Basketball was a sacred game, more than a game, especially to the black guys I played ball with in Dubuque who were from the inner city. My JV coach and roommate D Rog was the champion of this phenomenon, and he was a phenomenal ball player. The required skills and the dedication and the commitment to becoming a great baller were regarded as akin to honing and committing ones self to becoming a skilled craftsman in any trade or art or even in any other sport for that matter. One phrase that I like to use when referring to practicing and becoming a better baller is, "hone your craft". No doubt about it the ballers I met while attending UD had done and were doing just that: honing their craft as ball players. And so did and so was I at the time, just like the most of the rest of them. But to the kids like D Rog and Mo the game was even more than just a learned craft, it was their way out of the ghetto. I'm sure you've heard that same phrase and that same story before. But to see it and experience in the real with them, that changes the story for me from a cliche to something much more real. As for my story and my basketball journey in comparison to theirs: When I turned 18 I was thrown to the wolves by my parents after being kicked out of the house (or at least very strongly encouraged to leave). Luggage was my high school graduating gift. Could there be anything less subtle? I did get some help paying for college from my parents. I was smart in school and I could have studied anything and been successful, but yet not smart enough or wise enough to try to earn scholastic scholarships. I just wanted to play college basketball. The world and the U.S. and the rest of society and the Great American Dream and the corporate world and the grand illusion of it all caused me to want to escape into the game I loved to play and into the world and culture that revolved around it, no matter what the cost. So in a way I had chosen a path that made basketball my way out too, a way out of not confronting all the bullshit I saw in the rest of the world. So it was an escape for me also like it was for the college ballers from the ghetto, albeit my escape was a little more internal than theirs. But also I want to point out that maybe instead of escaping and running away from something maybe I was running to something. In any case what I want to make clear or at least the point I am trying to make is that basketball was more than a game to us, and since it was the way out of the ghetto and a chance at a career for many of the ballers I played with and against, it was a skill set and a real social phenomenon that can be likened to any skill, craft, or art that earns people a living and or recognition in our society.

I feel good inside when I think back to my old playing days. When I replay particular games or plays inside my head it puts my mind in a happy place. I worked hard for about 15 years at becoming the basketball player I wanted to be. During my playing days (except for the last few years or so) I felt like the underdog poor gangly street baller that I was and I never felt like I got the respect I deserved from a lot of folks that were in the local basketball community in the IC. Without the respect a baller doesn't get picked up to play in good pick up games or invited to play in the playing sessions organized by the likes of local b-ball enthusiasts such as Randy Larson (U of Iowa basketball booster and founder of Prime Time Summer Basketball League and a local Lawyer and a former City Councilman and also a restaurant owner), or asked to play on some peoples City League or intermural teams etc... I usually had my own teams and I did get asked to play on a lot of other teams and I did have more than respect from the old school ballers at the rec and from the Des Moines kids and ballers that lived above me in the "Johnson St. Pad II and from the CR crew I hung with... but some of the ballers that played at the Field House, specifically some of the black crowd, and the "referee crowd" (who made up our long time intermural rivals) did not respect my game, even though I don't see how they couldn't in the end considering the success I had against them. When I think back and as I write my stories I realize more and more how much actual success on the court that I had and how I fulfilled many personal lifetime basketball goals, and how hard I worked and how lucky and fortunate I was to have the God given size and skills and coordination to become the baller that I did. If its pride that fuels my writing or my reminiscing than I don't really care. With the isolation and the loneliness I have in my life now anything that gives me a sense of self worth, a sense of accomplishment in my life, and also makes me truly happy inside, must be a good thing. For all the words and the stories that sound overly boastful there are words and stories that I have included and potentially left out but that I still remember (or at least feel) that balance my personal sense of humility with my pride and ego. The broken bones, torn muscles, and dislocated joints; the on court ass whippings and the poster boy getting dunked ons; the thousands of late, late, night shooting sessions at outdoor courts like Dodge Street or Longfellow; the jumping workouts at Shraider Field for years or at Mark Twain when I lived on Pine Street; the giant hill I ran while at Dubuque while wearing my boy Shot's hip weights; all the weight lifting I did for like 10 years; the walking for miles to find a court to work on my game when in high school; the put downs, jealosy, and back stabbings; the attending of schools in far away places and the 100,000$ plus in student loan debts so that I could play college ball; the coaches and their yelling and all that crap; the let downs and the heartaches; all these things and more I experienced and endured during my life as a basketball player. I miss it all actually. The basketball journey I took was to say the least all that I had hoped for as far as the overall experience and its ups and downs and what it taught me and the man and the baller that it helped me to become. So great was this journey that I feel compelled to share it with others. Remembering back on it all as I grow older is a good thing, it is for me the next best thing to playing, and dare I say, or at least I wonder: is thinking back on it all even better than actually living it and experiencing it as it happened? During the playing days the pressure of always wanting to improve or of just winning the game at hand (important not just for the sake of winning but so you and you're team didn't have to sit out and loose court) didn't allow for the time to admire the on the court accomplishments of the day. At the end of the day after a day or afternoon of playing was usually a great time to mentally replay and rap about the events of the day with roommates and peers, but in the later years of playing to go home to an empty house with no one to rap to was a real lonely feeling, a terribly lonely feeling. On one such occasion I was so struck with a sense of grief and a feeling of utter let down in the knowledge that the day of hooping and an era of balling had come to an end for me that it compelled me to write a poem about it (But Who Cares?), and even after that day, some 10 years or so later, I'm still writing about it.