Author Archives: Mark Dent

Jul 19 2010
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Speaking about the Rucker

THE night before our pilgrimage to Rucker Park, we lounged on a Lower East Side rooftop, drinking and talking and people-watching. I was in New York on vacation, time spent with my friend Pat, cousin John and aunt Kathy.

John and his friends wanted to go to the bars and stay out late. Pat and I wanted to join, but partying didn’t reside at the top of our itinerary. We longed for the next morning’s promise of basketball.

To build a trip to the greatest city in the world around a visit to a patch of manicured asphalt anchored on both ends by 10-foot tall hoops would, of course, be foolish. And really, it didn’t seem like we built our trip around playground basketball. But when Pat and I finalized our plans for New York, he mentioned basketball. He had been playing the game often in his new hometown of Washington, D.C. for the last few months and wanted to try it out in the City. I thought of the Rucker immediately.

We had no other concrete plans for the weekend visit. We thought we wanted to bike all over the five boroughs, and my aunt lives close to the Met, and Ray’s Pizza is supposed to be delicious, and, well, we wanted play basketball. So maybe we did build the trip around a game. Maybe we were/are idiots. Either way, playing at the Rucker was a must. The must.

We kept mentioning this on the rooftop as night teetered closer toward early morning. Crowds of young people below passed a decaying church on the way to bars and apartments, and the glowing Chrysler Building touched the sky in the distance. After a couple of beers, another friend of John’s arrived to join the group. He wore high-tops and gym shorts. He had played basketball earlier in the night. He was tall and lanky, and his legs looked like they held the secret of an explosive first step.

I asked him if he had played at the Rucker. He hadn’t and offered an ominous reason.

“You actually have to be good to play there.”

*****

DESPITE the fact that I’m more suburban than Iron Kids bread, I knew about the Rucker because my granny wanted me to read something, anything, on a boring, late-summer day in the tiny burg of McPherson, Kan. We went to a book store on the town’s main strip, and a lightning yellow cover with Shaq, Kobe and the bolded letters of S-L-A-M peeked at me from a shelf of magazines. I loved basketball. All Kansans do. We watch the Jayhawks play in an old barn on the campus where the doctor who invented basketball coached and then go home and rehearse jump shots for hours on hoops hanging above driveways.

Granny bought the magazine for me. I remember reading about the Lakers’ 2000 championship, Duke’s Jason Williams, a high school diary from Eddy Curry and then getting hooked enough to subscribe. Yes, I subscribed to SLAM – kind of wish I still did. And if you’re a suburbanite who even knows what SLAM is then you’re probably already either laughing or blushing in embarrassment because you read a few copies back in the day as well. SLAM was and still is a basketball magazine, only it was more than that. SLAM was the self-proclaimed “in-your-face basketball magazine.”

The writers from SLAM drenched their stories in hip-hop. And SLAM, before And-1 Mixtapes and Hot Sauce, before Skip to My Lou made the NBA, pried me away from plush, private school gymnasiums and into the foreign world of street basketball. Into the Rucker.

The Rucker, I read, was the capital of basketball’s Holy Land. It was Madison Square Garden, only everyone could play there. If, as Rick Telander wrote, heaven is a playground, then the Rucker is the first court you see when you enter the pearly gates.

The Rucker acted as a refuge for Harlem youths and a springboard for superstars. Stephon Marbury, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kenny Anderson and Wilt Chamberlain played there, and they aren’t even the legends. The Rucker’s greatest fame isn’t granted to those who move on to a better basketball life; it’s reserved for the ones who don’t leave, men like Earl Manigault, the Goat. Manigault supposedly had a 52-inch vertical leap. He did the Double Dunk, an impossible move where he dunked, caught the ball as it went through the net while in mid-air and then dunked again. Kareem called him New York’s greatest of all time. His pro career was limited to a failed ABA preseason, and before he died his arms were punctured with holes in the places he injected heroin. But he dominated at the Rucker and that meant something.

After all, the Rucker means something to all New York players. I spoke with former Kansas basketball player Russell Robinson for a story two years ago about his upbringing in the Bronx and Harlem. He loved talking about the days where he’d buy a couple of Arizona Iced Teas for energy and head to playgrounds in the Bronx or to the Rucker for an afternoon of basketball.

So yes, I knew about the Rucker. Knew about the legends. Knew about the history. Knew that Arizona Iced Tea, at least according to Russell, was the street baller’s drink of choice. I knew you had to be good to play there.

And I knew about us. Knew that we were from Overland Park, Kan. Knew that we honed our game firing jump shots on driveways. Knew that we couldn’t jump 52 inches. Knew that our most genuine Harlem experience came when we listened to Mase’s first rap album.

But at least we enjoyed drinking Arizona Iced Tea.

*****

THE M2 bus trekked through Manhattan, past the Park and past 110th into Harlem, and let us off next to the Harlem River. The new Yankee Stadium beckoned from across the water, baseball’s Mecca situated so close to basketball’s.

We stared for a moment and then walked toward 155th and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, to the Rucker. It was still early, and it was a Sunday, so men and women scurried around in suits and sun dresses, the wardrobe of the hardcore churchgoer. Even if we weren’t white and from Kansas, the gym shorts and t-shirts would’ve separated us from the people ambling on the sidewalks.

Before we turned the corner to the Rucker, I didn’t know what would happen. Part of me expected near-vacancy. It was early in the morning, and the sun already sizzled streets and skin. In fact, we decided to come at a relatively early time thinking we’d have a better opportunity to stick around in a game for this very reason.

The other part of me thought the opposite. This was the Rucker. I imagined lithe, young bodies dribbling, passing and dunking. I imagined the next Earl Manigault crouching on the sidelines, cradling a ball in his hands while waiting for some real competition and then posterizing the pretenders. Neither time of day nor stickiness of humidity would stop ballers at the Rucker; nor would it allow for two average-at-best outsiders to step on the court and involve themselves in its transcendent game.

Finally at 155th, we could see the Rucker. Lush trees guarded the court and a row of dilapidated project buildings towered across the street. Yellow bleachers, their hue as sharp as the SLAM cover from years ago, commanded attention on one side of the court. Plain metal ones stood on the other. Dark green tinted the playing surface, relenting for maroon lanes, and a fresh mural painted in the middle of the masterpiece depicted LeBron wearing a blue Knicks uniform next to a caption that read “Harlem Loves You LeBron.”

A man loitered on the metal bleachers, solitarily tinkering with a cell phone. He didn’t have a basketball. A father helped his son practice layups on one side of the court. The other side was empty. Our side. I made my first shot, and the swish of the ball in the net sounded like nothing I’d heard from other basketball goals before. The net was nylon, but it sounded like it was chain-link. It was perfect.

We shot for a while, enjoying our time but craving a game, a true Rucker experience. The man from the bleachers walked toward us and held out his hand for the ball. He wore a white t-shirt that sagged over his stocky body. When he made shots, he motioned at me like he didn’t think I knew to give him his change. I began chatting with him, asking about how often he plays and if he thought more people would come for a game. After telling me he thought not many people would show up today, he pointed at LeBron’s gigantic face, saying how badly he wanted him to come to New York. I said it was a good thing that the Knicks had at least signed Amare Stoudemire.

Soon, another man arrived. Pat asked them if they wanted to play two-on-two. Game on.

I am 5-foot-9, perhaps 5-foot-10, with spindly arms and an accurate jump shot. Pat is an inch taller, slightly more built and wins games because he cares more than anyone else. Our opponents were older and bigger. They weren’t muscular but they were thick. The man in the white shirt liked to shoot, and the other one liked to dribble through his legs and attempt crossovers. Neither was particularly fast. Neither appeared to have a 52-inch vertical. This was a good thing.

