The Sports Pages by Jon Scieszka

Author:Jon Scieszka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

THE CHOICE

BY JAMES BROWN

I was in seventh grade when I first saw Bill Bradley playing basketball on our television in the basement. I didn’t know it then, but watching him would influence the path of my life.

In some ways, I was lucky to see him at all. We didn’t watch much television in our modest home in Washington, DC. My father worked two jobs and stayed busy supporting us, and my mother the homemaker made sure that we understood that we needed to work hard to be successful in life.

We needed to work hard on our school studies, needed to work hard around the house, and we simply needed to work hard and excellently at whatever we did. I certainly carried that work ethic over to sports, which I loved.

I was not an overnight success in sports. I had a lot of potential but had to work diligently in sharpening the fundamentals to become a good player, not ever thinking about stardom. Before high school, I made my basketball team in eighth grade, not because I was a great player, but because I was a good listener and the coach loved the fact that I paid attention and he knew I was going to be a hard worker. I was a role player even then. I did my part to make the rest of the team better.

Unfortunately for me, my role in those days was to set a good example of being a good listener and being coachable—but nothing that I did on the court. In fact, on the day when we were introduced to the student body, we dribbled down the court to make a layup … and I blew the uncontested layup. I still remember the gymnasium full of my peers, laughing. I was looking for a place to hide. Not the way you play it out in your fantasies. At least, not the way that I did.

In fact, before I ever became serious about my basketball, my first love was baseball. I’ve got a picture of me playing Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) baseball when I was fifteen years old. The picture captures me perfectly at that time: long and lanky, my uniform hanging off me, the unique nose that is undeniably mine.

I looked like a human coat hanger, skinny and pointy.

I hit a lot of home runs in the CYO play-offs that summer, and Morgan Wootten, a famous basketball coach from DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Maryland, was in attendance. He was there to see a pitcher on our team, a blond-haired guy named Steve Garrett who threw really hard and was headed to DeMatha for ninth grade the next year. Steve was a great three-sport athlete in football, baseball, and basketball and, to cap it all off, was also a good student. Coach was there to watch three games in the play-offs. And as I recall, Steve threw a perfect game, a one-hitter, and a no-hitter. No wonder Coach Wootten felt pretty good about the decision to have Steve attend DeMatha.

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