My Losing Season (22 page)

With two minutes left, Coach Ron Greene stuck two of his big men back in the game because his margin of victory had become a bit too narrow. But I was greedy now, a cocky, strutting pain-in-the-ass point guard. I wanted to bring those two magnificent guards back into the game to see if they could slow me down. We closed to within eight points. My team was fiery and intense. We lost by ten, 97–87.

The Green Weenies strutted off the court with our heads held high. I do not remember playing in the first half at all, although John Joby, in the Charleston paper's account of the game, says, “Just before intermission Pat Conroy made two driving layups for The Citadel to reduce the margin to 51–33.” But the game does not come alive to me until the Green Weenies took the floor as warriors together, no first-stringers allowed. The Green Weenies scored fifty of our team's eighty-seven points, and most of them we scored together. We had proven to ourselves that we were the only members of our team who could play like one.

As Joby said: “For The Citadel, Al Kroboth, a reserve who picked up the scoring slack in the second half, was the leading point scorer with 16 points, followed by another sub, Pat Conroy, who had 15. Loyola's next foe will be nationally ranked Michigan State Tuesday night in the Field House. The Spartans are third in the UPI poll and eighth in the AP rating.” Loyola would defeat Michigan State, the third-ranked team in the nation.

In the shower room after the game, the humiliation of our first team kept down any sense of jubilation the Green Weenies might have felt. Then Mel Thompson, who never came into the shower room after a game, ever, shocked us by announcing, “The Green Weenies are going to start at the Tampa Invitational.”

Silence greeted this announcement. I was glad I was in the shower because I felt tears rush into my eyes. Mel Thompson had seen us at last.

         

A
FTER THE TRAINER
B
ILLY
B
OSTICK CONDUCTED
the bed check, the whole team tumbled down the fire escape of the grand old hotel on Canal Street and headed for the bars and clubs of Bourbon Street. In my euphoria over the game and my surprise at the militancy and confidence of the voice that had risen out of me, I walked the backstreets of the Vieux Carré the way I thought a writer might. I tried to drink up every sight and image I passed. I stood before Antoine's and Brennan's and I breathed in the air that floated like clouds out of those restaurants, perfumed with garlic and the brine of oysters and the great brown pungency of sirloins. Someday, I promised myself, I would return to these restaurants and sit myself beneath the diamond-backed light of chandeliers and order all the meals I had read about in books but had never eaten. People would eat well and drink well in my books, I thought, and all my point guards would be flashy, by God, my point guards would be flashy as hell. Drifting alone in the city, I read every plaque on every house I passed. By accident, or perhaps by some unknown design, I found a house where Tennessee Williams had lived as a young playwright loose in the city and wondered if it was the house where Blanche and Stanley were born in his tortured and baroque imagination. Though I was looking for a house where the great Faulkner had lived, I could not find one, but I unknowingly passed the house where one of my mother's favorite writers, Frances Parkinson Keyes, was living. There was no plaque on the door for Miss Keyes, but there would be nineteen years later when Houghton Mifflin rented that same house for my publication party for
The Prince of Tides
.

         

O
N
S
UNDAY MORNING, THE FIVE
C
ATHOLICS
on the team rose early for mass at St. Louis Cathedral. Conroy, DeBrosse, Bornhorst, Connor, and Kennedy—you can hear the shuffle of immigrants' feet from Ireland, Germany, and France in that muster of fresh American names. Our insistence on attending mass every Sunday baffled Mel, who often had to adjust our travel schedules to accommodate his Catholic boys. Generally, I think Mel approved of our fidelity to our beliefs and considered it one of the many forms that discipline could take. When I took Communion that morning, I thanked God for the game He had given me at Loyola. That year, my relationship with God was direct and personal and conversational in nature. I was losing Him and I wanted Him to help me. Though there was majesty in His silence, He had finally managed to send me a good game. I considered this a good sign.

All season long, I would look for signs of His imminence and concern in my daily affairs. I prayed hard and only gradually became aware that this fierce praying was a way of finding prologue and entrance into my own writing. This came to me as both astonishment and relief. When I thought God had abandoned me, I discovered that He had simply given me a different voice to praise the inexhaustible beauty of the made world.

Outside the church, Dave Bornhorst and I strolled beneath the feathery ironwork of balconies as gypsylike women tried to read our palms and sharp-featured men tried to lure us into card games and black children danced madly in tap shoes and put out their top hats for dimes. The whole city, by daylight, felt strange with injustice and fatigue. Barney and I both thought it was a mortal sin to have our fortunes told. Both of us were looking for Christmas presents for our mothers. Street artists and caricaturists were in full cry as we passed by them, raucous as crows.

