Can I Keep My Jersey? by Paul Shirley

Author:Paul Shirley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781588366085
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-04-23T16:00:00+00:00

February 25

The age of the cellular phone and the accompanying automatic caller identification removes some of the shock of anyone’s opening salvo on the telephone. For instance, I was playing some poker at my house with some friends on a recent night when my phone rang. I looked down and saw “Scott Wedman” displayed. Thus, I was able to prepare myself for whatever piece of knowledge he would soon be spewing forth. In the olden days, I would have answered the phone blindly, without any forewarning as to the identity of the caller, and would not have been able to prevent an expression of shock at hearing my head coach’s voice at nine o’clock, the night prior to my team’s departure for Tijuana. In our current, advanced state, I had time to say, before actually answering, “Hmmm…I wonder what Coach Wedman wants at nine o’clock, the night prior to our departure for Tijuana.” And since I knew it was Wedman calling, which was strange in the first place, I was prepared for him to say just about anything. Therefore, when he said that our game in Tijuana had been canceled because that team wanted to save money so it could play in the playoffs, I was not surprised. Much. Sure, I found it alarming that a professional basketball league would ever cancel a game to save money, but because I was able to come about the information gradually, thanks to the technology we take for granted every day, the impact was minimized.

Receiving the above news was something like learning that school would be canceled due to snow, in that it was great. The news cast the poker game in an extremely cheery light—my personal level of responsibility for the next day had dropped significantly. And I didn’t have to go back to Tijuana. Of course, the ABA, and my participation in it, was sullied slightly. But fuck it: no school.

The news, whether it was good or bad, certainly did not stop the card game. In fact, it allowed us to play longer. But on a forest-for-the-trees level, the development did give me pause. The ABA season is limping to the finish line; we have only two regular-season games remaining before the playoffs, which will be of questionable viability in their own right. No one attached to the Kansas City Knights knows exactly where said playoffs will occur or even the format in which they will be played. It is doubtful that every team in the league will participate—most of the organizations are running their operations on fumes and it is rumored that several of the teams are canceling games with alarming frequency. (There is no real way for anyone to know exactly what is going on; ABA scores are not running underneath the regularly scheduled programming on ESPN.) Even if the season does linger on and concludes at its scheduled date sometime in mid-March, what will I have accomplished? It is not as if the NBA season is never-ending. And

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