I did what I do best: made a few dribble moves, floated in the air long enough for my opponent to falter and then delicately released the ball, relying on my touch to save me from what should be a terrible time to shoot. Pat stayed in the post, his moves more polished than his defender’s, and scored often. We took an early lead.

About five to 10 other men filtered onto the metal bleachers, loudly recanting their Saturday nights as our game went on. They arrived one-by-one or in pairs. It seemed a spontaneous gathering. If you wanted to hang out, you walked to the oasis across from the projects, you watched basketball, you swapped stories and you jumped in when the game beckoned.

One time when my man drained a three-pointer, someone hollered from the bleachers in support. Fortunately, that didn’t happen often. The game went to 16, by ones and twos, and we won easily. Our opponents slapped our hands, and the guy guarding me said I played like Steve Nash, exasperation in his voice. It was a flattering, if egregiously untrue, compliment, but I didn’t care much anyways. As we rested on the bleachers and drank now-warm water from plastic bottles, I thought about the impossibility of the circumstance: We, two Kansas boys south of six-feet, had control of the court. We had control of the freaking Rucker.

A few minutes passed. The men who arrived during our game now wanted to play. One of them joined our side, and we would play a game of three-on-three. No one asked where we were from or why we came. We checked the ball and played.

Our teammate was ripped like a linebacker and wore a sleeveless shirt. He invited contact but didn’t embrace it. He grunted, “Get off me, nigga,” playfully but never actually called fouls. We were hopeless. Pat bended over breathlessly after baskets, and a hip injury from a few years ago stabbed my side every time I tried to shuffle my feet or make a first step. We trailed by plenty when my man dribbled to his left. He flashed by for a layup, a wave of long legs and dreadlocks.

“Is the game over?” Pat asked.

They laughed. No, it was just 15-8. One point away from elimination, one point away from a .500 record at the Rucker, an accomplishment we would have happily accepted.

Then something crazy happened. Anger shifted into success for the Harlem guy on our team. Pat’s low post moves started complimenting him perfectly. I said to hell with my hip and started driving again.

I wish I remembered the exact baskets, but I don’t. I remember the sweat, the panging heat, the voice in my head switching its tone from leisure to rage and an abstract flurry of beautiful basketball produced by a Harlem native and us not because the artists painted with deft strokes but because the perfect canvas willed us to try.

16-15.

We won. We were still undefeated at the Rucker. We had controlled the court, again, but the two games were enough. The sun blazed and my hip ached. We shook hands with our opponents, waved so long to the players in the bleachers and walked toward a bodega on the corner of 155th for Arizona Iced Teas.

Right before that, before the Harlem men began the next game and before we retreated to reality I had to make my last shot. For years I have practiced the superstition, believing it is bad luck to leave any court having missed my final attempt.

I planted my legs on holy ground for the final time and aimed toward the hoop where the gods double dunk. I was Russell Robinson, I was Kareem, I was the Goat, I was the kid fascinated by the stories of the same game practiced in a different world.

The ball rippled through the net, sounding just right, the way I imagine it does for everyone.

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Jun 24 2010
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Breaking point

Damn the summer sporting scene. Daytime events just don’t fit into schedules of the working individual.

I, a sportswriter nonetheless, spent the morning at Starbucks sipping on a frappucino (Java Chip) while writing a story for a special high school sports summer section (concussions).*

*The job sure beats digging ditches, eh?

This, of course, meant no World Cup. This was the second time in a row I would miss the U.S. team’s match. I had already missed the coach’s son’s kick and the infamous referee from Mali. What more could I miss? It couldn’t get any worse than that, right?

At around 11 a.m., I received a text from fellow BrewHouse writer Rustin Dodd, bearing this message: Do you believe in miracles? YES!.

My response was acute: Damn it I missed the goal. I really need to start slacking more at work and watch more sports.

Quickly, I received a phone call and scheduled an interview for another story I was working on. Minutes later, Rustin called. He asked me if I had been watching Wimbledon, if I had been paying attention lately to the John Isner match.

The answer was a mild yes. As much as it pained me to miss Team USA play its last two matches, no sporting hurt caused by a work schedule stings as much as the type doled out during the summer Grand Slam schedule. The French Open and Wimbledon are nearly impossible to watch live. Nearly impossible.

Going into today, I knew about the Taylor Dent-Novak Djokovic match, Federer’s match against the qualifier and about Isner and Nicolas Mahut. I planned to check the scores on the Internet as I worked. That’s really all I could do in order to stay productive.

And then Rustin called. I told him I had checked the Isner score about an hour ago and saw that it was 11-10 in the fifth. I had already thought this score was both surprising and outstanding.

And then Rustin served up the ace. He said it was 27-27 in the fifth set.

I had two choices: stay at the coffee shop and refresh the scoring page every minute or go home and put work on the back burner for a little while.

I chose to speed home. And I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.

At first, the Isner-Mahut match played out like a moment of triumphant history happening live on TV. I made a sandwich and watched. Surely it would end soon but hopefully not too soon. I did want to watch some of it.

After a few minutes, it was 30-30. Then 33-33. And I began noticing something.

Isner really didn’t appear to be moving around the court well when he wasn’t serving. It wasn’t that he was dogging it, no, not at all. He’s 6-foot-9, and he was exhausted.

As for Mahut, he appeared to be in ridiculous shape, at a nearly perfect fitness level for a tennis player. He wasn’t going to tucker out, yet he couldn’t return Isner’s bullet serves.

This was an obvious conundrum. Neither player was going to get a break and thus the match would last forever.
I mentioned this to my roommate, Joe, who was at home eating lunch. Hearing this, he decided that we should change the channel and play FIFA. I agreed, but was then interrupted by a phone call from a source.

For 45 minutes, I discussed with him his time in the military, typing out the words furiously. They passed through my mind, and I comprehended them, but it sounded like Isner and Mahut were the ones talking. I couldn’t stop thinking about them.

But it had been 45 minutes. The match had already lasted longer than any in history by a hell of a lot. I know I made that comment about this match having the potential to literally last forever, but it was half in jest.

The score was 48-48 when I returned to the living room. I sat.

And sat.

And sat.

Sitting on the couch, I began to feel like my life was intertwined with this match and that everyone else who watched felt the same way. We had given up part of our day, given up productivity, given up time, and we had to see that our sacrifice would pay off in the form of seeing the end of a historical sporting event.

But it never ended.

It was pleasure, yet torture at the same time. It felt like we were all out there on Court 18, rewarded with the joy of tennis but punished with having to experience tennis and nothing else for eternity.

Normalcy, i.e. our job, our day, our families etc., couldn’t resume until this match ended, until one of the sweating men hit match point and that Rolex game clock on the side of the court stopped.

Around 3:45 p.m., this nearly happened. Isner had two break points and quite a few other opportunities on Mahut’s serve. There were only four break points in the entire fifth set, and here were two of them. This was it. This was perfect, right at dusk. Life could resume with still an hour left in the traditional working day.

But, as a Guardian blogger, Xan Brooks, put it, (and you must check out his hilarious live blog): “A tweet, a tweet from Mr. Andy Murray. “This,” he says, “is why tennis is one of the toughest sports in the world.” Thanks for that Andy: wise words indeed. Actually we were hoping you were tweeting to say when the angel was coming to rescue us all. Instead we get that. You sit comfortably, and eat your nice dinner, and spare us the tweets. Unless they’re about the angel, that is. We still have hopes for the angel. And ooh look, it’s 57-games all.”

Murray hadn’t invested himself in this match. He could eat his “comfortable dinner.” I had invested. The Guardian blogger had. Anyone who gave up their time to watch tennis had.

And while we watched, at least on TV, we didn’t quite notice that the dusk was turning into straight darkness. The game was tied at 59 when the two players approached the umpire.