Since we had little money, we stopped near an artist who did portraits for two bucks apiece. The others charged five or more. In the vanity of sons, we both thought that our mothers would love nothing more than pictures of their favorite boys. We studied the drawings of the strangers' faces he presented as examples of his work of portraiture. He seemed talented if literal. In my Citadel uniform, I endured my first sitting, thinking in some small insubstantial way I was contributing to the support of the arts. In less than five minutes, the artist, whose face did not accompany him in time's journey, handed me my portrait, then quickly began work on Dave's.

I did not recognize the face he handed to me. It was not simply a bad drawing, but a grotesque one. I looked evil around the eyes and mouth, stone-faced and idiotic as a gargoyle. The artist had found all the strangeness he could find in a human face and all the pain. The face grimaced and looked as if it should be wearing a crown of thorns. Barney's portrait was cartoonish and just as bad. New Orleans had hustled two more rubes from the mainland.

CHAPTER 14

TAMPA INVITATIONAL
TOURNAMENT

W
HEN
I
SAW THAT THE
U
NIVERSITY OF
N
ORTH
C
AROLINA WAS ONE
of the four teams at the Tampa Invitational, it was a moment brimming with deep pleasure. If luck was with us, The Citadel and North Carolina would meet in a game. They would cheerfully mop the floor with us, but I could tell my children and grandchildren that I once took to the court to do battle with the lordly Tar Heels.

Several of my teammates remember me saying, “Don't you feel sorry for Dean Smith, coach of the Tar Heels? Poor guy's got insomnia, hasn't gotten a decent night's sleep in months, trying to devise a defense to stop Conroy.”

“You're so full of shit, Conroy,” Mohr whispered across the aisle of the jet winging across the Gulf of Mexico to Tampa. “My God, it's getting worse.”

“Root,” I said, still exuberant after the Loyola game, “when I take my place as point guard with the Celtics, I want you to know that I won't forget the fart blossoms and losers who held my game back at The Citadel, the guys who failed to see my talent for what it really was.”

“Why don't you and DeBrosse develop that damn talent by throwing me a pass every once in a while? You know, once or twice a season,” Mohr shot back, bringing DeBrosse into the fray behind us.

“You ever thought about moving your sorry ass to get open, Root? Try to establish a passing lane every once in a while,” John said.

“Passing lane? You wouldn't know a passing lane from a jockstrap, DeBrosse. Anyone ever see DeBrosse throw a pass?”

“Yeah,” Cauthen said. “Once, with a girl.”

Our coaches sat in the front of the plane and the players crowded together in the back. Seats were not assigned in those faraway times, but we thoughtlessly arranged ourselves according to our classes. The class system at The Citadel cut deeply and invisibly across our system-tested psyches. We aligned our stars with the boys who had witnessed both our suffering and our resolve. During our freshman year, Mohr and I had compared cigarette burns that two of the cadremen had left on his chin and my arms.

“Zits, Coach,” Dan had explained to our beloved freshman coach, Paul Brandenberg.

“Floor burns, Coach,” I said. “Got 'em diving for the ball.”

That is why I always sat near Dan Mohr; it is why the class system at The Citadel remains the unbreakable, the unseverable bond. In the back of the plane, the five sophomores, wary and still unacclimatized, studied the customs and procedures of the juniors and the seniors. They were still early in their varsity careers and just six months away from the last indignities of their own plebe year.

“Hey, guys,” I said, whispering as I walked toward their area in the back of the plane. “How do you like playing big-time college basketball?”

Again, the sophomores had to contain their snickering. Mel did not allow horseplay or any member of his team to look like he might be having a good time, especially after a defeat. Their buried, covert laughter made a forlorn sound, like the call of barn owls.

When we landed in Tampa, a bus drove us to the hotel. By the time we had unpacked our gear, the Corps of Cadets back in Charleston had called the final roster and been released for their Christmas furlough. My team rejoiced because that meant that we could also wear civilian clothes in Tampa with the single caveat that we dress in coat and tie since we were still representing The Citadel. Thus began an annual humiliation for me and Dan Mohr.

When we gathered in the hotel lobby to take the bus to the amphitheater, the team seemed transformed into normal earthlings. In fact, my teammates looked camouflaged, almost deceitful, in their civilian clothing. Bob Cauthen and Tee Hooper and Doug Bridges dressed in the most stylish clothing, wearing their slacks and sports coats with great flair. Their loafers gleamed with the brightness of fine leather. The rest of the guys wore basic, off-the-rack sports coats, the kind they would wear for church or special occasions back home.

