by Scott Brown
From the moment I stepped onto the court, I could hear everything. I heard the fans, my girlfriend, the jerks in the bleachers screaming for the opposing team, the other players, the kids on the bench, my coaches. I could hear almost each and every word as if it were spoken in isolation. Even in high school, I would look to see who had come—my girlfriend, my mom, Coach Lane’s wife, or maybe Brad or Judy Simpson, occasionally my dad. Were any of them proud of me? Were any of them watching? But my focus always had to be first on the game. I could tune out the trash-talking from the stands, but the trash talk from players on the court only increased my motivation.
And then there were those near-perfect games, when the difficult shots, the lucky shots, the first shots, everything just went in, when the ball arced and sank effortlessly into the basket, and the plays came together with incredible speed, players passing, feeding the ball off each other; that was when we hit the zone. At those moments, we just didn’t miss, we didn’t foul out, every fundamental was strong, and we won.
And what I could tune out most of all on the court was home.
I lived in two different worlds, mine and Larry’s. Most weeks, I spent as little time as possible in his house. I showed up basically to sleep, eat, and change. The few times I went there with my friends to hang out by the pool or in the basement with the bar, it escalated into a verbal confrontation. There was always an issue: we were too loud, we shouldn’t be in the pool, or Larry would yell that someone had taken his beer or, more important, his booze. And then there was the risk that it could spin out of control into some larger clash of shoving, wrestling, and those lethal half-fingered hands. So we simply stopped coming around.
My friends were all athletes: Mike Quinn was the captain of the football team. Bruce Cerullo was the captain of the wrestling team. Dave Turner wrestled as well. Jimmy Healy, Bob Najarian, Billy Cole, and Mark Gonnella played basketball with me. Mark Simeola played on the soccer team, and so did Paul Seabury. Bobby Rose played football. We were good students too, and we were very competitive, with everyone else in the school and with each other. We ran for the same school offices and tried to best each other at whatever sports we played. It was a friendship and a rivalry that created a powerful camaraderie and a deep bond, which still stands today. We would have given our lives for each other. One of us in essence did. After college, Paul, who is diabetic, learned that his kidneys were failing. Mark, without a second’s hesitation, offered to donate one of his kidneys so that Paul might have a rich and full life. I am thankful to be counted among these friends.
As a group, it was a lot of the same kids that I’d been hanging out with since I was eleven or twelve, and very little about our routine had changed. We’d go to someone’s house, someone with a tolerant mom, and eat through the fridge before we went out for the evening. We might go play miniature golf down on Route 1 or go to a drive-in. Sometimes we went to the youth center, where there would be a crowd hanging out playing basketball. And sometimes we walked with our girlfriends over to the woods at the edge of the cemetery, where we made out in view of the staid, carved marble headstones.
One of the few nights when we were at my house, and Larry must have been out or something, Mike Quinn brought over a dirty movie. We told my mother that we were going down to the basement to watch football films to help Mike prepare for the big game. She called down, “Let me see,” and we answered, “No, no, they’re highly classified. Coach doesn’t even know we have them. So we’ll just finish up. We know how to work the projector.” And for years afterward, the guys would say, “Hey, Brownie, does your mom still want to watch the classified football film?”
We had parties too with beer that we bought, because back then liquor stores didn’t card anyone. But we were just silly, never crazy or hurtful. One time, right before my mother married Larry, I had about thirty kids over to our apartment on Salem Street, dancing and messing around, when my mother wasn’t at home. We were so loud that the tenant downstairs began banging on the ceiling with a broom and threatened to call the cops. In minutes, we had bundled everything up in trash bags and gotten the room spotless, and I sent almost everyone packing. When the cops rapped on the door and said they had a complaint from someone else in the home, there were only three of us there watching a baseball game. I said, “Oh geez, I’m sorry. We have been loud. It’s a great game.” And they came in and looked around and saw nothing.
