Friday, October 31, 2008

Basketball Monster

Finally, it’s here. After months of waiting, the college basketball season is beginning here in Michiana.

Apropos for Halloween, my Mama reared a monster! So afraid that her frail little darling, a giant 3 feet tall on entering the first grade, would waste away, or at least develop tuberculosis from lack of exercise while lying on the bed reading books, she coerced my father into installing a basketball backboard and hoop in our yard. She then forced me out there for “some fresh air.” In retrospect, I think that she hatched this unlikely idea not only because she was a big basketball enthusiast herself, but because it got me out from underfoot for a while. In sport’s parlance, it was a win/win: at least short-term.

Long term is a little “iffier." What she produced was a vertically challenged daughter with a tall case of short-man’s disease: a woman who lusts after a bass boat because of that big tall seat, and a rabid basketball fan!

So, you can imagine this short monster’s delight at the thought that the Notre Dame men’s basketball team takes the floor this evening. Come 9 p.m., my teammate, Larry, and I are gonna be in our seats for the season-opener. Trick or Treat indeed! But this is no late-blooming enthusiasm. Both of us have lives that prepared and shaped us for this destiny. Louisville, Tennessee, Princeton during the Bill Bradley years, Bethel College here in Mishawaka: basketball venues all. This fate was inescapable.

That inescapable fate has taken us to some surprising venues. Years ago, I was in Las Vegas for an exhibition game. While riding an elevator, the doors opened and several of the players joined me. Then, my just-over-five-foot self had Shakespeare slap me in the face. Remember in Julius Caesar where Cassius says, “Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about?”

This summer, Ireland was the surprise venue. While beautiful, Ireland is not yet perfect; it’s not a basketball-hungry nation. However, when we were there in August to watch the Notre Dame Irish men play, we met some folks who are working on correcting this. (In one of those twists of fate, while at a game in Dublin, I also talked with a man who, just as I did, grew up in Louisville rooting for the Cards and was at the game to fill his need for a basketball “fix." Nice to reminisce about those glorious Denny Crum years!) Through their Emerald Hoops program, the Ireland Irish are starting youth teams, so that, just as my Mama did with me, they instill basketball as a lifetime passion. Remember that dictum, “Give me a child before he’s seven and he’s mine for life.”? Truth: one of the reasons that old sayings survive.

Although I hugely admire “smart” players, team-members who appear always to be thinking, for me, as a spectator, basketball calls up a lot of emotion.  I abandon my normal Anglo-Saxon reticence and cheer unreservedly; when necessary, I boo. I try, however, to avoid being an old-lady-behaving-badly who lets forth streams of invective when bad calls happen. Curious, the turn this took. My Mama, a “lady” in the old sense of the word who wouldn’t say “excrement” if, as they say, she stepped in it, produced a child who has to be careful not to offend bystanders when poor officiating fuels my desire to be a jumping, gesticulating, spittle and swear-word spewing old lady. Talk about a monster! Sometimes it’s better that I stay home in my big, fuzzy slippers and watch on television in order to protect other fans. Larry is more cerebral and restrained in his enjoyment of the game. Doesn’t seem right somehow, but whatever.

So, this little monster is saying, “Happy Halloween. Let the games begin.  Stand tall for basketball!”

Broadcast by Jeanette Saddler Taylor on October 31, 2008
Customs & Rituals • Family & Friends • Sports & Recreation • Permalink • Printer Friendly
Google
WWW Michiana Chronicles