On the other side of the lobby stood Dan Mohr, wearing the same sweater he wore last Christmas break in Pittsburgh before we played Duquesne. Hanging back, I wore the same sweater my mother had bought me for a dollar at a yard sale in Beaufort my senior year in high school. Dan and I both wore our cadet shoes in a glittering pool of Bass Weejuns. When Dan felt shame, he raised his chin higher and from my vantage point across the room, I could see his Adam's apple in perfect bas-relief.

“Nice sports coat, Conroy,” DeBrosse said.

“I didn't know you were from the Alps, Conroy,” Cauthen added, a remark that stung because I thought the sweater made me look like Heidi's brother.

When our impeccably dressed head coach entered the lobby, he looked his team over with the same note of approval. Mel knew his clothes and the sharpness of his attire was an integral part of his unreadable character. It did not unlock any mysteries about him, but it at least gave you a clue. I saw the exact moment when Mel spotted Mohr out of uniform for the third straight Christmas break.

“Mohr, did I stutter?” Mel said in disbelief. “I said sports coat and tie. Did you hear me say anything about sweaters? We're still representing The Citadel and we should do it with some class.”

Then Mel spun around and saw me by a column near the center of the room. Some said I waved and lifted my eyebrows. Then Danny said, “Coach, I left it back in the barracks. I forgot to pack it with my uniforms.”

“My two seniors. You guys are supposed to be setting the example,” Mel said. “What's your excuse, Conroy? Look, even the sophomores managed to get it right.”

“No excuse, Coach,” I said. “I just screwed up.”

“You making it a habit, Conroy?” Mel said.

“No, Coach, promising you I'm not.”

“I've got to run you for two hours before the Christmas practice,” Mel said. “You both understand that, don't you?”

“Yes, sir,” we both answered since we had run two hours in our last two Christmas practices.

“Okay, get on the bus. We'll see what you got for Florida State.”

Neither Danny Mohr nor I owned a sports coat or a pair of loafers, but we wouldn't tell each other that for thirty years.

Danny and I, three times inducted into the brotherhood of the sweater, rode together on the bus to face Florida State in the opening game of the Tampa Invitational. The whole aura of the tournament had the clean, good feel of the big time to me, and I was as impassioned about the games to be played as any I had encountered in my life. I had written a letter to my family, and I can remember my hand tingling with pleasure when I wrote the words, “If we manage to beat Florida State, we'll go up against the Tar Heels in the championship the next night.” The North Carolina Tar Heels, the Cadillac of southern basketball, were warming up when my team entered the Curtis Hixon Convention Center.

“The AP poll came out today, Root,” I said. “The Tar Heels are ranked number three in the nation. If we beat Florida State, we'll play them tomorrow night.”

“Yeah, fat fucking chance,” Root said.

“That's the spirit, Root. Never say die.”

Before going into the locker room to suit up we watched the Tar Heels warm up. I studied two players and two players only. I had seen the ethereal and vastly gifted Bobby Lewis play for St. John's in Washington, D.C., when I had played on the junior varsity of Gonzaga High School. At Chapel Hill, Bobby had averaged thirty-six points a game in his freshman year, then twenty-seven points per game as a sophomore. He had extraordinary leaping ability and moved on the court with all the presence of a young king. Then my eyes moved to number 44, Larry Miller, who fired jump shots from the corner, a darker, more brooding court presence than the sunnier Lewis. They were the stars of this tournament; the true stars of basketball have all eyes in the building studying their every move because of the sheer magnetism of their great gifts. I turned to the invitational rosters and found the names of Bob Lewis and Larry Miller, then with my finger I went down the page and saw my own name printed along with the other Citadel Bulldogs. In one night I had tied my destiny to the lives of two legitimate All-Americans and it thrilled me to see my name listed on the same page as theirs.

When the game began, it took only a couple of times up and down the court for North Carolina to establish its superiority over the Columbia Lions. Columbia was missing their seven-foot-one pivot man, Dave Newmark, because, as the Tampa newspaper said, “of the giant's toenail problems.”

Miller and Lewis, together on a basketball court, blended like balsamic vinegar and the richest olive oil. Miller's darkness matched Lewis's lightness and speed on the court and their congruent talents made everyone around them better basketball players. Bill Bunting and Dick Gruber and Rusty Clark had to raise their own games to a higher level and that was part of Lewis's and Miller's genius—they wove their brilliance through the moves and passes of their teammates, wonderful basketball players all, but mortals like me.

