“Whoa!” Instinctively, Tim’s hands jerked up to catch the ball, and then he jolted. What is going on here? Tim blinked, but the ball… the players … and the mist were gone. Only a single sunbeam remained.
Tim slowly dribbled his faded basketball all the way home. Am I going crazy? I just saw ghosts! Why did that guy try to pass me the ball? He had to be the guy in my bedroom. Is he that Magic Genie guy Bob talks about?
Coming up the driveway, Tim noticed the old rim on the garage. He stopped, set himself, and tried a three-pointer. The ball sailed through the rim, hit the wooden clapboard backboard and ricocheted back to him. Pretty good, he thought… for a geek.
A geek.…was this Dad’s goal when he was a kid? He never talked about playing basketball. Maybe Grandpa did. Maybe Grandpa was a Red Roller. Bob never said so, but they were friends.
Tim took another shot. Moving from one place to another, pretending to dribble the ball around a non-existent defense, Tim was in The Flow. He wanted to forget about the ghosts or whatever he had seen at the gym that morning. He didn’t notice another round of dark clouds rolling in.
Around noon, he heard the back door slam and his father’s irritated voice behind him. “Do you mind?”
Tim stopped, his arms in mid air for a lay up. “What?” He panted and pulled the ball back down, resting it on his hip.
“I’m trying to sort through this stuff, and all I can hear is that damn basketball.” Tim’s dad scowled, his arms crossed on his chest.
“Well, I finished my work. And there’s nothing else to do.” Tim turned his back on his dad and shot again. The ball swished the hoop. “Come on, take a break, Dad. Didn’t you play basketball when you were a kid?” Tim grabbed the rebound and turned to pass to his dad. But there was no point: He was already headed back into the house grumbling.
After another quiet dinner, Tim found his mom in the kitchen drying dishes. “What’s up with Dad?” he asked as he took a dry bowl from her hands and put it in the cupboard.
“I think being here is bringing up some ugly memories… and maybe a little guilt. “I heard you two this afternoon. Give him some space, Tim,” she said and turned back to her dishes.
What ugly memories? What’s Dad got to feel guilty about? Besides never telling me anything about Grandpa. Starting up the staircase and pulling off his dirty shirt, Tim heard voices in the den. He stopped at the point where he couldn’t be seen and sat on the wooden step.
“I guess this is tougher than you thought, huh?” his mother’s voice began.
“Yeah, well…” his dad answered.
“Greg, you know Tim shouldn’t be caught in the middle,” his mother said defensively. Tim couldn’t hear a response. He scooted down a step, not wanting to give himself away.
But then his mom’s voice was sweet. “Maybe you should just give him the box and get it over with.”
Tim’s ears perked up. Box? What box? Tim leaned nearer to the bottom of the stairwell to hear better.
There was some muffled response.
“But why not, babe?” his mom coaxed. “The note said your dad wanted him to have it.”
“I’m getting rid of it tomorrow.” Tim shifted on the steps and winced when the step creaked. “It was always the same old thing with him,” his dad went on. “Nothing else ever mattered. I’m not doing that to Tim.”
Tim heard footsteps and then the door closed. Crap! Tim stood and tiptoed up the stairs and back to his bedroom.
He slipped into bed, trying to quiet his racing mind. There’s more to this stuff between Grandpa and Dad. Why won’t he tell me instead of being all weird and mean about it? I’m old enough to know. I’ve gotta find that box.
Tim tossed and turned, as the wind grew fierce outside his window. Before long, he hovered above himself standing on the wooden floor at the top of the stairs. Something or someone pulled him down the steps and into the darkened front yard. The wind seemed to force Tim across the yard and on to the driveway. He turned the garage doorknob and stepped onto the cement. In the middle of the floor, illuminated by a beam of moonlight, set a plain cardboard box.
Tim jolted awake. The box! He leaped from his bed, pulled on his basketball shorts, and ran downstairs. He flew through the front door and let it bang loudly. He didn’t care who heard him. Tim winced when he hit the gravel driveway, dancing across it to the garage. He shoved open the door, flipped on the old overhead light. There it was, sitting in the middle of the floor: The box from his dream.