Mahut wanted to postpone the match. Isner didn’t. The umpire seemed to want to play another two games (like that would help).

Mahut won. AND WE ALL LOST.

So now here I am, almost 11 at night. I wanted room for summer sports in my daily life but not like this. I can’t sleep. I can only think of awe and disgust but mainly awe about tennis.

And it will only increase. Closure hasn’t come yet and might not for a while. Isner and Mahut resume their marathon on Thursday, meaning daily life shifts back to Court 18 for a little while longer.

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Jun 21 2010
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The Chronicles of Roddick

Editor’s note: So I was slated to do a story on Andy Roddick last summer because he was going to appear at the now-defunct Indy Tennis Championships and interviewed numerous people, like his brother, his mom, Sam Querrey, Robby Ginepri, Patrick McEnroe and even Johnny Mac. And I was on a quick conference call with Roddick himself. Anyways, he bailed out because of injury and I never got to write the story. UNTIL NOW. A year later, and about 2,000 words longer, we get this…

As a rule, tennis doesn’t reward those who take their time. The sport caters to the fleet-footed and swift-minded. It goes without saying that a player can’t think at length about whether he hit his groundstroke deep enough to put his opponent at a disadvantage and thus should rush the net.

A player must react. A player must decide. A player must be ready to change in a match – be it a change of position, strategy or mental state.

This rule of tennis, of course, applies everywhere throughout the sport and not just in the basics of play.

Yes, transformations are rapid. Metamorphoses seem to occur overnight if not quicker. Sam Stosur was barely a top 50 player a year ago. She’s now a contender in Grand Slams. Robin Soderling was dubiously known as one of the ATP’s best indoor court players. He’s now seen by many as the best player behind Federer and Nadal.

Yet as rapidly as players’ fortunes rise and fall on the courts, their reputations change faster. Andre Agassi was a rebellious prodigy whose shallow persona prevented his play from reaching its ultimate depth. Then he was a wise philanthropist, a man who made use of his talent to reach out to others.

Federer was a talented headcase. Then he was the undisputed king of tennis. Then he was washed up. Then he was back on his throne, the billowy white jacket with a gold 15 emblazoned the lower corner at last year’s Wimbledon illustrating that.

Federer slipped on that jacket after a match against Andy Roddick that lasted 30 games into the fifth set. It was in those five sets, in those 30 games that a transformation, rapid even by tennis’ standards, occurred.

When it was over, Roddick was the bruised and battered hero. He was vulnerable. He was wounded.

And we saw that.

One day we felt iffy about Roddick, the next day we admired him.

This is about that transformation. This is about the origins. This is about a man who was misunderstood for so long.

This is about him, and it’s about us.

Why didn’t we feel passionate about Roddick from the beginning? Why did we have to change?

What took us so long to like Andy Roddick?

***
The rule was no basketball. And that was an order straight from Roddick’s coach, Tarik Benhabiles. He coached one of the top juniors in the country, and he didn’t want to see him get injured playing something that wouldn’t improve his tennis.

This wasn’t a typical rule for a tennis prodigy. Can you imagine a young Ivan Lendl even considering picking up a basketball?
But Roddick was never like the others. A tennis life for an ordinary kid began, where else, the Midwest. There, in Omaha, Roddick joined a class of 7-year-olds at Westroads Racquet Club. He was 3 1/2.

Blanche Roddick, his mother, knew he would fail. She only enrolled him because the class would shut down for good if another student didn’t join. So she signed him up.

“If you want to get rid of him,” Blanche would tell the instructor, “go ahead.”

Nobody got rid of Roddick. Even if he wasn’t better than the rest of the class, they couldn’t have. He would stand in front of the club’s rebound wall and pound the yellow ball endlessly, not budging for anyone.

Years went by and Roddick improved and he hit a growth spurt and soon he was one of the better young Americans and then one of the best young players in the world. He still wore a hole-covered Nebraska Cornhuskers hat when he played. He still spent his formative years in the Midwest. He still played basketball.

And when his family finally did move to Florida to further his tennis career, Benhabiles began working with him the way a typical coach would work with a tennis prodigy.

And one of his rules was no basketball.

So one night Roddick told Blanche he planned to see some friends, left the house and came back late. Blanche scanned the paper the next day and stumbled upon the box score from the Boca Prep basketball game. There, printed among the Boca players who scored, she found an interesting name. It was Andy Roddick.

***
Robby Ginepri knows a Roddick none of us know, the one without the Mach 3 serve and baggy Lacoste polo.

“He was a grinder,” Ginepri says.

Roddick had to be a grinder. He was small, almost comically small until midway through his high school career. The wall measurements were posted in the Roddick’s house in Austin, and Blanche can’t remember his exact height by his early teens, but…

“He couldn’t have been more than five feet,” she says.

This meant that Roddick came up with deceptive ways to win points. This meant that he put himself in better condition. This meant that he outworked his opponents so that he still finished near the top of the 14-and-unders despite standing smaller than all but one of the top 128 in the rankings.

But he did grow, and he grew into, well, Patrick McEnroe tells it through this story.

Tennis has taken McEnroe all over the world and then back to those places again, every year, as a commentator and a Davis Cup coach. Yet he vividly remembers Basel.

It was 2001. He was a freshly-minted Davis Cup coach and high on his list of priorities was finding a spot for a teenager who had not only turned professional but rose higher than any young player ever had. That player was, of course, Roddick.

McEnroe invited him to Basel for a match against Switzerland and held a practice for the entire team on the day they arrived. Todd Martin was there, so too were Justin Gimelstob and Jon-Michael-Gambill, and jet lag threw off everyone’s timing.

Roddick stepped on the court and began rifling 140 mph serves like he was in a Grand Slam match. McEnroe turned to Martin. He saw energy, and he still saw that grind-it-out mentality.

“I’ve seen that side in Andy many times in distant lands,” McEnroe says, “and it’s something few people have.”

***
“Andy Roddick can’t find the remote either.”
L. Jon Wertheim used that sentence to begin an SI story on Roddick shortly after he won the 2003 U.S. Open. You get it, right? In a tennis world where top players like Marcelo Rios ran over their trainers in SUV’s and punched Roman taxi drivers, Roddick never missed a Nebraska football game and played poker with Mardy Fish and James Blake.

He may have dated Mandy Moore and earned millions of dollars, but he was one of us. Roddick was the everyman.

Of course, he was one of us back then because he just won the U.S. Open. In September of 2003 the future of American tennis established himself as the present.

He had a world-record cannon serve. He had a sense of humor, too. He’d poke fun at media members during otherwise boring press conferences.

But he wasn’t Pete or Andre.

A few years later, we discovered that. He lost in the first rounds of Grand Slams, and when he did reach the semifinals or finals, we knew he didn’t have a chance. And he didn’t. By 2008, Roddick had never won that second, third, fourth or fifth Grand Slam like we expected.

His serve no longer struck awe. He was called one-dimensional, lazy. His outbursts to the media weren’t hilarious but instead moody and aloof.

He still advanced deep into the draws of most Grand Slams. He planted himself in the top 10, finishing eighth or higher for the year-end rankings every year since 2002. He helped several people escape a hotel fire in Rome. He started the Andy Roddick Foundation, a charity unmatched by anyone in tennis except for Agassi. Through it he started tennis academies in poor areas and sent tons of kids, including a young Jozy Altidore, to school at Boca Prep.

“Where would be without him?” McEnroe asks.

Where would we be without him? Did we even notice that we had him? Everything Roddick did seemed to spur feelings of apathy, or worse.

I remember the fall of 2008. Roddick played an early round match at the U.S. Open against Ernests Gulbis. Gulbis was a rising star, a young Latvian riding a summer hot streak. I remember watching the beginning of the match at a friend’s house and mentioning to the group you wanted Gulbis to win.

