Ultimate Sports

by Donald R. Gallo

  “How many“ I demand.

  “Maybe it was twenty,” he murmurs.

  I pick up a large clump of broccoli and aim it at his head.

  “Sun!” my father exclaims.

  Luke’s eyes widen. “Twenty-six!” he squeaks.

  “There. That wasn’t so difficult, was it?” I say, biting the head off the broccoli.

  Luke lets out a breath, begins to eat. There is a silence for a while.

  “By the way—nice steal there at the end,” I say to him as I pass the fish to Father.

  Luke looks up at me from the top of his eyes. “Thanks,” he says warily.

  “It’s something I should work on,” I add.

  “I’ll help you!” Luke says instantly and sincerely. “Right after supper!”

  At this syrupy sibling exchange, my parents relax and dinner proceeds smoothly.

  Later, during dessert, when my father and Luke have finally debriefed themselves—quarter by quarter, play by play—on the game, I wait for Dad’s usual “Well, who’s next on the schedule, Luke?” He doesn’t disappoint me.

  “Clearville, I think,” Luke says.

  “Any breakdown on them? Stats?”

  “They’re eight-four on the season, have that big center who puts up numbers, plus a smooth point guard. They beat us by six last time,” Luke says. My mind skips ahead twenty years and sees Luke with his own accounting office, crunching tax returns by day and shooting hoops long into the evening.

  “Big game, then, yes?” my father remarks, his fingers beginning to drum on the table. “You’ll have to box out—keep that big guy off the boards. And if their point guard penetrates, collapse inside—make him prove he can hit the jumper.”

  “He can’t hit no jumpers,” Luke says through a large bite of cake. “He shoots bricks, and I’m going to shut him down like a bike lock.”

  “Huh?” I say.

  “What?” Luke says. “What’d I say now?”

  “First off, it’s ’any jumper.’ And second, how do you shut someone down ’like a bike lock’?”

  “Actually, it’s not a bad simile,” my mother says. “If this fellow is ’smooth,’ so, in a way, is a bicycle—the way it rolls and turns—and a bike lock, well…” She trails off, looking at me.

  I shrug and stare down at my fish. It has not been a good day for either of us.

  “And who does your team play next, Sun?” my father asks dutifully.

  “Big Falls. Tuesday night,” I say. I look up and watch his face carefully.

  “Tuesday night, isn’t that?…” he begins.

  “I’m afraid I’ll miss it, honey,” my mother interjects. “I have that teachers’ education conference in Minneapolis, remember?”

  “Sure, Mom, no problem.” I keep my eyes on my father; on Luke, who’s thinking. I am waiting for the light-bulb (twenty watts, maximum) to go on in his brain.

  “Hey—Tuesday night is my game, too,” Luke says suddenly.

  “Yes, I thought so,” my father murmurs. The one-on-one experts have finally put two and two together.

  “What time are your games?” my mother asks.

  “Seven,” Luke and I say simultaneously.

  My father looks to me, then to Luke. He’s frowning. Suddenly his gaze lightens. “By any chance are they both at the high school? In the adjoining gyms?”

  “Middle school,” Luke says.

  “High school,” I follow.

  “Damn,” my father says, “they ought to take whoever schedules sporting events in this school system and—”

  “I’m sure it couldn’t be helped, dear,” my mother interjects. “Sun’s is a makeup game, after all.”

  “And the last one of the season,” I add.

  My father looks to Luke. “So is yours, right? The last one of the season?”

  Luke nods. He and I look at each other. I smile. I love moral dilemmas, especially when they’re not mine.

  My father turns to my mother.

  “Sorry,” she says to him, “I’m delivering a speech in Minneapolis. There’s no way I can miss it.”

  “Well,” my father says, drumming his fingers, “I’ll have to think this one through.”

  • • •

  Amazingly, Luke keeps his promise, and after dinner we work on stealing. It is chilly outside in March, with patches of leftover snowbanks along the north side of the garage (this is Minnesota, remember), but the asphalt is clear.

