A Fine Madness

Let the season within the season and the games within the games begin. I am woefully uninformed about the nitty-gritty of this college basketball season, having absorbed what little information I happened to stumble across in watching Saturday televised games and reading Sunday papers. But I've been a fan since the early 1960s when Ohio State and Cincinnati were the titans of the tournament. If you've heard of Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, and Fred Taylor, that was them. Short shorts, Converse All-Stars, grainy black and white TV, if any.

I'd been to college ballgames in the late 1950s when LaCrosse State played other Wisconsin state colleges from Platteville, Wausau, Menominee, Stout, EuClaire. I'd been to high school games between the local rivals Central (on the Southside), Logan (on the Northside), and Aquinas (Catholic). When we left LaCrosse and moved to Detroit, a new world of big-time sports opened up, and I was an eager witness.

Chas Golly took me to Pistons games downtown, first at Olympia Stadium, really an old classic hockey arena, and then at Cobo Arena, the ultra-modern dome on the riverfront. We saw some of the great old players like Bob Cousy and Bill Russell of the Celtics, Elgin Baylor and Jerry West of the Lakers, Bob Petit and Cliff Hagen of the St. Louis Hawks, Oscar Robertson and Wayne Embry of the Cincinnati Royals, and of course Wilt Chamberlain. That was big fun.

The University of Detroit had some good teams back then - Dave DeBusschere was the hometown hero - along with national powers like Loyola, Dayton, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Kansas. By the time I was in junior high school, Michigan was on the map. When they were still playing in Yost Fieldhouse, an antique little gym on South State Street, Cazzie Russell was an absolute phenomenon and a household word. Michigan had good enough players around him to make it all the way to the NCAA finals against UCLA, losing to a great John Wooden team with Gail Goodrich at guard. This was the beginning of the UCLA dynasty that later included Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), Bill Walton, and lots of other great players.

Pardon the trip down memory lane. If I sound like I'm recounting the Lives of the Saints or tales of mythic figures, it's because it's true. To someone who grew up playing the game and got joy from seeing it played well, those men were a little bit godlike in my eyes. When they were also admirable in other ways, as Bill Bradley was coming out of Princeton before helping DeBusschere and the Knicks to an NBA championship, they became real heroes. As the next generation wanted to be like Mike, we wanted to pass like Cousy and play D like Russell. Their names were synonymous with power, speed, finesse, and uncanny skill. If you made a great move in the gym or the driveway, somebody would yell "Cazzie!"

My teacher and guru in fandom, Chas Golly, was present at the creation of the tournament, or at least listened to it on the radio, when it was 16 teams and the NIT was the big show. Dad wanted someone to go to ballgames with and talk to about sports, and I was the privileged elder son initiated into the mysteries. When we weren't shooting hoops in the driveway, we were passing the ball around the family room during commercials. And then there was the time a stray bounce pass got away and landed in a bowl of spaghetti on the kitchen table. Game over by order of Mom.

I rarely get to a game anymore, although I'd like to see LeBron play in Cleveland some time. Once a year, however, I make it a point to go to the 'O' Club Classic right up the street in Methodistville, where every December there's a holiday tournament. Four smallish Division III teams reflecting the regional culture of whatever provincial small town they are from - upstate New York, eastern Kentucky, northern Michigan, it's a trip and a half. A few years ago Chas, Jessi, and I saw Savannah State play in the 'O' Club Classic, coached by none other than Cazzie Russell, pacing the sidelines all elbows and knees with the same grimace on his face as in 1965.