The Greyhound Track

Somehow Brag Havatake, a local kid from Dubuque Hempstead High School, and a kid from the Milwalkee suburb of Kenosha named Easy Edge Faster (a running back on UD's lowly football team), and myself , all started hanging out together and together we all started going to the dog track. I came out ahead every time I went. I could take ten bucks, pay for hot dogs and pop, and leave with 20 bucks. It was easy money. I would just read the program, check out the times from the dogs in their previous races, and make my wager, usually "boxing" dogs together for tri-fectas etc... Easy Edge and Havatake were mystified at my success, and they started betting my bets. We were winning all the time. I didn't understand how they couldn't read the program and predict the winners, it all stood out clear as day for me. It was all good until I went to the track with a kid named Rundy during the summer while working the UD basketball camp when I realized I had been reading the programs upside down. I never won again after that. I tried to use my old system but after realizing my mistake things never stood out clearly like they had before. That summer Havatake and Edge and I tried pulling off a caper that got out of control. It involved a credit card and a sports wear store. It was all going good until Havatake started pulling leather 8-ball jackets off the rack. Edge claimed to be a four corner hustler, which was a street gang from the Milwalkee area. He was known for telling long tales, and he did have a lot of hard to believe stories, too many actually. After our failed caper Havatake and I didn't hang with Edge to often. It wasn't anything personal. He graduated and moved on and I forgot about him for the most part.
Around that same period Havatake and I started hanging out with these two chicks that played on the women's UD basketball team. They lived practically across the street from the campus with a roommate from Chi. that Spike used to mess with. There were many a barbeque and afternoon drinking sessions with those girls, and there were some very interesting things that happened between those girls and us. I better not go into details, at least not in this version of the story, but I will say Havatake and I were accused by Darby from Gary Indiana of having some type of two man game, working the ladies in tandem, kicking babes to each other after we had our fill. We did have something going but it wasn't like we ever discussed strategy or anything. When I think back and try to remember all the girls that Havatake and I probably shared, I come up with at least five, and in some cases the girls dated and then dumped one of us for the other one, so we were getting played as much as we were playing. The stories of these women and of other encounters are interesting to say the least, but I better save it for another time or maybe I should just keep it all to myself. If I did tell these tales it would be for the purpose of sharing wisdom. I'm not bragging about the women, in fact I am somewhat ashamed of my youthful stupidity, but I want to tell the story as it actually was. Girls were a big part of the attraction for me to being a basketball player at the college level. I funneled my frustrations involving women (or usually the lack of) into basketball. That started as far back as grade school for me and grew more and more through high school. During good or bad times the thoughts of women would fuel a fire inside me that made me want to create an artistic like moment in time, an expression of self, of my pain, of my happiness, in movement and in sport. Most of those times were by myself late at night in a park or at a school somewhere shooting baskets or putting on a dunk show for the crickets, bats and the stars in the sky. I couldn't muster energy from thoughts about women when I was playing in a real college game though. I was always too concerned about the game and how I would perform, so basketball was also a big escape for me, a place where I could forget about everything else in the world, women, school, money, war, death etc...
Havatake was a hell of a ball player. He was a great long range shooter and a big time high flier. In one JV game he drove baseline as I screened off a couple defenders and jumping off one foot he dunked it, head rim high, arm extended straight out. It was a sweet dunk. I saw the bottom of his shoe as I held back the two defenders. That was a game in Cedar Rapids against Mt. Mercy. My mom and two of my little bros. were at that game. I scored about 32 points, Havatake had about 40 or 50. I actually had more field goals that game, as was usually the case, but Havatake shot and made a lot of three pointers, sometimes pulling up from 25 feet or so. I always thought Havatake had more hops than myself, and he could jump off the stride or off of two feet, but he didn't dunk with the same power or authority (or reckless abandon) like I did. He scoffed at that criticism. I gained my dunking style from growing up and playing on the streets of the ICE, always against older kids, where if you went to the rack you had to go hard. I had blood blisters, calasses, and scars on my fingers and wrists during the summers of my high school youth from playing jam ball at the many outdoor courts in the city.
Many of my team mates at UD were from the inner city, as I have mentioned many times. A lot of them were brought up with gangs as part of life. Some of my teammates were gang members. Our coach instructed us to treat each other as though we were family, which trumped any rival gang affiliations (supposedly). Havatake and I started our own "club", with our own hand shakes and symbolic gestures. We called each other "G" or "G Money" all the time. Our dominate symbolic gesture and the start of our secret handshake was to hold our right hand up with three fingers up, and the other hand on our elbow. My favorite number was always the number three but I think Havatake liked it because he was a master three point shooter. I could hit threes too but I usually scored three the hard way by taking it to the hoop, getting fouled, and sinking one at the free throw line.
At the start of the second semester our JV squad picked up a kid from Parkville, a 6'5" transfer from UNI (University of Northern Iowa) named Mark Black. He helped our team but he was a bit soft for his big size. He only lasted that one semester and he and Period Baby ended up transferring to Iowa (to the big university in my hometown) and played on the Iowa practice squad (aka the gray squad). I ran into those guys and played with and against them in the IC a hundred times or more (stories told elsewhere).

Mike Singletary. New head coach for the NFL's San Francisco 49ers. I just heard a story on sports radio about Big Mike dropping his pants in front of his team during halftime of his first game as head coach. He also benched the starting QB, kicked a player off the field in the middle of the game, had a classic post game rant and apology during the post game press conference and as the radio broadcaster stated, he did all of that in his first game. What's he got left? Reminds me of Magic Johnson's first game as a player in the NBA and the advice and reaction of his teammate Kareem Abdul Jabar afterwards, "We got 81 more games to go young man, you better save some of that energy and emotion or you'll burn out" (not an exact quote by any means). Magic never lost his passion and the excitement he brought to the game of basketball. He did not make it as an NBA head coach. This brings up the question of whether or not great players can make great coaches. Larry Bird did pretty good in the NBA. Wayne Gretzky hasn't had much winning success in his NHL head coaching experience. Mike Singletary. A great dominant defensive player for the 85 Chicahgo Bears. Those eyes (NFL fans know exactly what I mean). Has there ever been a more intense player? I'm calling it right here. This could be the beginning of an NFL head coaching legend. In his presser he stated that he was from the "Old school," and that he would rather play with ten guys and get penalized the whole way then to play with a teammate who was all about himself and not playing for the team. I'm feeling ya' Big Mike. After my UD playing days and during my life as a part time student and University employee working for the U of I department of parking and transportation I developed the nickname, "Old School Matt" or sometimes just "Old Matt" (long stories about the nicknames evolution and Jess Settles, a Hawkeye baller at that time, who had the nickname of "Old Man"). I always liked old school hip hop, and still do, so the nick name fit. Mainly the name came about because I was an older college student still playing ball in intramurals and so forth mainly with and against a lot of younger players. And also because I had played for a few colleges and had stretched my career out for an unusually long time and accumulated a lot of basketball wisdom along the way. "Old School Matt!" So a shout out to the old school and to Mike Singletary. I have always disliked the San Francisco 49's, always. Until now. Good luck Mike!