by Phil Wohl
The pain in Pete’s body drained from him as each word flowed from Coach Boswell’s mouth. He was just offered a free ride after his team lost by 19 points. It was like a hot fudge sundae without the cherry, although Pete wasn’t fond of cherries anyway. The meeting broke up as the parties exchanged smiles and handshakes. Elated family members of both boys gushed with excitement over the possibility of Pete and Glenn resurrecting the great East City College program, but it was still too early in the recruiting season to make a final decision.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
After the Helmsdale game, Pete was double- and triple-teamed every game. He even noticed a couple of people shadowing him in the classroom and the cafeteria. He wouldn’t take any team by surprise this year.
In the third game of the season, West Valley paid a visit to non-conference opponent Kelpham High School. Pete was overpowering in the first half, well on his way to outscoring the Rams in the first 16 minutes. A desperate opposing coach called on a 6’4” 250 pound junior football player to lay a body on him. Pete, usually unaffected by the man guarding him, felt someone hold onto his jersey while jabbing an elbow into his side and Pete said, “Are you football player?"
“Yes,” the opposing player replied.
“What year are you in?"
“Junior,” the now-confused player said.
Pete was in no mood for games, “Well, we can do this the hard way, or we can make this real easy.”
The puzzled player appeared angry initially, but after his first, second, third, fourth and fifth fouls - yes, five fouls in five minutes - Pete calmly put his arm around the muscular player and said, “I’m sure you’re a hell of a lineman.”
The Kelpham coach never left his seat the remainder of the game, and the football foul-out did not return to his seat at the end of the bench at the start of the second half. His basketball career was over after a handful of uninspiring minutes.
Pete had seen every defensive tactic since he was eight years old. While on the foul line, he thought back to the summer an opposing player made him cry following a game. As an 11 year-old playing against 13 year olds, it was plain to see that physical skills were only half the battle. It was easier than for opposing players to talk their way through his focus. Words only made him stronger now. Opponents made that mistake once, just as David Leiber repeatedly spouted out names of cartoon characters until it made Pete cry after the game. He wasn’t strong enough mentally or physically to get David out of his face.
However, in the final game of that summer, Pete and David’s teams met for all the marbles in the championship game. Pete called his father and told him of his unraveling in their first meeting, to which Lou Berman replied, “You can lose a game, but never let an opponent’s words negatively alter the outcome. These boys are all two and three years older than you. You’re never going to develop unless you play against equal or better competition. Most importantly, if you feel like talking, talk back. Use your imagination, don’t suppress your feelings. You don’t have to be a robot out there, but never, I repeat never, get thrown out of a game. If someone gets you mad, get even. If a referee gets you mad, take it out on the other team. You can’t beat an official, they can only hurt you if you open your mouth. Just have fun and play hard.”
Sage words from a man who could pick his fists up faster than you could say “My ball.” Lou Berman was quite the competitor. The only thing he hated worse than losing was playing with people who took losing lightly. Lou once said to his brother Abe, a notorious gracious loser, “If you’re killing yourself for 20 minutes in the hot sun, you better have something to show for it. Besides, the wait for the next game is at least 45 minutes, and I didn’t come here to sun bathe... I can do that at the beach!"
In the camp rematch, David tried to repeat the same tactic, but soon realized that he probably shouldn't have wasted his best material in an insignificant game. He was on the sidelines with three early fouls and fouled out in the beginning of the fourth quarter, foiling his counselor’s gamble to put him back in the game at such a crucial junction. The game’s outcome was never in doubt. Pete had come to camp with the game of a 13 year-old and left with a head to match.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Berman family was a notorious pack of howlers. They talked so loud that the phone company cringed during their conversations. You could put the phone down and walk across the room and still have an earache at the end of a rant.
Pete’s mother was a housewife turned real estate agent whose maiden name was Kirshner. Her family was decidedly quieter than the one she married into, but so was a cannon blast at ten paces. Helen Kirshner’s family accepted Lou into their clan as if he was their own son. Larry and Miriam Kirshner were modest people. Larry ran a small, successful, jazz night club, hosting such greats as Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald. He died at the age of 60, while taking a nap on the porch listening to an Oscar Peterson record. Miriam since moved to Florida and enjoys a life filled with Early Bird Specials and Mahjong games with the girls.
Lou Berman worked as a Social Studies teacher at West Valley’s junior high school, where he had been since the family moved from Brooklyn. His parents, Sophie and Peter, ran an apartment building on the upper east side of Manhattan near Central Park. Peter worked days as an ice delivery man and nights as the building superintendent. He spent little time with his two boys, as work always came before play. Sophie ruled with an iron fist and a thick leather belt. Peter died at the tender age of 51, undoubtedly of exhaustion, cutting short a life spent toiling and not enjoying. This, however, was the Eastern European work ethic. Lou’s family came from Poland and Helen’s emigrated from Austria. Pete only really knew one grandparent his whole life, as Sophie died of an already broken heart when he was only a few years old. She was never the same after her husband died.