I had two more run-ins with the cops. One happened when I dropped by a wild party in one of the really big historic homes perched at the edge of Wakefield’s lake. Kids were hanging from the chandeliers, which had come out of the ceiling. There were over a hundred kids, most were drunk, and just after I arrived, the cops came. Everyone else bolted and the cops hauled me down to the station along with about five other guys, and made us all pay restitution. I tried to argue that I hadn’t done anything, that I’d barely been there. And their answer was simple: “Well, you were there. You should have known better. You should have left.” So I ended up paying a couple of hundred dollars that I didn’t even have in restitution.
But the second incident was even more meaningful. One time, I was the designated driver as we were tooling around town, with two or three cases on the floor of the car. We always had a designated driver. We were not stupid enough to combine driving and drinking, but my friends were all drinking. And then a cop car pulled up, flashed its lights, and pulled us over, and the officer looked in. He looked up and said, “Guys, you can’t do this. This is not right. And you know it’s not right. You guys are the young leaders of this community and you shouldn’t be doing this.” He made us take the beers—probably two cases, forty-eight beers—and dump them. Crack it and pour, crack it and pour, forty-eight times, until it was done. Then he said, “You know what, Scott? You take each and every one of these guys home and when you’re done, you call me and let me know that you took them home.” So I brought them all home and called the officer. And it was done. It was a time and a place where cops could do that, where, like Judge Zoll, you could get a second chance. And we didn’t do it again.
I also had another person determined to keep me out of trouble: Coach Lane. Once or twice a week, often on the weekends, he would ask me to come and babysit for his three children, two girls and a boy. I’d watch TV with them and play a little catch or hoop in the driveway. Coach lived in a comfortable split-level home, with a kitchen, living room, dining room, and den downstairs, and three or four bedrooms upstairs. But it was so far removed from everything I had known.
The babysitting gave me some money and it gave me a chance to eat better or take a girl out and treat her on a date. When I stepped into his house, I remember thinking, Wow, I get to eat whatever I want, and I’m getting paid. And it probably cost the Lanes a heck of a lot more in food than it did in babysitting fees. I’d eat anything, popcorn, chips, cold cuts, pizza. I’d eat jars of pickles. It wasn’t that there wasn’t food at Larry’s house, and my mom did try to cook, but at this point, I couldn’t bear to be home.
Just turning onto the small cul-de-sac of June Circle was stressful. The moment I walked through the door, all I could think was, “What dilemma is there going to be now?” I was constantly watching, wondering what was next, where the next big problem was going to come from. I would be thinking, “Is everybody all right? Is everything all right?” Even simple stuff, like: Are my trophies OK? Did anyone take my stuff, or wreck my stuff? I would worry whether Leeann was all right or whether my mom was. I would think: Is my mom drinking again? Is Larry drinking? Is Leeann getting in trouble with her friends?
While my friends worried about their grades, about whether their parents would let them borrow the car, or about fights with their girlfriends, I was thinking: Is tonight going to be the night when Larry finally breaks my hands?
Chapter Ten
Escape
In high school, I didn’t do well in German. I didn’t do well in Spanish. By my sophomore
year, my last resort was Latin, and Mrs. Paula Smith, my teacher, was a major reason why. She knew just how to challenge me, saying, “A big tough guy like you, you can’t even get an A on a test. You can’t even do well in a simple language like Latin?” And of course, I took the bait. I thought, “All right, I’ll show her.” I studied, and I worked, and I ended up with A’s. Latin, for me, was like the basketball drill of language: everything was fundamental; every word or phrase was possible to break down, like the basics of a jump shot. It was orderly and structured. It required memorization and repetition. And I thrived.
Across the state, Latin and Greek students had formed something called the Junior Classical League. I ran for one of the offices as a sophomore, and as a junior I ran for president. The president would host the state convention—which included mock Olympic games—at his or her high school, and invite participants from forty other schools in the area. It was a real series of games, with a catapult contest and chariot races, but it also included basketball, Frisbee, an egg-and-spoon relay, and academic contests as well. For the opening ceremonies the students, who came from as far as New Bedford and Mount Greylock, were expected to wear togas and to sing the Junior Classical League Song. We also presented a performance of the story of Peter Rabbit, told entirely in Latin.