  “There are two main types of steals,” Luke says, dribbling. “First is the most basic, ’the unprotected ball.’ As your man is dribbling, he is not shielding the ball with his body, and so you go for it.”

  “I have part of a brain,” I say, and lunge for the deflection—but Luke instantly back-dribbles, and I miss.

  “It’s all in the timing,” he says, “all in when you start your move. Don’t start when the ball is coming back up to my hand—begin your move just when the ball leaves my hand, just when it’s released and heading downward.”

  I track him, waiting—then try it. This time I actually knock the ball away.

  “See?” Luke says. “That gives you the maximum time for your reach-in.”

  We practice this a few more times.

  “Be sure to reach with your outside hand,” Luke cautions, “or else you might get called for a reach-in foul.”

  We keep working for quite a while. I start to get every third one, but I’m still not very good at it.

  “It’s coming,” Luke says, then holds the ball. I kick away a pebble, which clatters against the garage door.

  “The second type of steal is called the wraparound. It’s when your man is dribbling and you reach way around behind, almost wrapping your arm around him, and knock the ball away.” He flips me the ball, has me dribble, and snakes loose the ball two out of three times. Then he takes the ball back, and we work on this one for a while. I get one out of ten at best. Soon I am panting.

  “The wraparound is the toughest one,” Luke says. “Maybe you need longer arms or something.”

  From the window, my father is watching us. “Again,” I say crabbily to Luke. Soon I am stumbling-tired and getting no wraparound deflections or steals at all.

  “Hey—it’ll come,” Luke says, bouncing the ball to me. I slam the ball hard onto the cold asphalt and back into my hands.

  “Yeah. Like in 2010 maybe,” I say, then mutter something unprintable.

  “Ah… I think I’ll go have some more cake,” Luke says.

  “Fine!” I bark. He heads off.

  “By the way,” I call after him, “who taught you those stealing moves?” The middle-school coaches teach both the girls’ and boys’ teams, and I am always on the lookout for coaches who treat boys and girls differently. Nothing pisses me off more than that.

  “Who taught me? Coach Dad,” Luke says with an innocent smile.

  I don’t smile. I glare at Luke, then to the window, which is empty.

  “What?” Luke says, glancing behind. “What did I say now?”

  “Nothing.” I turn away, take the ball, and begin to bank hard shots off the backboard, none of which fall.

  • • •

  That night, as my father sits at the kitchen table rattling his calculator keys and turning the pages of someone’s tax return (from March through April 15 we leave him alone), I find myself rattling the dishes hard and loud as I clean up the kitchen.

  “Was there something?…” he says irritatedly, glancing up only briefly from his papers.

  “No,” I say, and stomp past him upstairs to my room.

  Later I hear my mother speaking softly to my father. He lets out a sigh and pushes back from the table. Soon I hear his footsteps on the stairs, and then he pops his head partway into my room, where I am reading. “Everything okay, Sun?”

  “Sure,” I mutter.

  “Sure sure?”

  I shrug.

  He leans in my doorway. “So what is it?” he asks, checking his watch.

  “How come
you taught Luke those two types of steals and not me?” I turn to him. My eyes, disgustingly, feel glassy and spilly; they are about to dump water down my cheeks.

  He stares. “Steals? Oh, you mean… Yes, well…” He trails off and stares at some empty space in front of him, thinking. Then he turns to me. “I guess I just naturally do more sports stuff with Luke because… because we’re both boys—I mean I once was, and he’s one now, that sort of thing,” he finishes lamely.

  “Well, I play basketball, too, dammit!” I say. I try to be hard-boiled but a large tear rolls down my cheek. “Damn,” I blurt, and start crying for real.

  He stares at me, then moves imperceptibly, as if to come forward either to smack me for swearing or to take me in his arms. But accountants are accountants because most of them are not good with other things—like feelings. With a confused look on his face, my father retreats from my room.

