Final four flapdoodles
by
Jack Walker
You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Now the way that the book winds up is this: Huck was going to light out for the territory because Aunt Sally was going to adopt him and sivilize him, and he couldn’t stand it.
Just as he was about to set out for the western territories, he heard people talkin’ down at the livery stable. They was braggin’ and boastin’ about the Cajun Country in Louisiana and how lazy and comfortable it was down there. They said it was the least sivilized place in the whole world. When Huck heard that he didn’t lose no time getting’ there. By and by, he married a gal from Chataignier, Louisiana. That ended any chance for getting’ sivilized, and he was mighty proud of it too.
I’m considerable happy about it myself, ‘cause it he hadn’t got married I wouldn’t have been his great, great grandson and I wouldn’t have been called by his very own name and I wouldn’t have been third cousin, once removed to the man who writes this here sports report.
The last time I saw my cousin who writes this rag, he warn’t in a good humor. He was bent into a sorrowful shape, because the Louisiana-Lafayette basketball team had less chance than a dead skunk of gettin’ to the final four tournament. He had been wasteful with hope when he bought tickets in advance and now his money was gone and his dreams too.
There’s nothin’ more mournful than a man whose team has lost. So I sat there with him to give him what comfort I could. Suddenly, without no warning at all, he up and says, “Huck, I just don’t have the heart to write the a sports report this month. Rootin’ for them Ragin Cajuns done wore me out with grief. I want you to write that newsletter for me. You owe me. Remember twenty years ago when I took you to the final four? Well, I’m calling in my tally. I want you to write about what you thunk about that tourney and we’ll put it in the newsletter and your debt would be paid in full.”
I never knowed I had no debt, ‘cause I thought he had asked me to go for free, but when he bust out a-crying and a-blubbering ‘bout his poor departed Ragin Cajuns, I just didn’t have the heart to say no to him. And that’s how I come to write this here story.
I’m just gonna tell you ‘bout the truth as I seen it. It was a real bully tournament. Before the games started there was all sorts of scrounging and pushing and shoving in the streets that was full with excitement. The spledidest sight came in one big flash: All them players came runnin’ into the gym and the crowds went plumb wild; the bands was playing peppery songs, and the cheerleads were prancing and doing flips and such.
When the games started, those boys went a-weaving around the court lookin’ ever so tall and bouncy, bobbin’ and runnin’, dribblin’, jumpin’ and shootin’. One side would up and yell when their team did good and the other side would up and yell when their team did good. With all the yellin’ and shoutin’ and jumpin’ up and down, I was plumb wore out and I didn’t play in the game one lick.
It was fun and all, but in the end, I couldn’t tell you who won or lost. I was too busy listenin’ to the sounds and lookin’ at all the things that filled my eyes to know. Anyways, them games was plenty good enough for me and if ever I get a chance to go again, I would strike out and go right away.
The powerful fine thing that made me remember the most was when the coaches got up to talk to the men who go around these sportin’ events writing ‘bout what they saw and what they heard. I got a big kick out of listening to what the coaches had to say. The coach who shook me up considerable was a Yankee named Bobby Knight.
He looked out at that crowd of sports reporters and commenced to cussing. As far as I could tell he had no good reason for cussing except he liked the sound of the words. He cussed the fans, the press, and the refs who weren’t even there. Then he ripped into a passel of his players. He said:
You think I have a good team. My own blind grandmother can tell my team is no good. They couldn’t put the ball in the basket standing on a stepladder. Victory favors the team making the fewest mistakes and my team is still making mistakes.
He cussed his team ‘til he wore himself plum out. Then he finished up with some sort of general cuss all around.
When he left the room looking as worn out as a ninety year old man, I knowed deep down that he was the one making all the mistakes. I told myself that if I was a basketball player and he asked me to play for his team I would turn around and run faster than Lot’s wife and never look back neither.
Well, you could knock me down with a feather when I heard some of the people talkin’ good about him and explainin’ why he warn’t all that bad. They said that his brain overflowed with knowin’ all sorts of stuff and he could talk real interestin’ and be your best friend if he warn’t thinkin’ of winnin’, which warn’t very often.
