The earlier preview to the STILL HERE road trip to Buffalo brought a drove of responses, all related to issues of physical deterioration.
Rick Noland reminds us that, in addition to the collective laundry list of mechanical difficulties noted in the previous posting, Rock Supan also is a member of the ZIPPER CLUB, having had 114 valves, 63 aortas, three beagles, two canoes and a Fallopian tube replaced in and around his heart several years ago. God only knows what other players on this squad are NOT admitting to. I know that J.T. is old enough to have served in the Spanish American War and probably suffers from relapses of malaria and crotch rot.
On a side note, Rick also comments that Rock has given most of the rest of us our own heart attacks based on his shot selections --- but I think that’s just Rick picking on a coronary victim.
Speaking of pleasantries such as heart attacks, some of you will remember the day Boris Williams had his while playing buckets at Washington Court. He was highly pissed off, not that he was being carted away in an ambulance, but because his team was just about to win at the time his ticker decided to shut down. We have long ago bestowed upon Boris (who recovered, by-the-by), the STILL HERE HE HAS A BAD HEART BUT BIG BALLS AWARD for having said to his doctor, while still in the Emergency Room: “I hope the hell this doesn’t mean I have to quit basketball!”
Mark Scotch, famous northern Wisconsin point guard also wrote in. Mark had been invited to do the Buffalo trip but deferred because he has a bunion. He claims it is from excessive skiing during the 1,000 days of Wisconsin winter, but those of us who know him well suspect it may just as well have resulted from many year’s worth of Saturday nights doing the Green Bay Macarena dance wearing stiletto high heels that are too tight for his hairy feet. He notes that he is using an orthotic to contain the bunion and we had a nostalgic dialogue remembering days before we even knew the word “orthotic” existed.
Closing out this warm ramble about basketball as it relates to disease, broken bodies and the inevitability of death’s cold clammy hand grabbing the jock strap of every mother’s son ---- a bunch of us were sitting around the locker room at Medina Rec, sweating and gasping after playing a few games during lunch hour. A teenage kid --- you know the kind --- sauntered in to get his Abercrombie & Filch clothes out of the locker. Looking around in something less than awe he observed: “Looks like a scene from the movie Cocoon.”
We would have chased and beaten him --- but who had the energy to do so?
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