Scroll down to 12-19-16 to start at the
beginning.
On January 2 we went back to
school. On the school bus John and Kenny
and Philip and David asked me where I'd been during Christmas vacation, why I
hadn't come around with my new ball so we could all play together. I told them I had been too busy to play
basketball, farm work and all that.
"Ha," said Philip. "I'll bet he's practicing by himself so
he'll get good and put us all in the morgue!"
They all laughed. Right then I would have loved to see them in
the morgue; it could have saved me a lot of embarrassment. I smiled weakly, trying to indicate that he
was right. Better to lie to my friends,
I thought, than to try to explain about the basketball that was not a
basketball. It would have been disloyal
to my family to disparage the gift I had received, but I could not bring myself
to let anyone else see that "gruesome globe."
Nonetheless, it was all I had, so
after school, when the bus had disappeared over the hill where dead sassafras
leaves shook listlessly in the winder wind, I would take the ball out of its
box, carefully kept out of sight behind the pull-out bed in the living room
where my little brother and I slept, and I would go out to the barnyard and
heave it toward the rim on the barn.
I never learned to drive to the
basket, because I could never dribble with that ball. I could not shoot a normal push shot from
outside, because the ball was so light that the wind would carry it away. (Only an occasional "freak" from
New York shot the new-fangled "jump" shot. "The Great Scism" and other sports
writers assured one and all that it would never have a place in the game
because a shooter had to have at least one foot on the floor to be able to
control the flight of the ball.) Instead
I developed a two-handed "set" shot that was pulled back behind my
head and then hurled on a line directly at the backboard just above the rim, as
hard as I could throw it. The force of
the throw and the low trajectory combined to defeat the wind. I couldn't even lay it in, because the barn
side was too rough for the light ball, and it would carom off in any odd
direction.
Other than my "throw"
shot, about all I could do with that ball was stand with my back to the basket
and twirl for a one step "curl" shot or twist around for a hook
shot. I learned to vary the arc on the
hook according to the wind. When the
wind was strong I shot a line drive that barely cleared the rim. When the wind was gentle I faded away and
arched the ball high. I learned to shoot
those shots with either hand. It wasn't
really that difficult; the ball was light enough and small enough that I could
grip it easily.
I never had another ball of my own,
and I never let anyone else see that Christmas basketball. I continued to walk
to the homes of my friends for games. When I reached seventh grade I got to use
the balls on the playground and in the gym. I was never the great player I
dreamed of becoming. My skills were too
limited. More importantly, my confidence
was limited. When I was a teen-ager,
however, and later in college, there were games when I dazzled the opposition
with an array of hook shots and an indefensible overhead throw shot.
"Where in the world did you
learn to shoot like that?" people asked me. I never said.
[To be continued and
finished tomorrow, 12-22-16, with Part 4 of 4.]
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