They shrugged their shoulders.

They felt the same way.

***
There’s another layer to McEnroe’s story about Basel. The U.S. lost that Davis Cup match to Switzerland, and the main reason why McEnroe remembers, was because of a young man named Roger Federer.

That same man was wearing white on championship Sunday at Wimbledon last year and staring across the net at Roddick like he had so many times before. Roddick was 2-18 against Federer in his career.

Then the match started, and Roddick won the first set, and he had the second set won if he just made that volley. But he didn’t. He did come back to win another set though, and it went to the fifth, then it went to the 22nd game, then the 24th, then the 28th and Roddick still hadn’t been broken.

Yet no matter what we may have thought there was no way he was going to win. Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg and Pete Sampras had come to England to watch. This was about the coronation of Roger Federer. A dreamer serving aces on fumes wasn’t about to change that.

And Roddick didn’t. He did get broken. He did have to watch Federer put on that white jacket with a golden 15 emblazoned on the side and hear him apologize for the defeat.

Later, night fell on Wimbledon and McEnroe rushed over to Roddick’s rented townhouse to see if he’d be able to play in the Davis Cup event the next weekend.

Roddick was there with his wife, Brooklyn Decker, his trainer, Doug Spreen, and coach, Larry Stefanki. He was gutted. He was defeated.

McEnroe couldn’t do much to change that, but he felt he needed to say something.

“I know this isn’t going to make you feel any better,” McEnroe said, “but you’ve earned more fans with this loss than you did with any of your wins.”

The next week Roddick traveled to New York so a doctor could check on his hip. People stopped him on the streets, more than ever had before. They all gave him words of encouragement.

“I couldn’t go a block without people telling me how much they enjoyed the match,” he says.

Perhaps Joe Posnanski captured the zeitgeist best by writing “he offered that rare fan feeling: He made me feel like we had been through something together.”

It was true. Roddick had played with the guts of the grinder Ginepri knows, with the rebelliousness and joy of the kid who snuck out for a basketball game, with the energy McEnroe has seen thousands of times away from the TV cameras.

Really, he played the way he’s always played: the way we had previously never noticed.

Roddick didn’t change. We did. That quickly, how it always is in tennis, we converted.

We couldn’t get enough of Andy Roddick.

***
The draws are out for this summer’s Wimbledon. Roddick is ranked fifth and is placed in Novak Djokovic’s quarter. TV reports, blogs and news stories will bring up last year thousands of times over the next few days. They’ll show the English crowd chanting Roddick’s name as he vainly tried to win in the fifth set.

Then on Monday, the matches will begin. Flashbacks to last year will stop. Roddick will have to defeat six opponents, possibly Djokovic and Federer, just to get back to the Final.

It won’t be easy. He lost to Dudi Sela at a Wimbledon tune up last week. He played well on the hard courts in the spring but has slogged through injuries and inconsistencies the last two months.

Many wonder if Roddick has been able to recover from last year’s Wimbledon. The match that marked his mid-career resurrection and endeared him to us could have caused permanent damage to his game.

To be able to advance deep into the draw, he’ll have to forget about it. He’ll have to forget that he did everything he could against Federer for five hours and still couldn’t win.

As for us, we’ll remember. We’ll watch him hit bullet serves on the pristine grass and remember.

Our views of Roddick changed suddenly in one afternoon, and now we can take our time admiring his career.

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May 27 2010
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Feeling used

Editor’s note: Sorry for the long lapse between posts. Been busy myself and Rustin, of course, is the new blogger extraordinare for Ball Star at kansascity.com. Be sure to check his stuff out there. And, anyways, on to the post…

Q: How many used car salesmen does it take to change a light bulb?
A: I’m going to work this out on my calculator, and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

The intricacies of human fear are really quite fascinating.

Like most everything, at least part of our fears can be traced back to the human genome. Yes, we are, and have been for longer than any of us could imagine, genetically programmed to fear certain aspects of our environment.

Because it traces back to the genome, these are shared fears, archetypal phobias. We fear bed bugs. We fear the dark. We fear attacks from ferocious wild animals.

They are instinctual and more than that primal. This is because the human genome is obviously ancient.

Several hundred years ago, and longer than that, you damn well better have been afraid of attacks from wild animals and the dark because if you weren’t, you’d probably get killed.

Now, though? The fears seem a little outdated. When was the last time you saw a saber tooth tiger?

Yeah, our genome* needs an update. We should innately fear guns, not buffalo stampedes. We should innately fear texting while driving, not monsters lurking around our dwellings at night.

*Just to so everyone knows, I’m really not this smart. I know all about this stuff because of KU professor Dr. Steven Ilardi. Now, he is smart.

No, most would argue our genome lacks modern fears, and I would agree, except for one: the used car salesman.

It seems from birth we know to despise them, to cringe at the slimy thoughts induced by their very mention. We dismiss them, make fun of them, stereotype them as overweight fast-talking evildoers.

When pressed to think of what a used car salesman does all day, we imagine a wily man dressed in a checkered suit standing over a clunker with a rolled-back speedometer parked in the back lot repeating the line about how an old lady was the previous owner, and, “she just drove it five miles to and from church every Sunday.”

Yet the stories and stereotypes seem to be a way to divert our fear of them. Deep down, we fear the used car salesman. The anxiety seems innate, like part of the genome.

And that brings us to the point, about 300 words into this post in case you were wondering.

Last month, I battled the human genome and attempted to buy my first used car.

*****

Agatha Trunchbull: I need a car, inexpensive but reliable. Can you service me?
Harry Wormwood: In a manner of speaking, yes

BEFORE April, I knew of used car salesman only from popular culture. The thoughts of the used car salesmen as cheap, sleazy and poorly dressed begin early in all of us because of the genome, and are then cultivated through what we see and hear from media.

It starts with Disney. Or, more specifically, with Goofy.

Goofy, you may or may not realize, has a best friend name Pete in the cartoon “The Goof Troop.” Pete likes to play tricks on Goofy. He likes to cheat Goofy. He likes to sabotage Goofy when they go camping.

Pete isn’t just staggeringly different in the way he acts from the earnest, naïve Goofy; he looks different.

His gut protrudes from a rounded, stocky body. His black dog ears point upwards slightly, not unlike devil horns. His chubby, yet raised, cheekbones don’t feature a permanent scowl underneath them but do give the impression that one could form at any time.

Pete, of course, is a used car salesman.

So is Matilda’s dad. He’s the next step on the list, the used car salesman we see once we reach prime tweenage years.

Matilda’s dad, aptly named Mr. Harry Wormwood, fills engines with sawdust and buys a used car for $118 that he sells for more than five times that amount. He and his wife condemn education and reading. He calls Matilda “Melinda.”

In the movie, he’s played by Danny DeVito. He’s plump and shrill and picks from a wardrobe of checkered shirts, checkered shirts, checkered shirts and plaid shirts.

Finally, upon reaching our late teen years or early 20s, we may stumble across “Breaking Away”* and the noble dealer, if you will.

*The greatest sports movie of all time. A must see.

The main character, Dave Stoller, loves biking and the Italian culture. His father, Ray, is a used car salesman. Unlike Wormwood and Pete, he appears to be a loving, fair man – just not around the used car lot.

There’s a scene where Dave starts working with his dad to make some extra money. At one point, a pair of men start pushing a broken-down car back into the lot that they just bought. Dave wants to give them a refund. Ray tries pushing the car back into the street.

He has a heart attack.

All of these characters are funny but add all of them up and an image comes to mind – overweight and money-hungry, uneducated and unrefined, avaricious and opportunistic. If cars existed in the middle ages, you get a feeling Dante would have created a ring of hell entirely for housing used car dealers.

