Bin Laden's Bald Spot: & Other Stories

Three Basketball Stories

44 three BasketBaLL stories Lefty I played in a basketball league once in Boston that was so tough that when guys drove to the hole they lost fingers. One time a guy drove to the hole and got hit so hard his right arm fell off, but he was a lefty and hit both free throws before going to the bench. I heard later that he was furious he got taken out because his shot was really falling that night, and also I heard that his team later had a funeral for the arm with everyone carrying the casket with only one arm as a goof but they all got so howling drunk that they lost the arm and had to bury the casket empty and then they spent the rest of the night trying to remember every lefty guy in the history of sports which is way harder than you think. There were all kinds of guys in that league. One team had a guy who had been in a pro football camp but they decided he was too crazy for pro football, can you imagine? Another team had a guy about six foot twenty but he was awful and we beat them by ten. There were all kinds of guys. One time a brawl broke out before the game even started and it took like twenty minutes just to shoot all the technicals and half the guys were thrown out before the game even started, which led one guy to argue metaphysics with the refs, you know, like how can you be thrown out of a game if there’s no game yet? They threw him out too. Brian Doyle | 45 There were a lot of guys in that league who were unbelievable ballplayersbuttheyallhadsomeflaw,youknow?Liketheycouldn’t go left at all, or could do everything except score, or couldn’t do anything except score, or lost their minds when the sun went down or whatever. A lot of guys were total horses on the court but total donkeys off it, you know? Every team had a couple guys like that. We had two, our center who was a terrific ballplayer but who sold dope at halftime and ended up going into real estate and a guard who we never knew if he would show up or not or even stay for the whole game, sometimes he wandered off at halftime and that was the end of him for the night. He was the nicest guy you ever saw. We didn’t know where he lived or if he had a job or what. We just told him when the next game was and hoped for the best. Some guys thought he lived somewhere in the park where we played summer league but I don’t know about that. There was one team where everyone except one guy had lost their drivers’ licenses so the one guy, he was the point guard, had to drive the whole team and finally he got so tired of driving everyone he quit and without him they lost four straight and missed the playoffs. Another team used to pull up in the parking lot in a huge garbage truck which one of their guys drove for work, you could hear them coming miles away, but only four guys could fit in the cab so six guys had to hang onto the back. Guys drove all sorts of things in that league, old buses and mail vans and such. One time a guy drove up in a Bentley but it turned out he stole it and he missed the rest of the summer though he was back for winter league. Mostly we played for fun and to try to talk to the girls who came to watch the other teams. In summer they would sit up on the little hill above the court under the pines and sometimes we would call time out to get a look at them without the other team getting all wiggly the way they did if you wandered up there at halftime . You never knew if they were wives or girlfriends or sisters or what. One theory was that the girls who cursed the refs were girlfriends showing off, because wives and sisters could care less, but I don’t know about that. One girl was the tallest girl you ever saw, she was taller than any of us, and there was another girl who wore [3.137.218...