Life on the Run

Part One

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Part Two

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

“During those years, when most men of promise achieve an adult education, if only in the school of war, Ring moved in the company of a few dozen [men]… playing a boy’s game. A boy’s game, with no more possibility in it than a boy could master, a game bounded by walls which kept out novelty or danger, change or adventure…. It was never that he was completely sold on athletic virtuosity as the be-all and end-all of problems; the trouble was that he could find nothing finer. Imagine life conceived as a business of beautiful muscular organization—an arising, an effort, a good break, a sweat, a bath, a meal, a love, a sleep—imagine it achieved; then imagine trying to apply this standard to the horribly complicated mess of living, where nothing, even the greatest conceptions and workings and achievements, is else but messy, spotty, tortuous—and then one can imagine the confusion that Ring faced on coming out of the park.”

(From “Ring,” an essay by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

T
HE APPLAUSE OF THE CROWD THUNDERS LOUDER AND LONGER
with every shot my opponent sinks. The first quarter ends with him racing the full length of the court for a two-handed dunk, followed immediately by his clenched fist raised in triumph. Throughout the second and third quarters he talks to me as he plays:

“Hey, man, when you gonna guard me?”

“What’s the matter, too old?”

“You just one no-playin’ white motherfucker.”

“I ain’t even the doctor and I’m operatin’ all over you.”

The fourth quarter opens with me on the bench, fuming—at the coach for taking me out and at my opponent for his cocky derision. I look around and the faces of the crowd look familiar. My mother is on one side of the court yelling at the referees. My father sits across the floor from her, reading a newspaper. My high school coach is talking with a fourteen-year-old girl from my life-saving class. Most faces look blank, their features difficult to discern. A businessman who regularly sits behind our bench throws a hot dog bun at me. The woman next to him screams an obscenity, and then Mama Leone stands applauding my substitute.

With five minutes to go, I’m still waiting to get back into the game. Suddenly, the coach calls my name and I return to action. The first time I touch the ball, I hit a jump shot. During the next four minutes the running score sheet tells the story: “4:36—Bradley steals; 4:18—Bradley jump shot; 3:46—DeBusschere lay-up and Bradley assist; 3:28—Bradley rebound; 2:45—Bradley driving dunk; 1:20—Bradley two free throws; 1:05—Bradley jump shot.” The crowd groans with each of my acts. With forty-five seconds to go in the game we have pulled to within one point. We score and go ahead by one. They score to recapture the lead. I’m fouled with eight seconds left. I have two free throws. The crowd is now in a frenzy. As I step to the line I notice an opposing player trying to divert my attention. I concentrate, blocking out all distractions so the pressure won’t get through. Only two simple free throws.

Suddenly, something snaps. It is as if I do not remember the previous four minutes, but
only
the first three quarters—my failure and the fans’ reaction. I pause to scan the audience and look at the taunting opponent. The grain of the leather ball feels natural in my hands. The crowd boos as I bounce it three times in preparation for the first free throw. I miss. The crowd explodes. I need to make the next shot to tie. I glance again at the fans and opponents. My fingers find their familiar spots on the ribs of the ball—three bounces, eyes on the rim, elbow under the ball. I take a deep breath, draw back my arm and in one quick motion I hurl the ball twenty feet over the backboard into the crowd. And I laugh and laugh and laugh….

The phone rings. I roll over in bed and grab the receiver. The motel operator says, “Wake-up call. It’s 9
A.M
. Your bus leaves at 10.” Dave DeBusschere, my roommate on the road, yawns and turns over. We are in Cleveland where last night we—the New York Knickerbockers—lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers. We lie still for 45 minutes, half awake, both wishing that we could sleep longer. Finally, DeBusschere opens the rubberized Holiday Inn curtains. Outside, a cold drizzle soaks the city and a thick fog encases its buildings. I draw a hot bath and sit in it for five minutes to loosen the stiffness from last night’s game. When I finish, DeBusschere has gone and the door to the motel hallway stands open. My socks, shoes, and Knick uniform hang drying over the chairs, the room heater, and the floor lamp. I dress, pack hastily, and leave. After paying my incidental charges at the front desk, I walk past the Hertz Rent-A-Car counter and out the front door. My mouth is dry and burning. My legs ache. I’ve slept poorly. I board an old bus with windows as small as portholes. It will take our group to the Cleveland airport. We are twelve players, a coach, a trainer, six reporters, and a public relations man.

Two sportswriters seated in front of me begin to talk, loudly and animatedly. “You know 0–2 McCrory? Hell of a battler in the clutch.”

“Yeah, but the best was Fighter Peru, used to play for the Albany Senators. He was a convict like Ali Amata.”

“What you think of the Yankees this year?”

My attention drifts out through the bus window to Cleveland, one of America’s northern industrial cities where furnaces of progress leave everything ashen, like the gray of a December morning. We pass buildings with their tops enveloped in mist. Car wheels hiss against the wet pavement.

Someday, I think, I want to write a book about what it is like to be a professional athlete in America.

The fog delays our flight to New York for thirty minutes. One by one the players file by the airline counter where small television screens show the schedule changes. They check the gate number and the new departure time. They exchange information on last night’s women.

“How was she?” one player asks.

“Outa sight,” says another. “I’ll be sure and see her next time we’re in town. And you?”

“Nothin’, a real
chiwollephant
.”

“A what? You mean she was ugly?” (Pronounced you-g-ly.)

“Specially so—you know, part chimpanzee, wolf, and elephant. A real
chiwollephant
.”