We can imagine that, hundreds or even thousands of years ago, a mother or father would tell a child a story about how a vicious animal attacked one of their ancestors so that it would stick, so that the offspring would know to avoid the dangerous creatures.

In the same way, this repeated pop culture portrayal of the used car salesmen sticks. It feeds our innate fear, and before we ever walk into the showroom of a used car dealership we think of the salesmen as caricatures, as jokes.

But we’re also trembling.

*****

“It has been said that ‘The only constant in life is change.’

TOYOTA of Paris sits on the north side of Loop 286, a roadway that may be considered the Champs Elysees of Paris, Texas. Only instead of boutiques and designer fashion, the most famous street in this Paris features clunkers and smelly exhaust from passing semis.

I arrived there early one morning in late March. The used car area wasn’t a showroom but rather a jumble of offices. I expected heads to pop out doors, a handful of drooling men with wispy mustaches to appear already tasting a sale. No one did.

I called out for help. A woman stepped away from her computer. I told her I was interested in looking at one of the cars I had viewed online. She walked out with me and handed the keys.

She said nothing other than some directions to take for the test drive. She almost seemed surprised that I was there. She didn’t wear plaid.

To an extent I didn’t want to buy the car because the people working there didn’t seem overzealous. They didn’t rush out of their offices screaming, “What can I do to put you in one of our cars today?”

A couple of weeks passed. I didn’t buy that car, and I was considering driving my brother’s 2003 Hyundai Sonata a while longer, until it completely eroded from its already withered state.

That’s when I received a phone call from Debby Baxter.

Apparently I had talked to her earlier when I first began my search for the used car. She works at Hilliard Automotive in Grapevine, Texas, a town where there are no grapes nor vines.

She called to check if I was still interested in a used car. Said she could get me a deal. Yep, a deal for me, just for me.

Now this sounded about right. Someone was hounding me and promising something “just for me,” i.e., something for anyone who shows up with a checkbook or wad of cash.

All of a sudden, my appetite to search for the perfect used car and the stereotypical used car salesman strengthened.

But I never made it to Grapevine. I surfed the Web that night for some other deals and stumbled upon a delectable one at a dealership in Bonham, Texas.

I went there the next evening for a test drive and knew I wanted the car if I could get the right deal. The blue book value on the car I wanted was about 10-grand, and the blue book value on my Sonata, the passenger side dented to the point that the doors wouldn’t open from the outside and the windshield cracked, was about $900*

*And if my brother Mike reads this from Seoul, he could be finding out for the first time that his car was in such miserable shape before I traded it in.

The enemy showed up with the keys. He looked and sounded like a person from Bonham, Texas, not a shrewd fast-talker. He worked with his wife, who discussed high school football with me as her husband checked out my Sonata.

There was no major negotiating or arguing. I said what I would accept for my car (double blue-book value) and what I would pay for his (a little less) and we, along with the head of the dealership, agreed.

If, and this is an if and I’m knocking on wood as I type, this car doesn’t break down in say a year or two, I got the better deal. I know I did.

I would say I defeated the used car salesman and humanity’s shared fear of the species, but that wouldn’t be right. The used car salesmen that I dealt with didn’t even put up a fight.

The next day I e-mailed Debby Baxter. I had told her that I would stop by to test drive a car in Grapevine after she had called me, but I no longer had to because I bought that car in Bonham.

This was the last opportunity for a used car salesman to show their true colors, to justify our fear.

I expected an e-mail of protest, of arm-twisting. I expected her to sweeten the deal or recommend something else, or heck, I don’t know, knock on my door or stalk me for several weeks.

Instead I got what you saw above, that italicized, nearly philosophical quote about change.

Could it be that our genome got it wrong? Is the used car salesman not an evil, tacky opportunist and actually a sympathetic figure that we have misunderstood all this time?

I scanned further down on the e-mail. Debby Baxter had one more thing to say.

“Please keep my number handy – and remember – the only pressure you’ll get from us is the air in your tires!”

Then again, maybe we got it right.

Editor’s note: You may be wondering what type of car I bought. I left that out on purpose. Although most of the nine readers who frequent this blog likely know what I purchased, I’m leaving the story of my new car for another, hopefully soon, post.

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Apr 11 2010
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Lavin is perfect for the Storm

Imagine Alumni Hall for just a minute. It’s a Friday afternoon, shortly after lunch time, and the place, situated on the aptly named Utopia Parkway, is packed. A smattering of students mill about the court, bricking three-pointers and lazily checking the man they’re supposed to guard.

This is the rec center, and it is also the same cramped gymnasium where guys like Ron Artest, Eric Barkley and Lavor Postell not only practiced but played a few Big East basketball games.

I love this about St. John’s. It’s small time, only it’s big time. The names – Lou Carnesecca, Chris Mullin, Artest – and the numbers – only six schools have more all-time victories – prove that. Really, St. John’s is Big East basketball, more so than Georgetown, Syracuse, Villanova, Connecticut, any of those schools. There’s more history at St. John’s, more pride.

I started watching the Red Storm when Artest and Barkley played. Later, Postell took over, then Marcus Hatten. He would lead them to the NIT Championship one year and the NCAA Tournament the next. That was 2002, and the Red Storm hasn’t been back since.

After Hatten, Elijah Ingram, a McDonald’s All-American took over as the lead guard. Losses piled, Ingram was charged with a crime and then dismissed from the team, coach Mike Jarvis would lose his job, more losses piled, Norm Roberts was hired, New York ties were supposedly reintroduced, more losses piled; and now when the Red Storm gets brought up in conversation, it’s more likely to get mentioned with South Florida than Georgetown.

***
Who has the hardest job in America?

I began the first journalism assignment of high school with that question. Keep in mind, we didn’t actually learn anything about journalism – i.e. reporting or structure or writing or anything of that nature. So this first assignment was basically a column. It was a column about UCLA coach Steve Lavin.

At first I couldn’t stand Lavin. His slick hair and scratchy weasel voice made John Calipari seem wholesome. He only got the UCLA job because it fell to him after Jim Harrick was charged with NCAA violations and other top assistants like Lorenzo Romar had already found head coaching jobs elsewhere.

Then players from Kansas City started going out west. Lavin recruited JaRon Rush, and one of my all-time favorites, Earl Watson, and I began watching UCLA.

Every year followed the same structure. Lavin’s teams would begin the year with high expectations, a top 25 ranking and a tough schedule. They would slump in the middle before gaining ground at the end and qualifying for the NCAA Tournament, even if it was because they got the Pac-10s automatic berth.

Anyone who watched this season after season could form one of two opinions, the first being that Lavin disappointed. He twice brought the consensus No. 1 recruiting classes to Westwood and never put together a complete season.

The second opinion differs greatly from the first, penciling Lavin as a good coach who couldn’t meet wild expectations. I agreed with this one.

After all, Lavin did his best in the NCAA tourney. His teams advanced to the Sweet 16 five times in six seasons, most of the time upsetting higher seeds along the way. Only Mike Kryszewski and Duke made the same number of Sweet 16s in that stretch.

Of course, this wasn’t enough. John Wooden coached the Bruins, and we all know how he did. Nothing short of Final Fours and national championships wins goodwill from UCLA fans.

So no matter what Lavin did, UCLA wouldn’t accept it. Everyone called him a great recruiter and a terrible coach. He could bring in the talent and then let it lay dormant until it moved on to the NBA.

The placing of his name onto the so-called hot seat became a midseason tradition, a tradition that always ended with those Sweet 16 runs and thus the inability to fire him. I admired how he dealt with the unfairness, persevered, struggled a while again, and then still found some way to bring it all together.

Then came his final year – 2003. The Bruins never had that middle of the year run, and his firing was inevitable. Lavin spoke in the past tense about his time in Westwood. He knew he was finished, and he had no problem admitting it, even embracing it.

