Sports: The All-American Addiction

1. The Essence of the Game

THE ESSENCE OF THE GAME The summer after I had decided to stop chasing the dream of a career in the NBA, a college teammate was getting married in Charlotte, North Carolina. The church was not more than a mile from the arena in which we had played most of our college games. I was in the wedding. I had completed a very successful Division I career at Davidson College just two years earlier, having scored more points than anyone else in the school’s history. After being picked in the third round of the NBA draft by the New Jersey Nets, I spent a season playing professionally with the Maine Lumberjacks in the Continental Basketball Association (CBA). During that long, cold winter in Bangor, Maine, I had decided to give the NBA one more shot the following fall and, if that did not work out, retire from competitive basketball to find a “real” job. I came to this decision after observing far too many twenty-six-, twenty-seven-, and even thirty-year-old CBA players who refused to accept the fact that their chance to make the NBA was long past. They’ve given you a number, and taken ’way your name. —From the song “Secret Agent Man” – 3 – By mid-season I was determined not to follow in their footsteps; thirty years old and still chasing that NBA dream with nothing to show for a twenty-year career but a few faded newspaper clippings. Old newspaper clippings are of little use in getting a job. So, after being released by the Golden State Warriors the following fall, I returned to Charlotte to work as a director of youth sports programs at a YMCA. One of my wedding responsibilities was to escort family members of the bride and groom from the back of the church to the front before the ceremony. A friend of mine later told me of a conversation he overheard while I was performing these duties. A woman seated in front of my friend pointed at me and asked her companion, “Who is that tall guy walking down the aisle?” The man replied, “Oh, him? That used to be John Gerdy.” Apparently, when I stopped playing competitively, I not only wasn’t a basketball player, I wasn’t even John Gerdy! Despite having a great deal of athletic success, I prided myself on being more than simply a dumb jock. My mother had always emphasized to me that while athletic accomplishments were great, what was most important was being a well-rounded and good person. I earned good grades in school, had many outside interests, particularly music and social work, and consciously tried to avoid talking about or calling attention to my basketball career. But that I might be something other than a basketball player, possibly an intelligent or funny person with interests other than basketball, or that I might be someone who he should consider hiring in his business never crossed this person’s mind. To him, I was simply a gladiator. What I failed to appreciate at the time was that my athletic career had, at that very moment, come full circle. From an athletic perspective, I was where I began—not as John Gerdy—but as someone else. My earliest athletic memory was of kicking a football in the side lot adjacent to our house in Little Falls, New Jersey. I spent thousands of 4 The Essence of the Game hours kicking that football, often alone, but never lonely as I would visualize game scenarios, imagining myself to be a member of the New York Giants. A fullback named Tucker Fredrickson was my favorite. The Giants had great plans for Tucker, a first-round draft pick out of Auburn. Although he had a few good years, he never met the high expectations of a first-round pick, due to a series of knee injuries. Those were the days when a knee injury often meant the end of your career. But there I was, not thinking about knee injuries, but rather of all the touchdowns I was scoring, not as John Gerdy, but as Tucker Fredrickson. One of the beauties of sports is the way you can lose yourself for hours with the aid of nothing but a ball and your imagination. One’s ability to imagine and construct vivid mental images and concepts is a valuable developmental characteristic, which sport can...