Halfway Home

Tuesday was sort of a milestone day in terms of the chemotherapy treatments I’ve been getting. It was treatment number 4 which means I’m halfway done. Four more to go, one more surgery after that, and then it’s done. All done.

Things are still going ok as far as the side effects go. My hands are definitely more sensitive to the cold than they were when I started and grabbing something cold is about the same as getting a low level electrical shock. That’s definitely the worst part of it right now. The nausea comes and goes, but I’ve got medication I can take for that and for the most part, it hasn’t given me any trouble. The effects last for 2-4 days after I get the pump unhooked and then it’s been fine after that. That could change as the treatments progress, but I hope not. I can’t even tell you the number of times already that I’ve forgotten that I’m not supposed to touch cold stuff and end up throwing down whatever thing I’ve just picked up. Some good examples include a boot full of snow, a can of frozen apple juice, a ball for our trailer hitch, and a cold can of pop.

I did something a couple days ago that I hadn’t done since before the surgery. The snow has been receding in the driveway and that cleared off the basketball court enough for me to get a ball and shoot a few times. Nothing outside the range of about five feet, but enough to remind me that it’s fun and I’d like to get back to the point where I can do it on a regular basis. When I was in my early 20s, and maybe even in my late teens, that’s all I did was play basketball. Softball too, but basketball was my favorite. Bob Gulick and I played together when we started. Neither of my brothers was old enough to play in a league at the time, so it was just Bob and I. I had previously played for my uncle’s team and was ready for a change just because there were a lot of guys on that team and Bob and I wanted to be somewhere where we could play together.

This meant signing on to play with the Hen House out of St. Helen at first. They were a good group of guys, but we weren’t a very good basketball team. Bob and I were of the mind that since we were probably the two best players on the team, that we should be on the floor the majority of the time. The other guys didn’t see it that way. Hell, I’m not even sure that they agreed with our assessment that we were the two best players on the team. Actually, I’m sure that most of them did not share that view. Our time there did not last long.

One thing that I need to mention at this point in my story is that there is no person that I enjoyed playing with more than Bob. The reason is simple. I like to shoot the ball. I make no secret about it and I do not apologize for it. Bob knew this about me and still enjoyed playing with me. I have played with a lot of other guards over my years, and I have never had a backcourt mate more in tune with where and when I wanted the ball. We played together enough that he was just able see the play unfold the same way I did and he just knew where I was going to go and when to make the pass. Of course, every shooter needs a conscience, and while I didn’t have one of my own, I had Bob. He would pull me aside from time to time and tell me to get so and so the ball, or tell me that someone needs a touch down low. I knew that if Bob was telling me this, I had better listen just because he had a better sense of that stuff than I did.

And please don’t think that I’m saying that I’m some kind of all-star. I loved playing and I was pretty good, but I have played with and against a ton of guys way better than me.

One thing that I had going for me as a player was the fact that I was overweight and people took one look at me and decided that I wasn’t going to be any good, so I always got the worst defender that the other team had to offer until they figured out that fat didn’t necessarily mean slow and terrible.

A really good story about this happened when I was in my mid-30s. I was playing in a charity game at the high school in Sault Ste. Marie and I had invited my youngest brother Clay up to play with us. He came and we had a great time playing together. After the game, we were sitting on the bottom row of the bleachers changing our shoes and putting on sweats and such and getting ready to go. An older man and his wife were making their way down the bleachers and stopped in front of Clay and I and started talking to us.

“You are proof positive that you can’t judge a book by its cover,” the woman said. “You sure don’t look fast, but there you were, dribbling the ball all over the place and you looked pretty fast doing that.” I said thank-you and they went on their way. A few minutes later, when Clay could draw breath again, he managed to sputter “the fat guy can play. That’s what they just said, the fat guy can play.” Someday, I may forgive Clay for laughing as hard as he did over that, but not just yet.

Truth be told, it was pretty funny.

But my glory days as a basketball player definitely came in the Houghton Lake Men’s League. When Graham was old enough to play, we (me, Graham, and Bob) started putting our own team in the league with guys that we picked ourselves. And I have to be honest, I can’t even remember who was on that team, so if you read this and were on that team, please let me know. If you were on it, you should have a horrific looking purple t-shirt with a gold number on it. From there, Glen’s sponsored us for a few years and we began to pick up some of our core players. I’m going to rattle off some names that I remember playing with us, and I know that I’m going to forget some of them. If you played with us and I didn’t mention you, please message me so that I can edit this post and add you.

I know that Josh Arleth and Erick Haight played with us pretty much from the very beginning and I’m pretty sure Matt Brunt did too. Matt was a lot of fun to play with and he fit our style really well. We were the mouthiest team in the league for a period of about 8 years. Matt was very talkative on the court, but I don’t ever remember him getting teed up. A little later, we added Scott Szotko, who was an extremely good basketball player. He also fit our “talkative” style very well, especially in getting under the other team’s skin. When Clay was old enough to play, that added a whole new pool of players to our fold. The bruise brothers, Dave Jones and Jeff Mallets were lots of fun to have around and were just a brawl waiting to happen, and Craig Lavigne was another guy who came with Clay. He was a good player, but was quiet. I think he and Josh Arleth were the two quietest guys to ever play on our team.

We also had a guy named Doug Ryckman for a year, and what a year it was. We beat the perennial league champion that year with him and in that game was one of my favorite moments ever in that league. Matt Brunt gets the ball and takes a turn-around jump shot from the right elbow. Even before the ball is halfway there, he turns to the guy guarding him and says in this sing-song voice, “Eat it.” We laughed so hard over that after the game that our stomachs all hurt. That quote will live on for as long as I do.

We were the second-worst behaved team in that league for all our years in it, second to the Limberlost. The reason I say that is because we limited our behavior to verbal outbursts, and it was usually directed at the officials, not other players, although this was not always the case. The Limberlost group was maybe the dirtiest team I’ve ever played against in any league I’ve ever been in. The usual rule is that you respect the fact that guys have to get up the next day and go to their job and you don’t do anything that would jeopardize that. Not so with these guys. It wasn’t all of them, but there were definitely two or three of them that were more than a little crazy. If you were driving in for a layup, you wanted to have a good idea as to where they were in relation to your path to the basket. And if you knew you were playing the Limberlost on a given day, you made sure that your insurance premiums were paid up.

We were a way different team than that. We were cocky, arrogant, and to be honest, pretty damned good. Other teams didn’t necessarily like us, but it wasn’t because they were scared of us. We just had a good time playing together and had fun out there.

I still keep in contact with a good number of guys who played on our basketball team and would like to hear from you if I didn’t mention you in this blog.

I could go on for pages and pages about our team and our exploits in that league, but I will leave out the Graham Church abuse of the garbage cans in the hallway and some of my own tantrums that would be embarrassing to mention.

I Will Win