My Bill Simmons moment
One of the joys of reading ESPN.com’s Bill Simmons is that it is like reading someone you grew up with, who watched some of the same games you watched, and certainly many of the same movies. It helps that we are close in age. (He kept his hair. I didn’t.) The casual (I should say, written such that it appears to be casually written, itself an art) prose incorporates serious acumen, an encyclopedic memory, and flotsam and jetsam of pop culture. It’s reading the column you wish you could write, and perhaps you indeed could, if you, um, prolifically and humorously and wrote incredibly long sports columns for your living. Simmons belies the long-articles-can’t-be read-online theory, for he writes long, but incredibly readable articles.
As a longsuffering Chicago sports fan, I get, and respect, the longsuffering Red Sox fan shtick, although it’s hard to sympathize with someone who grew up watching Larry Legend (and Havlicek before that) and then got to enjoy Boston generally being the Sports City of the Oughts, i.e., the 2000s. Still, I agree with the theory that sports fans in warm-weather cities can’t suffer the same way as those in cold-weather cities. Growing up outside of Chicago, the NBC late afternoon game always was a California game, either in Oakland or San Diego. Chicago is gray from November to March. Meanwhile, Merlin Olsen and Don Criqui and Bob Costas (did I get those right?) showed a me a world with green grass and sun. The sun was just *different* out there. (Different latitude. Learned that later.) People on the west coast looked shiny, happy, and thinner. Surely they could not know pain. Not Midwestern, stoic, dirty snow pain. Not Cleveland pain.
I just bought Simmons’ latest book, the Book of Basketball. Well, first I got the Kindle client for my iPod Touch, then bought it. No need to lug 700 pages around! So far so good.
In the book, Simmons shares an anecdote of pre-Bird Celtics, in which he was able to walk out onto the floor during pre-game shootaround and mingle with the coaches. Which inspires this anecdote.
Pre-MJ Bulls, Chicago Stadium, pre-game.
The Bulls of that era boasted a lineup of Artis “Stone Hands” Gilmore and David Greenwood (i.e., *not* Magic Johnson), if memory serves. Or Orlando Woolridge and Dave Corzine. They were not good. Woolridge’s main skill seemed to be moaning when he was fouled. Then there was Reggie Theus. Tickets were reasonably cheap, which I intuit by the fact that my father would, on occasions, buy seats behind the basket. Folding chair seats. I never knew just how awesome this was, on so many levels, until much, much later.
I read the Tribune every day. I knew every columnist and beat writer’s name. Bob Verdi, Jerome Holtzman in the sports section, Mike Royko in Section 1. Royko will get a column another day. Bob Sakamoto was the beat writer for the Bulls. One day, I walked out onto the floor and over to the press table. I introduced myself (maybe Dad brokered the intro, but we talked) and basically asked him to put me in his article. A thermometer of a kid in glasses, asking for ink. The next day, I read his article only to find he had not. Very disappointing.
In 1984, the Bulls drafted Michael Jordan. Things changed. They got good. I saw the Jordan-is-God game against the Celtics in the playoffs…on TV. Note that the Bulls lost that game. Their offense basically consisted of running the same clearout…over, and over, and over. Despite this, he lit up the Celtics for 63. And lost.
So, no more walking onto the floor at Chicago Stadium, which was eventually replaced by the United Center, i.e., the stadium that Jordan built. But still. What a memory.