Days You’ll Remember

Was walking by the basketball hoop in my driveway and I felt a pang.

I used to love playing basketball.

Got old.

In my mind, I can still shoot it like I did as a young man.

But only in my mind. The boys threw me a pass last summer and I put up a 18-footer.

Airball 

They laughed.

As luck might have it, Pops sent me a text about a guy we used to play against…

…his DAUGHTER is a big star at a division one school.

That got the wheels turning.

I thought about starting a game on the night 4 of us shaved our heads and ran into the gym. Our girls were in the stands and they were mad!

I hit my first 5 shots that night.

All bombs.

The opposing coach yelled at his team:

“Who’s guarding Charlie Brown?”

And I laugh a lot with guys who were on those teams. I was pretty popular with the home crowd.

The North Collins faithful would chant:

“WE WANT FUZZY!”

Coach would put me in with one instruction:

“Go score! Don’t dribble!”

My teammates always got me an open shot. I would hit a bomb and go sit down.

I averaged 2 points a minute in my high school career.

One of my best buddies on that team was a true athlete and ended up playing Division 1 ball.

He dragged me to big tournament games in the years after college and I watched him battle guys who made it to the NBA and other college stars.

They weren’t playing the same game as me…

…and I didn’t want to ever get into a game.

One fine day, a few of our guys fouled out and I was the last guy on the bench.

I had to go in.

We were down 3 with less than 5 seconds left. Our point guard ran it up the court and I camped out in the corner and he delivered the ball to me…

…he screamed ‘NO!’ when he discovered that he’d thrown it to me…

…but I caught it and put it up…

A high arcing shot that I KNEW was in when it left my hand…

…but it didn’t fall.

My buddy got the rebound, dunked it through and was fouled.

He hit the free throw and we won it overtime.

As we were walking off the court, my buddy put an arm around my shoulder and said:

“I saw the ball in the air and all I could think was: “Please, God, don’t let that go in. He’ll never shut up about it.”

35 years later, we still talk about it.

Damn.

I miss being young sometimes.