  In the morning when I wake up, there is a note taped to my door. In his small, careful handwriting my father has written, “Dear Sun: There is a third type of steal….”

  • • •

  That Saturday, when Luke is gone to hockey, my father appears in the TV room wearing his tennis shoes and sweats. “‘Stealing for Girls,’ a sports clinic by yours truly, begins in fifteen minutes, garage-side.”

  I smile, grab the remote, and shoot the TV dead.

  Before we go outside, my father sits at the kitchen table and begins drawing neat X’s and O’s on graph paper. “We’ll call this third type the prediction pass steal. It’s something that works best with a zone defense.”

  “Okay,” I say. On my team we have been learning the zone, and zone traps, though we haven’t used them much.

  “A half-court zone defense forces the team on offense to work the ball around the perimeter.”

  I nod as he draws lines in a large half circle.

  “The faster the ball movement, the tougher it is for the defense to shift accordingly.”

  I nod. I know all this.

  “The offensive point guard will sooner or later get into what you might call the automatic pass mode—he receives a pass from, say, his right side, and automatically turns to pass to his left.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I murmur, for I am thinking of something that has always puzzled me.

  “What is it?” my father asks with a trace of impatience.

  “If you never played basketball in high school or college, how come you know so much about the game?”

  He looks up straight at me. There is a long moment of silence. “I would like to have played,” he says simply, “but it was a big school.”

  I meet his gaze, then put my hand on his shoulder.

  He smiles, a small but real smile, and we both turn back to the graph paper.

  “Anyway, when the point guard gets sloppy,” he continues, “that’s when the smart defensive man can start to think about a prediction pass steal.”

  “The defensive point guard?”

  “No,” my father says immediately. “The offensive point guard is used to that; he’s been conditioned to watch out for that kind of steal. What he’s not expecting is the weakside defensive guard or even the forward to break up and across, slanting through the lane toward the key and picking off the pass. A lot of the quick but small college teams use it.”

  “Show me,” I say, staring down at the paper.

  He grabs a fresh graph. “Imagine a basic zone defense that’s shifting to the ball.”

  I close my eyes. “Got it,” I say.

  “If the offense is moving the ball sharply, the defensive point guard has the toughest job. He usually can’t keep up with the ball movement.”

  I nod. I keep my eyes closed.

  “So the passes out front become ’gimmes’; they’re not contested.”

  I nod again.

  “And after a while, the offensive point guard gets sloppy. That’s when one of the defensive players down low—the forward or center—can make his move. He flashes all the way up, comes out of nowhere for the steal.”

  My smile opens my eyes.

  “Keep in mind it will only work once or twice,” my father cautions, “and the timing has to be perfect—or the defense will get burned.”

  I look down to his drawing, see the open hole left by the steal attempt.

  “Burned bad,” he adds. “But if it works—bingo—he’s gone for an easy layup.”

  I correct him: “She’s gone.”

  • • •

  Outside, for want of five offensive players, my father presses into service a sawhorse, three garbage cans, and my mother. “I just love my team,” she says wryly.

  “This won’t take long,” my dad says. Mom shivers; the weather is cloudy, with rain forecast.

  “Sun, you’re the weak-side defensive guard,” he directs. I position myself, back to the basket. “Honey, you’re our offensive point guard,” he says to my mother.

  “I’ve never been a point guard; I’ve never been a guard of any kind,” she protests.

  “First time for everything,” my dad retorts.

  Actually, I can tell that they’re both having at least a little fun.

  “Now,” he says to my mom, “imagine you have just received a pass from the sawhorse, and in turn you’ll be passing to me.”

  My mother, the orange ball looking very large in her hands, says, “Thanks—sawhorse,” and turns and passes to my dad.

  “Now—Sun!” he calls, but I break up way too late.

  “Again,” my father says.

  This time I break up too soon, and my mother stops her pass.

  “Again,” my father says.

  I trot back to my position and try it again. On the sixth try I time it perfectly: I catch her pass chest-high and am gone for an imaginary layup.

