My Home Team by Dave Kindred

Author:Dave Kindred [Kindred, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2023-09-12T04:00:00+00:00

A month after our Normal Community expedition, I was in a hospital robe after a routine medical procedure, if such an invasive procedure can be called routine, and everyone of a certain age knows that invasive procedure is never routine. Waiting for the wooziness to clear up, I asked a nurse, “Is it OK if I ride a couple hours in my sister’s car?”

“Is it important?” the nurse said.

“Oh, yes,” I lied.

“If you’re not having any pain, sure, go ahead,” the angel said.

“Good, no pain,” I lied.

Sandy drove us north on I-74. She dawdled along at fifty-five miles per hour in deference to forecasts of icy rain changing to snow. Noticing how responsibly she drove, her passenger said, “Not raining, not snowing, game in an hour. Step on it.” She motored on, now at fifty-four miles per hour.

Galesburg, the model/target/nemesis, was running a new offense. Massey had gone to the “run-n-fun” concept originated by Paul Westhead at Loyola Marymount and adapted by David Arseneault at Grinnell College. It was basketball, distorted. See the rim, shoot. Everybody, chase the rebound. Off full-court pressure, force a turnover or let ’em score so you get the ball back. Galesburg was on a thirteen-game winning streak, averaging 74.1 points.

Invited to participate in that chaos, the Potters declined. Becker’s old-school stuff confused the Streaks. Morton 49–38.

The doctors in Peoria had told me to come back in five years. Then the good and right in basketball had prevailed over the eccentric. As we walked across the snow and ice to the parking lot in Galesburg, I said to my responsible sister, “I’m good to drive now.”

Not even a year into this Act Two basketball, how important had the games become? If a hospital visit would not get in the way, why would a job? I had become an adjunct instructor at Bradley University. (Me, a teacher? “Just tell ’em your stories,” the dean said.) In late February 2011, I stood before a sports journalism class that began at four thirty and was to end at seven o’clock on Tuesday evenings. But on this Tuesday in late February, it became five thirty and I said, “Class dismissed.” Only one of the fifteen men and women in the class asked why. I said, “I have a date.”

The Potters had won sixteen of their previous seventeen games, were 27–4 for the season, ranked No. 8 in the state, and that night, halfway across the state in Champaign, they would play No. 2 Springfield in a first-round sectional game. I reckoned the students could do without hearing about Game 6 of the 1975 World Series or the time I delivered Michael Jordan’s shoes.

Anyway, nothing pleases a college student more than the gift of an hour and a half away from the mumblings of a rookie adjunct. My car’s computer registered 1 hour and 18 minutes, eighty-nine miles at sixty-seven miles per hour on arrival at the sectional game site, Champaign’s Central High School.

I did have a date, made in November and confirmed while Cheryl and I wandered all over New Antarctica in search of little gyms.

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