, the black American pastime. You’re asking me if somehow I played a role in making that happen. The strange thing is, like I said before, baseball was probably my favorite game. Everyone in those days played baseball. But basketball gave me the chance, and I took it. This scout for Branch Rickey, Rex Bowen, offered me a baseball contract. He wanted me to go to Oklahoma, which was not a place a black kid wanted to be at that time, and there was always the chance I’d be in the minors for ten years. With basketball, I knew could step right into the big leagues if I made it. That was it. That helped me make my decision. I wasn’t thinking of what came next. Now, if you ask me about why all the kids play today, I have a philosophy or belief on how that came to be, and why it stays that way. A big part of it is economics. A whole neighborhood can’t use one tennis racket to play a game made for two. And you can’t play baseball unless you’ve got the right equipment and a field big enough to play on. If you don’t have a catcher, you’re not going to throw fastballs, and no one’s playing catcher without a mask and chest protector. Your options are limited with a lot of sports if you’re in the city, but a whole neighborhood can play a whole lot of basketball with one ball and one rim. That’s affordability. It costs nothing. Baseball or hockey, they demand all that equipment, and there can be a lot of expense. That’s the biggest reason basketball took off and then became a way of life. That’s sociological more than anything. A neighborhood can play with one ball: two teams playing, one guy on the sidelines who says, “I got 42 | Moonfixer game.” It’s an outlet in a place that often doesn’t offer many. And we all need an outlet, all of us. For my community—for many, many years—it’s been basketball. It costs nothing. You get up, you go to the playground, and you play the game. A lot of people, especially kids, define themselves that way. Now, I also understand that it’s become more than that. I remember doing an interview once at Tennessee Tech, and the guy asked me, “Earl, for black kids today, do they see basketball as their best way out?” And I said, “No.” It might become a way out, something they talk about, and what kid wouldn’t dream about getting the big contracts? But I think, beyond all else, it’s become a social thing, a matter of community. Everyone plays. It brings everyone together. It’s no accident that the Rucker League and the Baker League are flourishing in the heart of New York City and Philadelphia. The guys who run those leagues are miracle makers. They understand the big picture. They understand that basketball is a passion that will bring the kids to them. You can’t begin to imagine how many lives those guys have touched. You can’t even guess at the number of kids who would have ended up with nothing, going nowhere, but instead got scholarships because someone noticed them playing in those leagues. The dunking thing, this whole idea that you’re defined by the way you play above the rim, came along long after me. In my time, dunking was dangerous. It was considered grandstanding. I never dunked. But I’m not down on it. These kids today are supermen. Even the backcourt people play over the rim. You see a guy five-foot-six, Spud Webb, winning a dunking contest. Everyone dunks. I still go to basketball games, but I really love to watch the games in my den because you get to see the good players make every play twice, whatever they do. They are so skilled that sometimes you just ask yourself , “Did I just see what I thought I saw?” And then you get the replay, and you see it again. That’s today’s game. Flying above the rim and dunking, for me, would have been dangerous, because it would have been seen as showboating. You just might end up in the fourth...

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