Lou Berman was not going to repeat the mistakes of his father. By becoming a teacher, he was able to have enough free time to coach his son in various basketball and baseball leagues. He lived through his son. Each shot, rebound, pass, pitch and hit, meant a great deal to each man. They spent so much time together that Pete never felt the need to hang out with other people, and rarely felt love outside of the court from his teammates and classmates.
Pete spent the past 10 years reaching goal after goal and rarely took anything seriously off the court. He was scared of the opposite sex and was completely bored with the rote school curriculum presented by educators whose only motivation was four months’ vacation each year and tenure.
One day, Pete passed by Mrs. Martinson, the school’s psychologist, in the hallway. Mrs. M said, “What’s the good word, Pete?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember,” he countered.
The two laughed as Pete drifted back to the afternoon they first met, and how it had changed his life. It was the first week of Pete’s second term in the tenth grade. He was called down to the principal’s office in the middle of Biology class. Pete thought that only the man above could have saved him from such torture, but soon discovered that it was his mother’s doing instead. He had been an average student his entire life and the higher authorities wanted to tap into his brain to find out why he didn't overachieve. It’s a good thing that the words exam or test were not used in the setup, because Pete would have surely tuned out.
The scores from Pete’s aptitude test the previous year revealed he had the intelligence of a Hostess Twinkie. In fact, he never scored well on these tests. Principal Berry looked Pete in the eye and said, “Do you think you’re dumb?” Pete, surprised by the question did not answer. So Berry pressed on.
“Do you think I’m dumb?”
“No,” Pete answered.
“Then why didn’t you take these tests seriously?”
“I don’t like being tested. It doesn’t prove anything.”
“What kind of design were you trying to create? I used
to make S’s," Principal Berry stated.
"You didn’t even look at the questions, I bet. What were you thinking about?”
“No, I didn’t look at the questions. I have a lot of ideas in my head. I wrote them down on the scrap paper. You didn’t do well on those tests, either?” Pete asked.
“No, and my parents found out, and let’s just say that once I was able to walk I never did it again. Being intelligent is not as bad as you think, Pete. If you like to write, then write down everything that comes into your head. Being intelligent is not only spitting back facts from a book, it’s also imagination and other things that can expand your mind. The more information you put up here, the further away your mind can take you."
Berry switched gears, "I want you to go to Room 215 and talk to Mrs. Martinson. Do us all a favor and DON’T HOLD BACK!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The message from Principal Berry could not have been received any clearer. Pete’s lack of enthusiasm for school had never been explained in such plain terms to him before. All he ever heard was, “You have the intelligence, but you just don’t try hard enough.” Too many times his teachers and parents relayed that message. Enough was enough.
Pete knocked on the door of Room 215, and a muffled voice from inside said, “Come in."
The 50-something year-old woman was on the phone.
"Okay, Principal Berry, will do."
She hangs up the phone and turns to Pete, "Ah, you must be Pete Berman. Come in and take a seat.”
Pete nodded and sat down on a soft tub-like chair facing the woman.
“I am Mrs. Martinson, the school's psychologist. Principal Berry wants me to ask you a few questions. By the way, say hello to your mother for me. We went to college together. Just try to relax and this will be over before you know it.”
She started here analysis with a few ink blots, but Pete mainly saw butterflies so she moved on. Then came a few other classic tests but Pete still wasn’t responding. She saved the hardest test for last, feeling that there was little hope that there would be any good news to report to Principal Berry. Mrs. Martinson started by telling Pete that she would tell him a series of numbers and he was to repeat them when she was through.
The first set was a group of five single-digit numbers. Pete repeated the numbers forward then backwards at Mrs. Martison’s request. They repeated this exercise right through ten single-digit numbers. Mrs. Martinson noticed a change in his eyes, the light had been turned on. She then repeated the exercise with double-digit numbers, and Pete continued to perform flawlessly. She figured that he needed to be pushed, and continued to 15 then 20 single- and then double-digit numbers. Forward and backwards again with no problem until the last set of double-digit numbers. Pete mixed up the fifteenth and sixteenth numbers and showed great displeasure when informed of his mistake, just as he would if he missed an open jump shot. He once again went over the numbers in his mind and agreed with Mrs. Martison that he had made a mistake.
“How were you able to do that so easily? she asked”
“I see the numbers floating in my head.”
“Has this ever happened to you before?”
“I can always visualize things, but some things are clearer than others.”
“What things are most clear to you?”
“When I play sports, I can see a play develop before it happens.”
“What else.”
“I always see percentages and numbers in my head. I also see scenes, but I only recently started to right them down.”
“What type of scenes?”
“I don’t know. Just everyday things, imagined things.”
“Do you realize that you just scored in the ninety-ninth percentile on that memory test I just gave you? That means that only one percent of students scored better than you.”
“So, what does that mean?”
“Well, Pete, it basically means that if you continue to ignore your memory and let your imagination go untapped, it would be a terrible waste. Otherwise I would take this as excellent news.”