The escalator is broken, so we walk up the steps to the main lobby. Jerry Lucas, the reserve center, magician, mnemonicist, and entrepreneur, overtakes me as I approach the newsstand. “Twelve and thirteen,” he says. “Twelve and thirteen.”

“What?” I ask.

“Twelve steps to the first landing and thirteen to the top. What’s the matter, didn’t you know that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said, twelve steps to the first landing and thirteen to the top. Counting is a good mental exercise.”

Lucas counts steps everywhere. There are 93 steps from the Atlanta dressing room to the bus, and 62 steps from his locker to center court in Madison Square Garden. He says he walks the equivalent of 87 steps during the playing of the National Anthem at a normal tempo.

I buy the morning paper and head for the coffee shop. DeBusschere sits at the counter eating a sweet roll and drinking orange juice and a cup of coffee. Other players dot the restaurant, none sitting together—most of them reading the sports section of the morning paper. They missed breakfast at the hotel, too. I sit next to DeBusschere and order the same breakfast. A family sitting at the opposite counter whispers among themselves and then the mother walks over to DeBusschere and asks him for his autograph. Six other autograph requests interrupt breakfast. One man, who speaks with a Southern accent, says to Lucas, “Jer, ever since you was playin’ high school ball down in Middletown, I been your number one fan.”

I flip DeBusschere for the check. He wins.

We walk out of the coffee shop and start the long walk to Gate 48. A man stops me. He tells me that he went to Princeton (my alma mater) in 1958 and that he is a friend of a friend, who is in politics. He asks what I think of our friend’s chances. When I catch up to Dave he grins and says in clipped military fashion, “Princeton—’58,” as if the graduation year was the first name spoken after the surname Princeton.

At the departure gate a few Knicks are already sitting in the plastic chairs attached to the floor of the waiting area. DeBusschere makes his way to the seat next to Danny Whelan, the Knick trainer. He leans over and informs him that I had been stopped by “Princeton ’58.” Whelan, a man with foxlike features and carefully combed white hair, has been a trainer in either professional baseball or basketball for twenty-five years. “Hey, Red,” he says to Red Holzman, the Knick coach, making sure I hear, “Bill just met ‘Princeton ’58.’ Just think, Red, ‘Princeton ’58.’ From the tables down at Mory’s and all that rah rah. Makes you proud to know a Princeton man, doesn’t it? Did he wear white bucks and a striped tie, Bill?”

A few waiting passengers seem puzzled. DeBusschere looks out the airport window, chuckling.

Dave DeBusschere is a man whose simple tastes are constantly at war with New York stardom. His great basketball ability has earned for him the loyalty of New York’s basketball fans. His shock of dark hair, powerful legs, and wide smile make him a striking public figure. Drawn toward personal friends, his family, neighborhood bars, and other athletic men, he keeps himself apart from the New York celebrity atmosphere, which he regards as phony. Yet, he is a part of it and slowly he has come to live his role, though he is never comfortable as an idol. DeBusschere’s personal strength lies in basics, such as loyalty, fairness, unselfishness, and consistency. His vulnerability lies in an occasional lack of grace, of self-esteem, of a sense of adventure. He never pretends to be anything but what he is.

Dave DeBusschere’s grandfather emigrated to the United States from Trahoot, Belgium, with a bride his family had arranged for him. After living in Canada for three years, they settled in Detroit where Renae DeBusschere worked as a bricklayer and later as a milkman on the city’s East Side. He built his own home, using latches, nails, and tools which he had made himself. During the summer he tended an elaborate vegetable and flower garden. Self-reliance became the family trademark.

Renae DeBusschere’s son, Marcel, grew up in Detroit and became a good athlete at De LaSalle High School. During the Depression, Marcel delivered beer to restaurants and bars located in the counties around Detroit. Later he purchased the local distributorship for O’Keefer, Baumeister, and Cincinnati Cream beers. He met and married the daughter of one of his customers, a restaurant owner in Irish Hills, Michigan.

Marcel’s only son, David Albert DeBusschere, was born on October 16, 1940. Dave grew up on the East Side of Detroit in his father’s old neighborhood. He attended an all-boy’s Catholic high school and worked for his father after school. He spent many hours with the other employees—young blacks born in Detroit, white country people generally from the South. Together, they unloaded box cars of beer onto the trucks from which Dave made deliveries. “Our family was a real European family,” he recalls. “The man was dominant. He provided. My mother was a housewife. She was totally dependent on my father.”

Around 1958, his father sold the distributorship and bought the Lycast Bar. It stood across from one of the large Chrysler plants and only three miles from the family’s frame house. The Lycast was dimly lit; a place that had last seen sunlight when the roof was nailed over it. A pool table stood in the center of the wooden floor and small tables lined three walls. In the back room, light food was served to supplement the drinking. A big bar extended the length of one wall and the Wurlitzer jukebox blared Country and Western tunes. “It was a factory bar,” says Dave. “Guys coming off shifts at Chrysler would line up at seven in the morning to get in the joint. Each year brought another set of customers. They would migrate up from the South, work, and then they would get fired, or whatever the hell happens to them, but they’d be gone. There were a few regulars like Indian Pat and Tennessee Lee. When Tennessee walked in, singing, everyone would applaud and buy him a drink. So he’d sing again. He was the only live entertainment we had except for the old guys, sixty or seventy, who would get drunk and start fighting. Hell, they couldn’t even see each other. It was a sad show, but it was a show. At that time, I wasn’t looking at it as a sad show; it was sort of fascinating to me that that world existed.”