Advantage Disadvantage (8 page)

Coach Battle smiled and said, “Hey Rechter, have you
worked any games at Garfield Park lately?”

“You’re never going to let me live that down, are
you T.J.?” the referee said laughing.

“Neither will the guy who’s walking towards us!”

A well-dressed man approached. Billy Rechter
recognized the face.

“Hey Ref. What ‘sup, Coach. How’s the team lookin’?”
asked the man.

“I owe you one, Bobby G. The Imari kid is a budding
basketball prodigy. He’s developed so quickly… my best player by
far.”

“No prob, Jeeves. I owed his pops a favor. I just
ran into him a few minutes ago and he genuinely thanked me for
hookin’ up the two of y’all.”

“Hey Ref, you should’ve stuck around at Garfield.
The game was the bomb.”

Shaking his head, Billy Rechter replied, “You guys
are crazy. I would never work a game like that. Did you win?”

“I always win, Holmes. C’mon.”

***

By the end of eighth grade, Jamal had become T.J.
Battle’s basketball phenom. Several coaches from parochial schools
recruited him in an attempt to get him to enroll and play at
various places around the city. Jamal and his dad had discussed
this decision at length; ultimately, he decided to play at the
local, public suburban high school in East End. He disappointed
many parochial school recruiters, but certainly pleased one lucky
coach.

After the last NAU game under Battle’s tutelage,
Jamal and Marcus were at a loss of words to express their sincere
thoughts:

“T.J., I can’t thank you enough for taking Jamal
under your wing and teaching him the correct way to play
basketball. He is not done learning or growing, and I think he will
continue to get better, but without your help he would be an
awkward and tall, uncoordinated freshman in the fall. You were
great for him.”

“Marcus, it was a labor of joy to help with his
development. Jamal, you have unlimited potential – you are on a
short list of elite players that I have been lucky enough to coach.
Don’t mess it up kid.”

“I won’t Coach,” Jamal responded. “Thanks for all
you’ve done for me and our team. We had a great run, right?”

“Sure we did. You have the trophies to prove it. But
your run is not over…you can really accomplish stuff on the court
and off.”

“Beside the trophies and metals, I’ve also got the
sore muscles from those crazy drills too, Sir!” Jamal respectfully
joked back.

“T.J., will we see you again?” asked Marcus.

“That could happen in a few ways….one, if I need to
arrest you.” He laughed. “Two, I moonlight as the onsite officer
for a few high schools in Chicago and in the ‘burbs during events,
and three, when I can I’ll drop in on your high school games every
now and then.”

“I’ll make you proud, Coach.”

“Jamal, you already have. Stay out of trouble, get
good grades, and for the Love of God, keep your elbow up on your
jump shots or it’s back in the pool!” he kidded before shaking
hands and hugging the player and his dad.

Chapter Nine. The Whistle Blower

William (Billy) Rechter was born forty-five years
earlier in the near south side section of Chicago named Bridgeport,
famous for including the homes of the father and son duo Mayor
Daleys. Mostly middle class business owners, factory workers and
city employees populated these neighborhoods.

Billy had a solid B- grade point and a .250 batting
average in Pony League. He loved sports but never played for his
school’s teams. It was a given from the time he was a toddler that
he would attend college. He limped into a run of the mill state
university for average students like him finally hitting his stride
as a nineteen-year-old college sophomore. Subjects became
interesting, and playing intramurals against like competition
turned out to be fun. While his dorm mates partied at the bars, he
found purpose in the library and at the recreational center. While
working out one day he stumbled on a new way to make expense money
– refereeing basketball and umpiring softball intramural games. The
manager of the campus recreational sports staff offered him a job
after some small talk about sports. He could earn cash for
“watching” sports.