Tim lifted one flap, and all four sides popped up. On top was a folded piece of shiny red cloth. Tim hesitated and then pulled it out: A Roll Red Roller basketball jersey, number 5, red and white, and shimmering as brightly as if it were new. Tim could almost see the face of the player who had worn it—the player who had smiled at him yesterday. Number 5!? That’s the ghost! That guy must have been Grandpa! My grandpa visited me in my room and at the gym. But why? Why now?
Tim carefully set the box on the floor and reached back inside. His hands touched canvas. Charcoal gray with rubber soles that were yellowed and peeling, but they were Chucks, the originals! Tim dug deeper. He found a trophy… and netting… newspaper clippings, … and programs from games played at the old Roll gym. Tim set them aside and pulled out a cardboard cutout photo of #5 posing in his basketball uniform, arms up as if guarding the goal. This is my grandpa, Tim thought looking into the young man’s bright face.
“Who said you could look through this stuff?” his father snapped, stepping toward the box. Tim instinctively swept the photo to his chest and turned his back to his father who had suddenly appeared. His mother was right behind him.
“Greg,” his mother started, out of breath. “Tim has a right…”
“I, uh… no one,” Tim started. “I just had this dream…” That sounds lame, he thought. “I had to know what was in Grandpa’s box. Why didn’t you tell me? It was mine.”
His dad moved to close the box. “Well, I guess the famous Magic Genie wins again,” his dad snorted. “He can’t get his own kid to play basketball, but he’ll get his grandkid to. Even after he dies.”
“Grandpa was Magic Genie,” Tim whispered to himself, dropping the photo and carefully running his hand along the jersey’s number. Tim turned on his dad.
“What is wrong with you? Why do you hate him so much? He was a star!” Tim shouted. “Everybody loved him!”
“Yeah, and he never let me forget it. Pushed and pushed me, even though I could never be the player he was. I didn’t even like basketball. I hated it!” Greg yelled back, quivering with anger. “It was all I ever heard about. ‘You’ll get a scholarship if you just work harder.’ I couldn’t work harder, and I didn’t even WANT a scholarship to play basketball.” Defeated, Greg said, “I just wanted to study literature.”
Tim’s mom moved closer to her husband and stroked his back. “It’s okay, honey. It’s over. This is Tim, not your dad.”
“No, it’s not over. I tried to keep Tim from all that pressure. I couldn’t handle it, and Tim shouldn’t have to, either. Now Tim’s got Bob and my dead dad pushing him to play ball. It’ll never end.”
Tim looked at his dad. “I like basketball. And I finally know my grandpa. There must be a reason I was supposed to have this box. I think Grandpa led me to it.”
Greg reached down to scoop up the items on the floor, but before he could dump them back onto the container, his son yanked the box away. “There’s something else in there. I want to see it.”
Tim reached inside and felt tissue paper. What else did Grandpa save?
Tim tore away the discolored paper and tossed it behind him. In his hands, Tim held a purple-blue mortarboard. It can’t be a Roll graduation cap, Tim thought. It’s not red. From inside the folded fabric, a note card fell out. Tim picked it up and read the card to himself. Now it was clear. Tim understood… even if his father didn’t. “Listen to this, Dad.
Mr. Harold Eugene Brewster is proud to announce
the graduation
of his son,
Gregory E. Brewster,
Bachelor of Arts,
Magna Cum Laude,
from Northwestern University,
May, 20, 1975.
Please join us as we honor his accomplishments.
Tim smiled as he handed the card to his father. “You were wrong, Dad. Basketball wasn’t all Grandpa cared about.”
Stephanie White
Brenda Robertson Stewart
Beginning her basketball career at Seeger Memorial High School, West Lebanon, Indiana, Stephanie White averaged 36.9 points and 13.1 rebounds a game. She led Seeger to a 97-4 record over her four years, and finished with an Indiana record 2,869 points. She was named the National High School Player of the Year in 1995 and was also Indiana Miss Basketball.