But then something strange happened, although with Lavin nothing was entirely strange. UCLA defeated Arizona, the top seed, in the first round of the Pac-10 tournament. Would the Bruins mount another tournament run? It sure looked that way.

In the second round, UCLA held a big lead against Oregon. It was happening again, all the late season theatrics and victories that certainly incensed athletic officials and boosters. Somehow Lavin would save his job.

But that’s not how it worked. UCLA coughed up that lead, and Oregon won 75-74. The Bruins finished the year 10-19. Finally Steve Lavin could be fired.

***
Nobody can win at St. John’s. That’s the sentiment circling around right now; it has been since Mike Jarvis left, a cloud of controversy staying there behind him. Yep, no one can win there. No one can win at Rutgers or Seton Hall either. Schools like them, schools like St. John’s, they’re urban schools.

On the surface, coaching St. John’s would seem like an easy job. You’re based in New York. You’re based in the Mecca of college basketball.

About 20 million people live in that Mecca. Plenty of them grow up playing rec ball in cramped CYO gyms in the winter before bringing the game outside to the famous playgrounds in the summer. The smaller ones become pass-first point guards, and the taller ones develop mean streaks; they become the type of player no one wants to drive against in a game. Yes, the talent is there, but mining it is the hard part.

All the best players from the NYC area generally want to get out of the five boroughs. They don’t want to live in Jamaica, Queens. And outside of the NYC metro, no one has heard of St. John’s or cares about St. John’s. They don’t want to live in Jamaica, Queens, either.

The Red Storm’s last coach, Norm Roberts, knew New York as well as anyone. He was the man who first convinced Russell Robinson to leave the City and come to Kansas. He had connections. He could recruit the public and private schools of New York.
Roberts lasted for six seasons. He never made the NCAA Tournament.

And now here comes Lavin. He probably doesn’t have enough connections to reserve a table at a restaurant in New York City, let alone enough to gain favor among the area high schools.

Most people say this is a problem. How can the coach of a basketball team in New York City survive without any connections? How can a laid-back San Francisco guy inspire the gritty players of the Northeast to come play for him?

Here’s how. Lavin won’t. He won’t get the best players from New York City. He won’t establish deep connections with the city’s high schools. He won’t have to. And he shouldn’t try to.

St. John’s has been milking the New York City route for too long, and it’s a pointless endeavor. All the great connections of Jarvis and Roberts have gotten the Red Storm nowhere except the bottom of the Big East for the last several years.

New York City boys don’t respect St. John’s like they used to. They’ve moved on. St. John’s needs to do the same, and finally did so by hiring Lavin.

Like he did at UCLA, Lavin will recruit from all over the country and probably still largely on the West Coast. There’s no question it will be tougher. This will be a challenge.

But, remember, Lavin once held the hardest job in America. His new job fits into that same category, and there are few others more prepared for such a challenge.

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Apr 05 2010
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One more play for the Royals’ lowlight reel

It’s getting to a point that someone could write a thesis about the Kansas City Royals and all their famous blunders and bloopers of the last 10 years. I’m not talking about writing of how the organization lost more games than anyone else in that time, how it drafted the No. 1 overall pick in 2006 without a general manager or how it lost 97 games with the Cy-Young winner pitching once every five days, or even how it paid a man who can’t play in the field, get on base, walk or hit for power $36 million.

I’m talking about the purely anecdotal evidence from players and managers. The lowlights. The hilariously awful moments. These could fill an easy 100 pages double-spaced.

To an extent, the Kansas City Star did this on Sunday. The Star, of course, featured a massive section, one you could consider a thesis, to preview opening day and this coming season that mainly detailed the Royals’ problems with fundamentals. One part of it highlighted these blunders I speak of.

It was brilliant. The Star reminded us of Kerry Robinson’s famous scaling of the outfield wall, only, upon reaching the apex of his jump, to find out that the ball bounced on the warning track in front of him. It reminded us of Ken Harvey getting hit in the back by his cut off throw, various sunglasses issues and others that you can read here.

Those are the chosen lowlights. Those are what we remember the Royals for in what is arguably the worst period of baseball imaginable. Those are what Joe Posnanski can reel off reflexively, along with moments like when the Royals promoted Eduardo Villacis to start at Yankee Stadium, when Tony Muser complained he had too many players who pounded milk and cookies instead of tequila, when Luke Hochevar let a runner advance to third base because he wasn’t looking, when a cat sprinted around the stadium and when manager Tony Pena showered in his uniform after that dreadful Villacis start and then told the press the Royals would win the division.

These are wonderfully terrible, hilarious moments. But everyone tends to overlook a certain lowlight when the discussing the Royals’ ineptitude.

Let’s go back to 2005. August. In the annals of bad baseball history, this would be Chapter One.

That month, Kansas City lost an otherworldly 19 games in a row. From July 28 to August 19, the Royals didn’t win once. One of the famous lowlights occurred during that stretch. In a game that the Royals had in the bag, Chip Ambres let a fly ball drop to the turf. His catch would have been the third out in the ninth. The other team went on to win the game.

So, yes, people will remember that August month for the losing streak and that game. Maybe that’s why this lowlight has largely been forgotten.

It happened on Aug. 27. The Royals led the Yankees, in the Bronx, 7-3 in the bottom of the ninth. Jeremy Affeldt, who had been a pretty reliable reliever, was pitching.

With one out and a runner on first base, he forced Jorge Posada into an 0-2 count. Then came the moment.

Posada hit an easy come-backer straight to the mound. Affeldt fielded it and had an easy throw to make for the game-ending double play. But these are the Royals, and easy often leads to a certain kind of remarkable that leaves you shaking your head for all the wrong reasons.

As he turned around to throw to Angel Berroa, who was covering second base, Affeldt tripped over the rosin bag. Let me write that one more time.

HE TRIPPED OVER THE ROSIN BAG.

The loss of balance caused him to poorly throw the ball, and both runners advanced safely. Of course, the Royals went on to blow their four run lead and lose 8-7.

So there it is, the forgotten piece of history. I guess it’s only natural that we forget or don’t emphasize certain parts of the past. Important details of the greatest civilizations have certainly been forgotten or lost. But our conscious keeps details of Tony Pena Jr.’s sunglasses, Robinson’s leap and so on. I say we add the rosin bag as well.

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Apr 02 2010
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Only in Oklahoma

The ground turns red when the sign standing next to the highway welcomes you into Oklahoma. It’s a noticeable change. You look out the window, and the grass seems to disappear. There’s only dirt. And yes, it’s red.

This happens because the soil is enriched with oxidized iron, something that is common in other regions and states throughout America. Only Oklahoma, though, is synonymous with red dirt. It’s like Roland Garros, the clay there affectionately known as red dirt, minus the tennis and the Paris sophistication, or snobbery, depending on how you see it.

I see it as sophistication. And I see it as snobbery. Paris has both. Oklahoma seemed to have neither.

Really, what does Oklahoma have?

Even as a major fan of the Midwest, I never really held any particular admiration for Oklahoma. To me, it was partially just that song for Curley to sing about, and in it, even he admits that Oklahoma is only OK. It’s not fantastic. It’s not memorable. It’s OK.

Ok-la-ho-ma, OK.

At least, I saw it that way.

I drove through Oklahoma the other day* on a journey that took me from Dallas to Oklahoma City for a basketball game. Requisite signs of meth abuse warnings and finding God before you can no longer be saved dotted the side of the road on the way there.

*Two weeks ago now. Man, really procrastinated on this post.

A heavy rain began falling as I neared the city. This would turn into a blanket of snow and ice that would add misery to the ensuing Saturday evening Kansas basketball loss. It prevented fellow Brew House writer, Rustin Dodd, and I from driving home that night, he to Kansas City and I back to Dallas.