It was easy for Billy to produce an excellent grade
point average in Political Science, a subject he loved. When his
senior year rolled around, he was not sure what he wanted to do for
a living, so he applied to Law Schools around the Midwest.
Ultimately, he attended DePaul Law School, proud home to alums such
as Benjamin Hooks of the Civil Rights Movement, the father and son
Chicago Mayor duos, and John Stroger of Cook County government
fame. Law school did not come easily to Rechter; he studied nearly
every waking hour to land in the middle of his graduating Jurist
Doctorate classmates. Billy did not head for a lofty Wall Street
Firm, he was lucky to become the in-house counsel for a firm
rehabbing condominium lofts.

As the years progressed, he honed his craft to
target the burgeoning Windy City real estate market. A twenty-year
building boom allowed him to fly the coup to become a self-employed
practitioner. He mastered his workday responsibilities in a legal
field hardly tied to litigation. Billy had gained much control of
his schedule. He joined the elite East Bank Club in downtown
Chicago and began to play basketball again - not with the ex-Bulls
and collegiate talent that played regularly on Court 1, but with
the other guys – weekend hackers. When he hit forty-years old, his
playing days were numbered and he looked for other ways to compete.
Billy played a lot of golf and tennis, but remained unfulfilled. A
friend suggested that he resume his basketball officiating at the
high school level and he checked into becoming an official.

The Illinois Interdisciplinary Athletic Association
(IIAA) located itself in the middle of the state, 75 miles south of
Chicago. It began in the late nineteenth century to encourage and
regulate participation in boys’ high school sports. Billy had to
acquire three references for the IIAA application, one of the three
being associated with a school in some way. Recently he helped
close a property sale for the Principal of a local school who
offered to assist. After sending in a small fee, the state
association sent verification cards to each of the three people on
his application. When these verifications came back without
complications, IIAA sent National Federation of High School
basketball books to Billy: Rules, Mechanics, and Case Studies. The
annual take-home test followed shortly. Billy completed one hundred
true/false questions on the test, but many were obscure, picayune,
or subjective. He looked up each question using all three books,
and in this initial process, he began to develop the respect for
officiating that he never felt before.

Billy contacted a few of the assignment chairpersons
as soon as he received his credentials. He applied the iron-on IIAA
logo to his striped shirt. He had become “patched”. One assigner
with a twelve-school conference appreciated his college recreation
center officiating experience and signed Billy to work a dozen or
so freshman games in the upcoming season. Now scrambling to learn
what else was required to complete his uniform, he found his answer
in the Mechanics Manual.

He showed up to his first game already dressed.
Billy would later find out that coaches and athletic directors
considered this unprofessional. At any rate, he survived his first
season mostly working freshman “B” games. Some of his partners were
vocal in pointing out his shortcomings; others said stuff only when
asked. A certain number of officials at the freshman level were
simply there to make some beer money. These people liked to work
double headers to make a little more referee dough. Others,
especially the young guys who wanted to move up attended outside
activities to get better. After one season, Billy was in neither
group. The refs working games to make extra money had horrible
habits – they rarely switched positions with their partners on all
fouls as prescribed in the Mechanics Manual. They hardly used their
whistle because they did not want to slow down the game, and many
did not really understand the rules completely. Billy worked his
quickest game with a crotchety sixty year-old veteran nicknamed,
“Keep the Car Runnin”. Another official who usually showed up angry
earned the nickname, “Chip the Technician”, because the chip on his
shoulder rarely allowed him to work a technical-free basketball
game.

Freshman parents had a lot to learn as well. All
high schools hosting a game were supposed to provide the “game
management” function. Athletic Directors (AD) usually supplied
scorekeepers and ensured an appropriate secure facility for the
referees to get dressed and conduct pregame, halftime and postgame
wrap-ups. They also were in charge of crowd control. Usually, by
the time their athletes reached their senior year, most parents had
figured out how the games were called and what might have been
acceptable. Maybe it was a chicken and egg issue, but it was hard
to say why ADs had more crowd problems at the freshman level. Was
it that parents did not figure out that they are supposed to root
positively for their team (not against the opponents or referees)
or that the officials assigned to ninth grade games were the most
inexperienced or simply didn’t care?