But my most rewarding moment with the league was a ten-day trip that I took with other Massachusetts kids to the University of Rochester for a convention of high school Latin students from across the country. I would be representing all of the Massachusetts students in the Junior Classical League. Aside from meeting so many kids with similar interests, there were two remarkable things about it, and one was playing basketball in the University of Rochester gym. It was a beautiful, spacious gym with high ceilings and seats to accommodate huge crowds. I was in there one afternoon shooting the ball alone when another kid came in, and I asked him if he wanted to play a little one-on-one. “Sure.” We played, and I beat him, as someone watching said, “You kicked his butt all over the court.” I had no idea as we sparred over the ball, but the kid I was playing was no kid. He was the captain of the Rochester varsity basketball team, and the team’s coach, Coach Neer, was standing off to one side, watching. Afterward, he asked me, “Hey, who are you? Do you go to college here?” And I said, “No, I just finished my junior year in high school.” Rochester back then was a Division III team, but it played Division I teams like Ohio State and other powerhouses in the Kodak Classic basketball tournament. Coach Neer looked at me, asked where I went to high school, and said he’d be in touch.
Those ten days, I also met a gorgeous southerner from Alabama, Ann England, who was president of her Latin Club and had been Miss Teen Alabama. For all ten days, we were inseparable, and we were in tears when it came time to leave Rochester and return home. I called her constantly from Massachusetts, and she called me. One month, I think my phone bill was close to $800, earning Larry’s immense wrath. It was puppy love, crazy and brief, but I felt it in the deepest reaches of my heart. And it reminded me that there was a life beyond June Circle.
By my senior year I had a motorcycle, which I had purchased used from a neighbor for $300, so I wouldn’t have to bicycle everywhere. But I had to be careful where I started it. If I throttled the engine too loudly, it would set Larry off. By now, most everything set Larry off.
On the basketball court, I had become a scoring machine. My junior year, against both Stoneham and Watertown, I shot 27 points in each game. In a double overtime against Lexington, our bitter rival, I scored 15 points in the first quarter, breaking the school scoring record. I now had one more season to prove myself, one more season for the recruiters.
The local papers called me “Duce,” playing on my old nickname, Deuce, and wrote about every battle. And they were fierce. Wakefield had been cochamps the previous year. Everyone was looking for us to repeat, but for our second season now, we were in the sights of the other teams. Some teams would do anything to win. They’d play dirty, take cheap shots, try to trip me or someone else and send us sprawling to the ground. They’d trash-talk, and they’d do one-on-one, trying to play mind games to get us off our game. If I went to get a drink, there would also be a kid from the other team there with me getting a drink. If I went to take a shower, the same kid would be right there handing me a towel. Wherever I went, someone from the other team would go. I had people run beside me on the court, two people shadowing me to make sure that I didn’t get the ball. They would try to get me in foul trouble, or even to foul out. They’d run alongside me, taunting, “How ya gonna score, Brown?” or “You suck. I’m going to shut you down, Brown.” “You’re nothing.” “You’re only going to get five points tonight.” But they could never get inside my head. I had too many adults who had already tried to do that.
Instead, I worked harder, and when the ball sank with a swoosh in the net, I’d say, “There’s one.” And then, swish, “There’s another.” “There’s two more.” And then the guys following me would start getting frustrated and would start fouling. They’d foul out, and I’d say, “That was pretty easy. Bring in the next guy, will you?” But what I loved most was when I was up against the other team’s best player. Most of us developed a kind of grudging respect for each other. We could score, look over, and smile, and either he or I would compliment the other. Those were the best rivalries, because we matched up one for one and we appreciated each other’s game.
That final high school season, we started off beating the Belmont Marauders 60–43, even with their scoring machine, Jay Jehrian. I had 24 points and nine rebounds. Then we were humiliated by Lexington, 84–63. We were fourth in the Middlesex League standings, with Lexington and Winchester and Burlington all ahead of us. My goal was to score 20 or more points in every game, to help us bring home the win.