They said he got uptight because he knowed so much about basketball. He thinks he is considerable smarter than everyone else and his big head makes him think he can win every game while any fool knows you can’t. He goes on trying and pushing to beat every team and when he doesn’t he begins acting like he got the brain fever and he gets to rippin’ and tearin’ and smashin’ things. I kept thinkin’ that if you was to cut him open you’d see lava flow instead of blood.
The folks that I heard talkin’ said that winnin’ didn’t give him more than a minute of satisfaction because as soon as his team wins he commences to think about how to beat the next team, leavin’ off the celebration for other folks.
I reckon that sour people leave a rotten backwash and I don’t care how much brains and charm Mr. Knight has on good days, I don’t want nothin’ to do with him on any day although just thinkin’ about how he messes up his life makes me feel sorrowful and mournful for him.
There was a Southern coach there who was right peculiar too. His name was Larry Brown. He seemed to be trying awful hard to relax and take it easy, but it warn’t working. He was like a man who sung the right words but got the tune all wrong. If you put him up against a funeral director, you wound think that funeral director was a circus clown.
He said the most confoundest thing for somebody from the South I have ever heard. It was so contrary to what anybody would think excepting maybe a puritan preacher on a diet of clabbered milk that I writ it down word for word. He said:
No matter what happens, I have never really enjoyed life much. I never allowed myself to enjoy experiences at the moment. Someday told me “Slow down and smell the roses.’ I don’t know what that means.
That was such a pitiful thing to say that I studied him up real close. His face was cold as a glacier. His words were chloroform to the spirit. He never said nothin’ positive, He made me shiver all over just like when spelunking in a cave and finding a bottomless pit. You lean over the edge and throw a rock in that terrible darkness and the rock falls and falls and soon you don’t see it fallin’ and you listen real careful for the longest of times and you don’t hear nothin’ but gloomy silence. That was Mr. Brown, forlorn as an empty house. I don’t see how he could motivate no basketball player, a gaggle of gravediggers maybe, but no basketball team.
Writing this hear report was making me feel as low as a tugboat in the fog, when I turned on the radio and heard a man by the name of Billie Gillespie, coach of the mighty Kentucky Wildcats. He was like a superb summer morning with a freshness and breeziness that gave a satisfyin’ sense of freedom. I writ down his speech. This is the word-by-word truth as to what he said:
When our team hits the floor, we know where we are going and we know what to do. We expect to win and because we know we are going to win, we usually win. Playing fearlessly makes the game fun. Relaxed confidence allows better play. There is no better way to play relaxed than to have fun when you are playing.
One time our team was playing lousy and stinking up the place. I called time out and told them, “Boys you are playing so bad that you can’t get any worse, so you might as well go out and have some fun.” They did and we won.
A coach must give the team confidence by being in charge all the time. When we have a time out, you won’t see me huddling up with the assistant coaches. No sir. I go right up to those players with the assurance that I know what I’m doing. When I have self-doubt—and all powerful people, study their behavior, and make changes when appropriate—I never call myself a wimp or admit puzzlement out loud. That takes away a players confidence.
When we lose a game—and boys sometimes we do lose, believe it or not—I feel beat up and sore all over as if I had gone 15 rounds with Mohammed Ali. I never let my players know. I increase the spring in my step and act more cocky than usual.
And when the refs make a mistake that they are prone to do, I let them know that I’m in charge. I notice that all refs have a hearing problem so I have to yell to get their attention. I don’t saunter up to them with my hands in my pocket talking gentle. I instruct them like I was a drill sergeant. They’ll soon learn how to make the right calls.
We play alive, open to every possibility and we make the moment ours, again and again. Our style of play gives the message that it’s great to be alive.
Billie Gillespie got me so excited I wanted to jump up and holler. My heart near busted with excitement. Even to this day, it thrills me through and through to think of the spirit, the gladness, and the wild sense of freedom that made the blood dance in my veins when Billie Gillespie turned words into fireflies.
Studying up on these three men and what all they stood for set me to thinkin’ ‘bout what makes life good. It ain’t winning’ and it ain’t losing’. Its livin’ and livin’ to the full each and everyday. It ain’t somberness and strivin’. It’s thankfulness and gratefulness. It ain’t grindin’ work. It’s finding play in your work.
That’s the end. There ain’t nothing more to write about, and I am powerful glad of it, because if I’d knowed what trouble it was to make this sports article I wouldn’t have answered to the job and I ain’t going to no more, even for courtside final four tickets.
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