So hello, Bobby Lewis, and hello, Larry Miller. I salute you from the secret place to which lost nights go. I tell you how splendid the two of you were that night and the next night and all through that long season. I have never forgotten the dark fire of Larry Miller or the breathtaking swiftness of Bobby Lewis and I did not deserve to be in the same building with them. It was with great reluctance that I followed my team into the locker room to suit up for the game against Florida State.

Mel's promise to start the Green Weenies proved an empty one. This felt like a great mistake to me that night and it strikes me the same today. Before I had mistrusted my coach's unimaginativeness, but I had never once doubted his word. Distrust poisoned the air around my team. That and the great sudden pain of the wonderful sophomore guard Tee Hooper. This night would mark the beginning of Tee's dismantling. He put his hands over his face and eyes in a gesture of cautionary despair.

I looked to the blackboard and received my greatest shock of a season that would contain many. My name was written in the starting lineup. Slyly, I tried to check my teammates for any sign that they recognized the wrongness of the moment. When Mel gave us his pregame talk, I could tell he had still not forgiven us the fiascos of Loyola and Old Dominion, nor did he believe we could beat Florida State. He inoculated us with a sense of hopelessness before we took the court. We could feel him losing faith in us as a team. In turn, we were not a team, we were much more like a lost archipelago, floating islands sharing straits and bays and rivers, but not linked together in any cohesive way. Tee's sudden and surprising demotion was an amputation. In my own estimate of my talent, I could not wear Tee Hooper's jock, and we all knew it.

The Green Weenie in me, the realest part of my image as an athlete, stirred and I said to myself, “Does this mean I have to play with the damned Blue Team?” as Mel named me team captain for another night.

When we took to the court for warmup, I made the first layup and Danny made the second, then we sized up the Seminoles on the other end of the court. They looked like a race of well-fed giants to me, long-limbed and stately. They carried themselves with the confidence of a team who knew The Citadel was not in their league.

“That team makes you look short, Root.”

“How do you think it makes you look, midget?” Root shot back.

When I went to center court that night as the starting point guard, I felt a small sense of a shifting of my fate, though I could not tell you what it was. After shaking hands with their guard Jeff Hogan, I lined up for the tipoff with an anthem or mantra going through my mind: “I'm the starting point guard against Florida State.” My Green Weenie identity had not allowed me to hope that a moment as distinguished as this would ever fall to me as a college athlete. Florida State won the tip and would win every tip on this less than brilliant night.

I spent the evening, self-conscious and tentative, trying to look like I belonged on the court. DeBrosse told me to guard Brian Murphy, a five-ten guard from Pompano Beach, and this was the first time I realized that John always picked the defensive assignments of the guards. Later, he would say to me, “Conroy, why do you think you always guarded the biggest guy they had or the highest scorer? I wanted to conserve some of my energy for offense, so I always gave you the guard with the most height or firepower. Think I wanted to look like shit on defense? Hell no. I wanted you to look like shit, baby. It was a great system. Conroy busting his ass all night on defense while DeBrosse got some much-needed rest.”

If this was indeed the system, DeBrosse made a serious error of judgment in this Florida State game. Brian Murphy and I were evenly matched, his smallness and quickness mirroring my own, two Irish Catholic boys locked all night together in competition that was clean and fast moving. He was better than I was, but I stayed in there with him.

Because he had known him in Ohio, DeBrosse put himself on Jeff Hogan of Akron and I spent the entire game grateful that I was not guarding that classy, well-schooled guard who played an astonishing game with poor DeBrosse scrambling to keep up with him. Somewhere in the first half, I realized that Hogan was the lord of this December night. His game flowed with quiet brilliance and he was shooting the eyes out of the basket all night.

At a time-out, I whispered to DeBrosse, “Anybody tell you you're supposed to be guarding number ten, DeBrosse?”

“Goddamn, he's good,” John said, in pure admiration.

Jeff Hogan scored twenty-five points, and we could not do a thing to shut him down. Under the boards the Seminoles killed us. They were simply too big and fast for us. Theirs was a big-time program; we were bottom feeders. Mohr and Bridges played as though they were sleepwalking and kept looking to the bench every time Mel yelled at them, which seemed to be every time downcourt. Their faces were glum with confusion and hurt and they never seemed to be able to place their hearts in the center of the fray. Their legs seemed gluey and unresponsive. Mohr scored six and Bridges four—and both of them were fully capable of scoring twenty a game. Kroboth and Zinsky both played hard and busted their humps under the basket. With his bird-of-prey face and his fiery intensity while rebounding, Al Kroboth was still my biggest surprise of the season. I felt no pressure as a point guard to get the ball to “Big Al” because his perpetual hustle kept him always near the center of action, and his points came from his fierce nose for the ball. He held his ground while rebounding against Florida State and he was beautiful to watch.