White was recruited by Purdue University where she led the Boilermakers to their first NCAA title in 1999. She was named the recipient of the Wade Trophy, the National College Player of the Year, Big Ten Conference Player of the Year, Big Ten Female Athlete of the Year, consensus All-American, GTE Academic All-American of the Year, and the Honda Award as the nation’s most outstanding player.
Her first year in professional basketball was spent as a member of the Charlotte Sting, but White was acquired by the Indiana Fever for their inaugural season in 2000. She retired in2004. Subsequently, she served as an assistant coach at Ball State University, Kansas State University,the University of Toledo, and the Chicago Sky. She has also served as an analyst for ESPN and the Big Ten Network.
In 2011, White was hired as an assistant coach for the Indiana Fever. She joined Coach Lin Dunn, the former Purdue coach who recruited her. Since Stephanie White was an original Feverplayer, the team’s winning of the 2012 WNBA title was special to her. She is a member of the Fevers All-Decade Team and has recently been elevated to associate head coach.
THE BIG SLOWDOWN
Terence Faherty
This happened a ways back, around the time I added “the Hoosier Eye” to my business cards and ads, right under my name, Harley Rensselaer. I was in Broad Ripple, a little town that had been swallowed whole by sprawling Indianapolis but never really digested. I was having lunch with a pal of mine, Albert, who’s also in the profession. The private investigator profession.
You would think that when two keyhole peepers get together, they’d talk shop, but not Al and me. Yes, he razzed me a little about “the Hoosier Eye” tag, about how a man who calls himself that should be wearing bib overalls and not a sharkskin suit, but then Al was never much of a one for self-promotion. Or self-interest in general. Give him some stray-dog client who can’t even pay in installments, and he’s content. Throw in an occasional chance for him to talk about basketball, and he might even smile.
We were sitting on the patio of the Broad Ripple Beer Emporium, which occupied a stretch of Maple Street, a shady backwater on the northern edge of Broad Ripple’s business district. It was a beautiful afternoon in early May, warm enough to eat outside but without a trace of the summer humidity that was lurking somewhere around St. Louis, waiting to pounce. And there was a breeze, too, just a shade cooler than the sunlight and delicious.
Also delicious were the Emporium’s home brewed pale ale, which I was sipping, and its famous Scotch eggs, which I was eating. Those are hard boiled eggs rolled in sausage bits and bread crumbs and then fried. Cardiac specials, Al calls them, but I suspect your mouth is watering just from my brief description. Mine is, just from thinking back.
All in all, it was a perfect afternoon, except that the state basketball tournament had recently been conducted and Al wanted to talk about it. Here’s the point in the story where I make a dark confession. I don’t like basketball. A Hoosier—that is, a resident of Indiana—admitting he doesn’t like basketball is like someone from Illinois saying he doesn’t like political corruption or an Italian turning down pasta. To continue that food metaphor, it’s another way of saying such a Hoosier is living in the wrong place, ‘cause he’s in for a lifetime supply of a dish he didn’t order.
I don’t care for basketball because I was never any good at it. I could shoot just fine—I excel at any kind of shooting—but I could never get more than passable at dribbling. It’s true that superstars forgo dribbling altogether in favor of loping toward the basket while carrying the ball aloft like Miss Liberty’s torch, but before you can be a superstar, you’ve got to be an ordinary player. And ordinary players dribble.
The only state I’ve been to that’s as basketball crazy as Indiana is its southern neighbor, Kentucky. Once when I was down in Louisville on a case, I stopped for breakfast at a greasy spoon. A tableful of geezers was discussing the Kentucky-Louisville basketball game, which had been played the day before, and making it sound slightly more important to world history than D-Day. On the Thursday of that same week, I tried to breakfast in the same joint, and there were the same guys discussing the same game at the same fever pitch. I stomped out, but not before stopping by their table to deliver a sermon on the virtues of moderation.