Against Woburn, I scored 17 points in the second quarter and 34 points in the overall game. I wore my red sneakers and constantly drove to the basket. We beat Lexington the second time in a double overtime, 73–72. Then came Winchester, number two in the league. We were down about 18 points going into the fourth quarter. It was one of our last games of the year, and I did not want us to give up. In the huddle, I kept saying, “Never quit. We cannot quit.” And we didn’t. I hit 35 points that game, 16 points in the final quarter, breaking the school record for points scored in the fourth quarter. I’m told that the record still stands today.
When the buzzer sounded the score was tied. We lost in overtime, but we had proved that we could come back.
I finished the season having scored 20 or more points in nineteen of our full twenty-three games. My point total for the year was 519, I was only the second player in the school’s history to break the 500-point barrier in a single year, and on the court, I averaged 23 points a game. Over three years, I scored 940 points, the second best ever at that point in school history. That season, I was named co-MVP of the Middlesex League and I was invited to be on the Eastern Mass. All-Star Team, in a final high school all-star game that each year pitted Eastern Mass. against neighboring Connecticut’s Class A Top 10. The event was played at Southern Connecticut State College in New Haven. National college and professional scouts would be watching us. Connecticut was heavily favored to win. That night, when we stepped onto the floor, there were 2,500 people in the stands.
The Connecticut team took the lead to start, but we drove back. Twice, I stole the ball before halftime, where the score was tied at 33. When the clock stopped, Eastern Mass. had won, 78–69, the first time a Massachusetts squad had ever won the event. Earlier that season, I had been on the court for Coach Lane’s one-hundredth career victory. And I had never let Larry break my hands.
The college recruiters came all winter to meet me and look at my game films. The University of Rochester offered me full financial aid and a scholarship. The University of Maine, Ole Miss, Colby, Brandeis, Connecticut College, and Tufts all came, the low-end Division I schools, high-end Division II, and all the to
p Division III. Tufts’ young coach, John White, had been watching me from the stands since my sophomore year. And when the college team coaches and recruiters came to meet me, I never took them home to Larry’s. We met in the living room of Coach Lane’s house. He was the one who called them, who sent them the articles about me. He was their contact and the person who steered me through. I loved Rochester. I loved a lot of the schools. But in the back of my mind, I knew that I could never leave the Boston area. If I left, who would protect my mother? Who would protect Leeann? I looked at all the schools, I dreamed, but I knew that Tufts University was in Medford, Massachusetts, its campus running up and down one of those ancient glacial Massachusetts hills. And Wakefield was only a ten-minute car ride away.
I consoled myself at first with the thought that the Tufts gym looked just like the Rochester gym, but then I visited the school. It offered me a significant sum in financial aid, some of it provided by generous scholarship funds from past alumni. The coach was cool, and the team was great. And Coach Lane made one other point: I was going to be one of the only white kids on the team. Unless it was the all-star game, I had never played on anything but an all-white team. Tufts was a very international school: we had a Korean player, Jimmy Campbell; the Greek players, George Mazereus and John Caragiorgis; an Arab player, Billy Gorra; and Fielo Toro from Puerto Rico. The team was in its own way a kind of mini–United Nations. When I was torn among Brandeis, Colby, and Rochester, he said, “You know what? You know what the difference is between Tufts and these other schools? At these other schools, you’ll do great, and you’ll love it, and they’re great schools. But look around at Tufts, what do you see?” And I said, “I see people.” He prodded me. “What kinds of people?” “All kinds of people.” He said, “That’s right. There’re minorities here. You’re going to be playing with people you have nothing in common with. When you get older, you’re going to be able to relate better to blacks and Puerto Ricans, all types of nationalities, rich people and poor people. And if you go to other schools, I’m afraid you’re not going to get that.” It was 1977. Not very many people thought that way back then. But Coach Lane did. And I chose Tufts.