  “Excellent!” my father calls. “Again.”

  We practice until we are glowing in the chilly March morning, until an icy rain starts spattering down and the ball becomes too slick to hold.

  Afterward, we are sitting at the kitchen table drinking hot chocolate when outside a car door slams—Luke’s ride—and then Luke thumps into the house. “Hey,” he says, pointing over his shoulder, “what’s with the garbage cans and the sawhorse?”

  The three of us look at each other; I smile and say nothing.

  • • •

  For the next several days, my father and I work exactly forty-five minutes per evening on the prediction pass steal. I let Luke join us only because we need another passer. The weather remains lousy, and my mother freezes her butt off, and Luke complains about not getting to try the prediction steal himself, but my father ignores all that. He is too busy fine-tuning my timing, my breakaways.

  And, suddenly, it is Tuesday morning of game day.

  Both games.

  “Huge day—two big games,” my father says, first thing, at breakfast. He drums his fingers, glances at his briefcase, at the clock.

  Luke glares at me. He is not happy about this week and his role as perpetual passer. “I guess I know which game you’re going to,” he mutters to my father.

  My father says nothing.

  • • •

  Warming up with the team, I have the usual butterflies. The Big Falls girls look like their name—big, with huge hair tied back and bouncing like waterfalls as they do their layups. I try not to look at them, but can’t help but hear their chatter, the chirp and thud of their shoes. Even their feet are huge.

  I look around the gym. No family. No Dad. I miss my layup.

  Just before tip-off, from my spot on the bench, I look around one last time. No family. No father. I sigh and try to focus on the game.

  Which is going to be a tough one all the way. The teams are well matched at every position, and we trade basket for basket—bad news for me. I ride the pine all the way through the first quarter.

  We do our “Hawk Bend Fliers!” send-off whoop to start the second quarter, and as I head back to the bench I scan the small crowd. Still no father.
But it’s just as well, I think gloomily as I settle onto the bench—at least at Luke’s game he’s seeing Luke play. Logically, if I were a parent I wouldn’t come to my game, either.

  Watching, chin in hands, that second quarter, with a sparse, quiet crowd giving neither team much support, I begin to think dark but true thoughts: that really, in the end, each of us is alone. That each of us, by what we choose to do, is responsible for what we achieve and how we feel about ourselves. That each of us—

  “Sun. Sun!” An elbow, Jenny’s, jabs me in the ribs: The coach is calling for me.

  “Sun, check in for Rachel,” Coach Brown says, then adds, “At forward,” giving me a fleeting, get-your-head-in-the-game glance.

  I have to ask Rachel who she’s guarding. Tired, irritated at having to pause on her way off the floor, she looks around and finally points to a hefty, five-foot-ten forward with major pimples on her shoulders and neck. I trot up close.

  “What are you staring at?” the sweaty Big Falls forward says straight off. Then she leans close to me and glares.

  “There’s a new soap that might clear those up,” I say, letting my eyes fall to her neck and shoulders.

  “Listen, you little shit—” she says, but the horn drowns out the rest.

  Then the ball is in play. It comes quickly to my man, who puts her shoulder down and drives the lane. I keep my feet planted and draw the charging foul.

  “Way to go, Sun,” my team calls as we head up the floor, and my mood lightens considerably.

  In my two minutes of play I make one lucky basket and draw one foul—a reach-in steal attempt. I try to remember that timing is everything. I also see that our team is quicker, but Big Falls is stronger inside. Pimple Shoulders muscles me out of the way for an easy bank shot, like I was a mosquito on an alligator’s back. She outweighs me by eighty pounds, minimum.

  At the next time-out Rachel comes back in and I end up sitting next to the coach. I watch us get beat inside by some teeth-jarring picks and back screens; the score gradually tilts in favor of Big Falls. At the half we are down 28-21.

  • • •

  In the locker room the first five players lie red-faced and flat on their backs on the benches. “They’re shoving underneath,” Rachel complains.