While working a freshman “B” game at suburban
Cregier High School, a grandfather of one of the players
particularly annoyed Billy’s partner. The old man stood up on a
time out and verbally berated this official. The referee told the
grandpa to be quiet, and then told him to sit down and shut up. The
old man dug in and refused to sit quietly. Home management finally
resolved the situation when the AD asked the spectator to tone it
down. During halftime, as the referees were walking back to the
locker room, the old guy approached the referee and tried to
continue his harassment. He clenched his fists in a threatening
way, and the referee grabbed his arms defensively. At this time,
the grandfather’s son (father of the player) tackled the official,
sending all three men sprawling on the floor. The two relatives of
the player were escorted out of the gym by a seemingly
understanding AD. The next day the Caller ID tipped off the referee
that it was his assignment chairperson. He thought the call would
be sympathetic to him. Instead, he listened to a five-minute tirade
laced with cuss words. Net results: the school blacklisted the
official, home and away. Moreover, his stock went down in the
assigner’s eyes. The referee community was buzzing with the details
of the incident. Billy learned that the old man’s construction
company built Cregier High School’s baseball dugouts pro bono.
Lesson number one: Do not interact with the crowd; nothing good
comes out of it, especially if the idiot in the crowd is a major
donor to the school!

By his second year, he had worked games covering
most of the teams in a few conferences. He got to know the coaches
and many of them called him by name. Savvy coaches learned that
using a referee’s first name personalized the discussion and
increased the likelihood of future favorable rulings. During one
game, Billy called a player for travelling – a pretty routine call
in freshman basketball. The player stared down Billy in
disrespectful way. As he sent a substitute into the game, the coach
yelled out in a booming voice:

“Son, this is not the NBA. In high school ball, you
cannot walk without dribbling. Grab some bench!”

After clearly embarrassing the player in front of
the freshman parents and fans, he rested the indignant player for
the balance of the first half. At halftime, as the referees were
walking away from the gym, the team trotted by on the way to their
locker room. The coach followed. As he passed Billy, he patted him
on the rear and said,

“Billy, no way was that travelling. This kid is
going to be a great player, isn’t he?”

You have to love a coach who respects officials,
calls them by their first names, and even vouches for them in order
to teach discipline to his team. This coach was a rare individual
amongst his peers.

After a couple seasons of exclusively working
freshman basketball, Billy’s officiating objectives formed.
Basketball officiating was an avocation; a hobby that he aspired to
conquer. He was fearless about the location of the assignments:
black, white, or brown schools. All of them, in the city or
suburbs, it did not matter who was playing. Over the winter, he had
a discussion with the assignment chairperson. The chairperson told
Billy that he would have to do outside activities to improve his
skills and competitiveness. He should: 1) attend a summertime
official’s camp, 2) become an active member of an officiating
association, and 3) regularly stay to watch the varsity officials
work their games after his underclass assignment was finished.

There was a wide variety of summer camps to attend.
Some of them were built on a scam. Players and teams paid to play
in a particular high school’s summer league with the promise of
patched officials regulating the games. Referees paid to work the
games for evaluations, and with practice, bad habits corrected.
Therefore, the people running the camps collected from both ends,
teams and officials. Nice hustle for those who could work it!

Billy could have cared less about the money. His
real estate legal work yielded plenty of income. He looked forward
to personalized instruction at the camp as a way to move up to
sophomore games. Most camps had a two to three hour classroom
session before the league started actual games. Billy picked up
good information at the meeting and he looked forward to the
on-court instruction. While the camp’s flyer suggested that each
camper would work two to four games, Billy‘s schedule included nine
games. He realized that after the fifth game without any on-court
reviews, he was just helping to staff the games free, not obtaining
officiating training. The assignment chairperson, aka the summer
camp coordinator, required Billy to participate but was nowhere
around to help him improve his skills. Major Lesson 2, the
basketball golden rule: the assignment chairperson holds the
gold.