So we waited until the morning. Then I began the long drive back through Oklahoma. My car was shaking.

This, of course, was nothing new. My car had been shaking a couple of weeks earlier on a drive to Austin. I took it to a mechanic, who replaced all the mufflers – said he hadn’t seen any in that poor of shape all his life – and assumed everything would work. Or at least work as well as everything could work for a 2003 Hyundai Sonata that has damage so bad you can’t even open the passenger side doors.

This was an incorrect assumption. It started shaking, badly. Driving in the car, I felt strangely like someone sitting in one of those massaging recliners. At least, I thought, I’ll feel comfortable before this piece of junk breaks down and sends me into the roadside ditch.

But soon I would stop for gasoline. My stretch through Oklahoma was nearly ending, Dallas and hopefully a trip to another mechanic miles away.

At the gas station, I didn’t check the tires. I had just days before, and they seemed full of air, or at least full enough.

This was another incorrect assumption. Minutes after leaving the gas station, the ground made a pop and the smoky, smell of rubber wafted. The tire went flat.

Flat, though, wouldn’t describe what happened to the tire. Holes and gashes zig-zagged through the treads, as if the gremlin from that Halloween episode of the Simpsons latched onto the wheel and went to town.

But I didn’t really care. I’ve had about six or seven flat tires in the last two and a half years. I can change them quickly, not Ralphie’s dad in “A Christmas Story” quickly, but quickly nonetheless.

I popped the trunk, spotted the spare and, after a timely struggle, pulled out the jack. This wasn’t your ordinary jack. It was far worse. It was missing a piece. The lever that allows you to pump the jack, yeah, the most important part, the thing that actually helps you raise the car so you can attach the spare, it was missing.

Oh fudge.

I was in the middle of Oklahoma, and I had to try elevating the car by twisting a small, jutting part of the jack, an exercise that probably permanently damaged my wrist and did nothing. I considered calling AAA or some sort of tow service and called my mom and dad about seven times for advice.

Then a massive truck, no, it was more like a van, or maybe a van-truck hybrid, pulled to the side of the road. A man stepped out.

He quickly removed the type of jack you would find at a mechanic from his vantruck, slid it under my car and pumped it up in a matter of seconds. Two or three minutes later, we had affixed the spare, and I was ready to go, especially after he filled it up using an air canister that was sitting in the back of his vantruck.

His name was Terry. He had been driving for at least 15 hours because of the snow, he said, and had spent the last day or so in North Dakota. His teenage daughter sat in the passenger seat, noticeably angry that this trip would be prolonged a little while longer.

He had seen several accidents. He had seen a semi-truck completely stall in front of him. He had seen an crash, and a man laying in the snow surrounded by flashing ambulance lights.

And apparently, he saw me by the side of the road, vainly twisting my wrists to lift a Sonata with a faulty jack.

I couldn’t quite understand him, but I think he said he passed me on the highway, kept driving for about a mile and then turned around.

“I wondered if you needed some help,” he would tell me.

He handed me his card – he works in some sort of repair business – hopped back in his vantruck and drove away. I arrived home without any further problems and explained the story to my roommate, Joe, who happens to be from Oklahoma.

“People rag on Oklahoma and states like it,” he said, “but there’s nowhere else someone would do that.”

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Mar 17 2010
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The other Ford Center memory

The Ford Center brings with it a certain connotation, giving rise to images of weariness, disgrace and pain for Kansas fans.

Everyone remembers a night from 2005. A group of seniors thought by many to be the greatest class in Kansas history lost to Bucknell. It had been to two Final Fours and came within three points of a national title. It came within an overtime period of another Final Four a year earlier. It included Wayne Simien, Michael Lee, Keith Langford and Aaron Miles.

And those stars lost to a group of guys in pumpkin-orange jerseys named McNaughton and Bettencourt.*

*Funny how people with variations of the last name Bettencourt (i.e. Betancourt) just seem to aggravate Kansans/Kansas City sports fans.

The senior who spoke forever on his senior night missed the last shot. With about three seconds left, Simien found a spot just inside the top of the key, turned around and attempted a shot he had made hundreds of times throughout his career, the shot that fans associated Simien with…and missed. The ball bounced off the iron, the Bucknell players swarmed the court and Kansas reached what many considered the nadir of its basketball program.

I didn’t see any of it. That night I was in Guatemala City, far away from TV or radio or March Madness or any type of medium in which you could even see a bracket. The next morning at the airport my group and I wondered about the game. We, of course, assumed Kansas won. A few Guatemalans told us otherwise, but we assumed it may have been a joke or miscommunication. Only when I returned home and saw the “Death-Knell” headline in the Kansas City Star did it fully hit.

Yet none of that night has ever quite registered the way it likely has for most Kansas fans.

This week, perhaps, they’ll think of the Ford Center because Kansas is playing there again. They’ll think of that night. They’ll think of Bucknell.

I’ll think about the NCAA Tournament at the Ford Center in a different way.

***
The 2002-2003 season was the first time I hadn’t seen a KU game in person at Allen Fieldhouse in six years. My family started going to one game a year in 1997.

That season we saw Kansas defeat Brown by approximately 984 points, and it was Jacque Vaughn’s second game back from his wrist injury. The next year, we saw them defeat Baylor by approximately 983 points. Then it was a loss to Iowa, then a loss to Iowa State and so on.*

*Yeah, we were a pretty unlucky group. Kansas never loses at Allen Fieldhouse, unless the Dent family comes to watch. Later on, as a junior in high school, I was there when KU lost to Richmond, too.

Every season, we saw one game. That was pretty much the rule, and it was generally a game that no one else would want to see, thus the reason why we could actually get/afford tickets.

But we didn’t see one in 2002-2003. Oh, I would have liked to have seen one. It was Nick Collison’s last year. Same with Kirk Hinrich. Two of Kansas’ all-time greats were going to graduate, and I wouldn’t get to see them in their final season.

It wasn’t exactly a tragedy along the lines of, say, Oedipus Rex or Macbeth, but I was a high school kid living in Kansas who had studied KU basketball for years. It sucked.

Then the NCAA Tournament rolled around. The Jayhawks earned a No. 2 seed and would play their opening round games at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City. I’m sure I could use a quick Google search to determine who they played in the first round but at this point, I am feeling lazy and just wanting to stream of conscious everything, so I will just say that they smoked their first round opponent.

In the second round, they would face Arizona State. The Sun Devils had a power forward named Ike Diogu who was supposed to be one of the best power forwards in the nation. I assumed, like for all the games, that I would watch it on TV.

Then my dad, Paul Dent, had this crazy idea. The day before the game, a Friday, he suggested that we travel to Oklahoma City to watch Kansas play against Arizona State.

It was a five-hour trip. Oklahoma was playing in the other second-round game, meaning all those football fans would be more than happy to sell their tickets and watch replays of Josh Heupel, Jason White in their basement.

We would have an opportunity to see Nick and Kirk, not to mention Keith Langford and Aaron Miles. Yes, it was a great idea.

My brother, sister, dad and I (my mom had some sort of open house thing, whatever that means, and couldn’t go) left early in the morning in my dad’s Toyota Avalon.

You get to Oklahoma City on I-35, a devil of a highway that pretty much runs from Canada to Mexico. It seems that everyone in the Midwest must traverse I-35 to reach any destination. It also seems that I-35 intentionally drags through the ends of the earth regardless of its latitudinal location.

Once you get past the Flint Hills and Wichita the only destinations between there and Oklahoma City are rest stops with broken vending machines and sketchy bikers wearing jean jackets. Diners with names like “Grab and Dash” and “Manny’s” pop up every 50 miles or so but that’s it.