Mrs. Martinson called Principal Berry and told him of the results, but he wanted to see it for himself. Pete was starting to get tired, but performed impeccably, smiling when he got to numbers 15 and 16. Principal Berry suggested that Pete take some writing classes and a few extra math classes, but saw him becoming uneasy. “I tell you what, come by my office and I’ll let you pick out whatever classes you feel comfortable with. We wouldn’t want to overload that untapped resource of yours.”
When Pete walked through the door of his house that afternoon, his mother stood there with her arms folded. “So the teachers were right all these years, you have been holding out on us.”
“I just haven’t felt comfortable.”
Even his mother couldn’t understand what was going on in his head. She had always been book smart just like all of the teachers. Nobody had ever told Pete he was smart. As long as he excelled in sports, whatever he did, or did not do, in the classroom was overshadowed. Since he wasn’t pressed to excel, he did just well enough to get by... and get by he did.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Coming off an easy win against Kelpham, West Valley was eager to complete its non-conference schedule. On this particular night, the team would be taking a short bus ride across town to St. Francis High School to face the Eagles.
The players from both teams were quite familiar with each other, as St. Francis was West Valley’s lone catholic school. This game would be for the bragging rights of Piedmont Park, the place where they had played with and against each other since they were kids. St. Francis was a guard-oriented team, but their tallest player was 6’8” Harry Allison. Harry was about as smooth as an ice skater on a putting green. The Eagles’ coach, Richard Fisher, believed in playing man-to-man defenses exclusively, regardless of the opponent.
This was a game Pete marked with an asterisk on his schedule. Allison always looked like he was lost playing against him. Pete would be dialing long distance all night long because he knew Harry only had enough change to make local calls.
The Pistol came out of the locker room firing, hitting his first five shots and scoring 12 points by the end of the first quarter. Coach Fisher started the second quarter by putting the 6’2” Brendan Mallory on Pete, hoping to eliminate his outside game. Four minutes and eight inside points later, Allison was back on the court for Mallory. Brendan and Pete used to be good friends and had often shot around in Pete’s driveway when they were in junior high school. Pete slapped Brendan’s hand, and he shook his head all the way to the bench.
The score at halftime was 32-23, with Pete tallying 24 of those points. This was the second consecutive game he had outscored the other team at the half.
The third quarter started with another 20-footer from the right side. Harry said on the way down the court, “Does your arm ever get tired?”
Pete replied, “No. I bet your neck starts to hurt first.” More harmless banter between friends. He ended the third quarter with 34 points and was greeted by Coach Andrews as his teammates took their seats on the bench.
“You’re getting pretty close,” the coach said.
“How much?”
“Eight away.”
“Remember that night Weisman broke the record?” Pete dipped into his memory bank.
“Yeah, like it was yesterday.”
“It was great that he did it at home.”
“Wouldn’t have been the same on the road," the coach concurred.
“Knew it wouldn’t last too long.”
“Only a matter of time.”
“Not gonna’ happen tonight," Pete stated.
“Had a feeling you were going that way.”
Pete let his guard down, “I don’t want to embarrass these guys. I have to face them every summer. Let’s tie it and get out of here. The other guys deserve
to play, they work real hard in practice.”
“I get the feeling your saving that humiliation for your friend from Fellingwood," the coach beamed.
A sly smile came across Pete’s face. “We’ll see.”
Coach Andrews pulled Tom Sullivan over and informed him of the situation, as the rest of the team walked onto the floor.
Pete went scoreless in the first two minutes of the quarter due to a lack of focus. He took only one shot and was struggling to fight through fatigue and get back on track. The lead was still 20 points. Just as Coach Andrews was about to call time out, Tommy Donahue walked by Pete and said, “I guess the well went dry.”
Sullivan spotted Pete for an open 18-footer— BANG!—36 points. Next time down from 20 feet—SWISH!—38 points. Pete then blocked Donahue’s shot and rumbled the length of the court for a lay-up - 40 points. He had always envisioned “the big shot” as a long baseline jumper. He ran around the baseline and received a pass from Sullivan in the very edge of the right corner. He turned, saw Allison charging at him, faded away and released the shot. The ball went straight through, causing the net to wrap around the rim. Pete barely saw the ball go in as Allison's momentum sent him into the lap of a St. Francis cheerleader in the first row of the stands. The referees blew the whistle to stop play so they could unhinge the net.
Coach Andrews signaled for Barry Drexler to go into the game. Then he walked to the scorer’s table and informed the public address announcer what just took place. Pete started walking toward the bench the moment after Allison shook his hand, after they stopped to chat with the cheerleaders.
Sounding confused, the public address announcer said, “Pete Berman has just tied the West Valley scoring record with 42 points. Barry Drexler replaces Pete Berman for West Valley.” Coach Andrews hugged Pete and whispered in his ear, “If you don’t break the record I’m going to regret this, and your father will kill both of us!"