Bodies Built for Game by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SPO012000 Sports & Recreation / Essays, SPO019000 Sports & Recreation / History, FIC038000 Fiction / Sports
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

—Martin Luther King Jr.

Baldwin Hills, CA—August 2011

I don’t know how many times I’ve cut through Baldwin Hills to get to ’SC from Inglewood or Culver City over the years. I could have been walking through the Target parking lot on La Cienega as he passed in his car on the way home from the gym. It’s been a week since he died—the news teams and their live shots are no longer on the front lawn. There’s a quaint little potluck spread of fruit, crackers, cheese, and meats on the dining room table. My dad and his teammates tell stories. The den reminds me of my dad’s trophy room and the ’80s. I sit on Bubba’s enormous sofa as if I’m Lily Tomlin. As if I’m the little girl standing next to him while he signs autographs at MSU homecoming back when he was Police Academy famous and I heard On the Banks of the Red Cedar for the first time. He was my first real-life movie star. The only man I’ve ever met that was bigger than my dad. Who I realize, in this moment, was once 19, had friends, and a life, long before I was born. He’s been fielding calls from reporters on his flip phone the whole trip. Details about how they played against each other as teenagers in an all-black league. I wonder what would have happened if Bubba and his dad hadn’t spoken up when Duffy asked if there were any other black boys they should take a look at. I wonder how many heavily recruited kids today would go out of their way to tell a Division I school about an opponent 80 miles away. Most of my life, I believed magical white men came down to Texas, plucked my dad out of Jim Crow, and gave him a scholarship to MSU. He played for the Vikings, got injured, was traded to the Broncos, retired, and eventually had me. Those were pretty much all the details I knew. It never occurred to either of us that I was missing pieces. What good are details in a Negro makes good narrative, anyway? All people ever want to know is if he still goes to all the games and if I can get them an autograph. Simply knowing that a scholarship changed his life was enough for me until we take pictures outside on the patio. It’s perfect LA weather. With the pool catching moonlight and the occasional fly, it feels more like a barbecue than a wake. Bubba’s friend Eli, who was with him when he died, tells me how he was trying some new treatments as he recovered from back surgery. They were getting ready to go to the gym and Eli noticed he’d been in the bathroom a little longer than usual. He discovered Bubba had collapsed on the floor. The idea that he hadn’t planned to die that day—the fact that it just happened while he was in there reading his Bible guts me.

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