After stopping at Braum’s (and thankfully not “Grab and Dash”), we found a hotel in Edmond, Okla., the hometown of Bill Self. This being 2003, none of us knew or cared about that then. We cared about finding tickets. And that would be a problem.

The Ford Center was buzzing. Oklahoma would play the first game of the day and you could tell.

Men and women in red shirts milled around outside, each desiring tickets like us and scanning for the either nonexistent or unapparent scalpers. My dad looked puzzled. My sister joked that she should try and persuade a security guard to let us in. I could have sworn I saw someone from my high school, not that that would have helped.

At this point, nothing helped. Kansas would be playing inside the arena looming tall in front of us in about two hours, and we had no idea how we could move from the sidewalk to the cheap seats.

So we didn’t. We kept walking, and my watch kept ticking, moving closer toward game time. With about an hour to go and elusive scalpers still very much elusive, we decided watching the game at a restaurant was better than not watching anything at all.

Bricktown’s red hues rose up within walking distance of the Ford Center, and we settled on a restaurant there. TV screens showed Gonzaga lose to Arizona in a second round overtime game before the Kansas game started.

My brother and I split a pizza. We would watch Kansas on TV again, just in a slightly different location.

And for a while we did. Nick Collison, Kirk Hinrich, Aaron Miles and Keith Langford dominated Arizona State like we all expected.
Then something funny happened. CBS switched broadcasts. The screen went from that awkward split-phase to full-blown coverage of something else, something that wasn’t Kansas.

We drove five hours in one day, and now we couldn’t even watch the Jayhawks on TV? This was a new low. The game involving our favorite team, with two of its greatest players of all time, was taking place five minutes from where we sat and we couldn’t see it.

Powered by the thought that there had to be some sort of TV screen showing this game closer to the Ford Center, we walked back. Like before, hordes of people in red Oklahoma shirts walked outside.

This was different, though. They were leaving the arena en masse. They saw the ensuing KU blowout victory as CBS did, a worthy diversion for one half but not for anything longer.

Problem was, empty seats didn’t make a difference. We couldn’t just ask for their tickets because, upon leaving the arena, they were voided.

One half of basketball was left, one half that seemingly nobody in Oklahoma City wanted to see but us, and we couldn’t see it.

Then we had an idea, my sister’s desperate idea. I don’t know how we came up with it or who exactly suggested it, but we ran with my sister’s joke from earlier about just asking a security guard to let us in the arena.

An old man wearing a yellow jacket guarded one of the side entrances. He appeared to be a volunteer, the type of person excited about sports and helping others. My sister asked the question. Would he let us in?

Sure, he said.

We didn’t even think of ascending the stairs toward the upper levels and instead focused on seats located a few rows behind the Jayhawks’ bench. Four of them awaited.

For one half, we watched, the best view I’d ever had at any sporting event when 30 minutes earlier it seemed we wouldn’t get to see any of it.

I don’t remember much about that second half now. Kansas extended its lead, and I’m sure Hinrich and Collison led the way; but it’s really just a hazy image of fast-breaking, turnover-inducing Roy Williams basketball at its finest.

I do remember the end. As we walked out, a few older people decked out in KU garb waited by the same exit. I recognized one of them as Wayne Sr., or at least that’s what they always called him during the game broadcasts.

He was Wayne Simien’s father and came down to watch even though his son couldn’t play because of a shoulder injury. Feeling content from all the night’s events, I approached Wayne Sr. and told him I wished for a smooth recovery for his son.

He shook my hand. He told me he appreciated everything.

In two years, this man’s son would miss a shot in the same arena that would send fans fuming and writing threatening letters to Bill Self, a shot that people still remember and probably will for quite some time.

I won’t. I’ll remember Wayne Sr.’s handshake.

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Mar 16 2010
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Pop Song Analysis Vol. 1

So here’s a new, hopefully recurring series I’m working on. I’ll dissect chosen songs from the ever-complex world of popular music. I will attempt to do this in a sort of literary fashion, discussing characters, the summary, the setting, the conflict and a proposed solution for that conflict because let’s face it, sometimes these songwriters just leave us hanging.

Oh, and a quick note: Being that this is March, I should have a good college bball post up tomorrow and possibly another on Thurs. or Friday.

1. Akon “Sexy (Chick)”

Summary: Akon is at bar, and a dancing woman piques his interest. He wants to find a way to describe her, a respectful way, but is struggling with this concept.

Setting: Nighttime, at a bar where most of the other girls, except for the one of Akon’s focus, look like, we can assume, “neighborhood hoes.”

Character list
Akon: A performer of Senegalese descent, his first single was “Locked Up” from 2004. He was once criticized for allegedly simulating improper on-stage acts with a 15-year old. Gwen Stefani also once kicked him off their tour.
Sexy Chick: This is a girl who is a diva and could be on the low down and who people say needs to slow down. Others have also said that she’s the baddest thing around town. Akon finds himself infatuated with Sexy Chick.

Universal Conflict: Man vs. Self

Specific conflict: Akon vs. His inability to describe this so-called “Sexy Chick”

Akon is battling the limitations of his own vocabulary. He’s trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful. If he could find these words, perhaps he could walk over toward her, hope that she is not underage as is allegedly his past mistake, and make a move.

Proposed solution: As a writer, I can totally relate to this conflict. Finding that perfect word is sometimes impossible. In that sense, there really is no feasible solution. There is, however, a recommendation. Instead of finding a way to describe this girl without being disrespectful, Akon simply starts chanting: “Damn, girl, you’s a sexy chick” (and it’s sexy bitch in the unedited version). Now, maybe I’m not as much of an expert at life as Akon, but I do know that describing a girl as a “sexy bitch” is not respectful. He says he is trying to not be disrespectful, and he obviously is. So here’s my suggestion: Akon should say, “Damn, girl, you’s an upstanding citizen.”

2. Lady Gaga and Beyonce “Telephone”

Summary: Lady Gaga and Beyonce are out at a club, presumably with several friends, and someone, presumably a male, calls each of them. At first, it seems that Gaga tries to answer but isn’t getting any service. But for the rest of the song it seems that neither woman can answer their cell phones because they are too busy dancing.

Setting: Nighttime at a bar that is a dead zone for phone service. It also just so happens that Gaga’s favorite song is about to come on.

Character list:
Lady Gaga: Talented performer and singer who has risen to “Fame” (get it?) in the last year. She loves to dance. This is evident from the song, “Just Dance.”

Beyonce: Another talented performer and singer who has been around for a long time. She is married to Jay-Z. Although she hasn’t previously professed to be as much of dancer as Gaga, we can assume she also enjoys the pastime.

Unknown caller: Someone is obviously trying to contact these two. It is unlikely that this person is Jay-Z because Beyonce would likely want to speak with her husband. He has their cell phone numbers and thinks for whatever reason that he could meet them at this club. Gaga may have wanted to meet him earlier when she was free, but now, clearly, she is not. Beyonce also says that it’s not that she doesn’t like this caller, but it is just not a good time.

Universal conflict: Man vs. Technology

Specific conflict: Beyonce/Gaga vs. Their cell phones.

Both Gaga and Beyonce are having problems with their phone, whether it is from bad service or that it won’t stop ringing. Really, all they want to do is dance, one of the most primal forms of human entertainment, and their phones, technological devices, are preventing them from doing so. They are romantic beings trying to enjoy the simpler forms of life without relying on science or technology.

Proposed solution: The easy way out is to throw away the phone. But who would want to do that? You would lose your sim card, and it would be a waste of money. I suggest that Gaga and Beyonce suck it up and try to text while dancing. They argue that they can’t dance, hold a drink in one hand and text with the other. Why not? They could even implement the phone and their texting motion as part of the dance.

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Mar 03 2010
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Jersey Shore 2

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