I couldn’t preach to an old buddy like Al, so I sat and listened to a recap of the final games in all four classes of boy’s basketball. Before long, my mind was straying and occasionally my eyes as well. There was a particularly fetching redheaded waitress, for example, whose duties brought her in and out of my field of vision. Whenever Al looked down at the tabletop, where he was using the salt and pepper and a squirt bottle of ketchup to illustrate plays, I tried to catch that redhead’s eye, though without success.
Al then moved on to the evils of class basketball. You see, until a few years ago, we only had one class of high school in Indiana, as far as the season-ending basketball tournament went. Every school in the state, whether it had fifty students or five thousand, was thrown into the same melee. If a school survived the local, sectional, and regional rounds, it was on to Indianapolis and a shot at immortality.
Basketball fanatics loved the one-class tournament, but apostles of fairness, that highly desirable and equally elusive commodity, did not. The fairness police won in the end, overriding purists like Al and ignoring a sacred precedent, the “Milan Miracle.” Never heard of that one? Milan (pronounced with a long i) was a tiny high school, enrollment one hundred and sixty-one, located in a tiny Indiana town of the same name, population eleven hundred. In 1954, Milan beat mighty Muncie Central for the state championship. If that sounds like the plot of a movie, it’s because it is one. They ripped it off for Hoosiers, a little indie you might have seen.
I knew Al would treat me to a discussion of the Milan Miracle next—all the one-class diehards swear by it—and he didn’t let me down. And that’s the point at which this story really starts.
“Milan had a new coach, Martin Wood,” Al said, “and he taught his squad a new kind of basketball.”
“Martin Wood,” I repeated, like a kid who thought there might be a pop quiz coming up. Al can get you flashing back to your school days because he looks a little like a college professor: a lot of forehead and not much hair to shade it.
“He was all about controlling the ball back when most schools were only interested in shooting it.”
“Ball control,” I said. “Right.”
I was distracted just then by the sight of a woman coming toward me down Maple Street. She was a mail carrier, and she’d taken advantage of the warm day to break out her summer shorts. I was grateful for that, because she had two of the longest legs it had ever been my privilege to see. She had a graceful, willowy stride, too, not at all like the silly walk super models use, the one where they seem to be trying to step on their own toes. She carried her mailbag like it was full of feathers and wore a sort of gray pith helmet on the back of her head like a sun bonnet.
Meanwhile, Al was lecturing on. “Wood had this four-corner offense he called the ‘cat-and-mouse.’ It elevated passing to an art form.”
There was a lot more in that same vein, but I didn’t hear it. I was trying to think of an excuse for a conversation with
that mail carrier, assuming she looked as good up close as she did from a block away. I was having to exercise patience on that point, as the carrier had stopped to give directions to some guy in an oversized Colts jersey. I inferred or deduced—I can never keep those two straight—that directions were the subject by the way she was pointing back toward the cross street she’d just passed. The lost guy kept referring to a piece of paper, then dropping it, then picking it up upside down, then dropping it again.
I took his nervousness as a good omen. If the carrier could inspire that kind of Woody Allen behavior in passersby, I reckoned she must be a looker and then some.
She finally got Woody straightened out and started my way again, but she’d only managed to drop off and pick up at one business, a sign shop, before she was waylaid once more. This time it was by an altercation. A thin man and a fat woman had popped up from between parked cars to yell at each other on the sidewalk. Here again I learned something about the postal worker: She was brave. Most people would sidestep an altercation like that, but when the man pushed the woman, my willowy heroine stepped between them. It was my chance to play knight errant or would have been, if I could’ve caught Al between sentences.
“Milan beat Terre Haute in the morning of the state finals at Butler Fieldhouse,” Al was saying, “to set up the championship game against Muncie Central.”
“Ah, Al,” I said, but I could see my chance had already flown.
The thin guy had backed down and quieted down almost magically. He was pointing to the bumper of a parked car, which the fat lady must have either dented or scratched. Before I could repeat my interjection, Al having ignored my first attempt, the two combatants were exchanging insurance information, using a pen provided by my lady of the mailbag.
Hoosier Hoops and Hijinks Page 27