WAYNE CREED: Thoughts on Two Years Without a Net

Town Manager Bob Panek ordered basketball backboards and nets removed December 26, 2012, for “safekeeping.” The Wave has been running this poignant picture ever since.

By WAYNE CREED

January 5, 2015

As the holidays end, the realization that winter is really here finally begins to sink in. The colder air and diminishing light began to incubate my seasonal affective funk. This growing malaise is compounded by the fact that my son’s fall sports — JJV football and Shore Soccer — are also over. Sitting on my front porch steps, I’m watching him, in a cold, light rain, dribble up and down the wet sidewalk. One way to avoid the inevitable winter depression is to stay as busy as possible; self-tasking, I try to help Joey begin the transition to winter sports: basketball. Going over the fundamentals, defense by Kevin Garnet and Gary Payton, workout routines by Steve Nash — this kind of work is good, but not fun; he still really wants to go out and play for real. Being an old Knicks fan, I try and remind him of what Bill Bradley used to say, “When you’re not out practicing, someone else is. And when you meet that person, he’s going to beat you.”

True, yet even Bill would have to admit it’s tough here for ballers, since there isn’t anywhere in Cape Charles to truly practice or play (Cape Charles Baptist Church has one goal in a small area for every player in and around town. The backboard has already been crashed once). The outside courts at the old school, perfect for the urban ¾ game, have been taken down, and the beautiful old court inside is being chopped up and turned into apartments.

A few weeks ago, the Wave published a story about the developer of the old school. As usual, there were several interesting comments, but one really struck me. This person said in his comment that he really didn’t have a dog in the fight, but was against the town keeping the courts public. Yet in the same breath he said he hoped the folks that wanted a “community center” would eventually get one. I had to wonder just what it would have taken for him to have a dog in the fight. From my perspective, it was easy because my dog was mainly sports — indoor and outdoor. Without the gym and outside courts, I just don’t see how you can even pursue the concept of a “community center.”

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I never understood how people in this town could have been against saving an iconic, yet still useful athletic facility, right in the geographic center of the Historic District. Being the son of a nurse and engineer, who were of the Apollo 13 “Failure is not an option” generation, and being an engineer myself, I never understood the stupid, inane, and lame excuses (half-truths and outright lies) put forth as to why keeping the school and courts public was not an option. (I do feel some bittersweet vindication as I watch the Haas engineers make quick, efficient, and elegant work of what our town’s Chicken Littles were wringing their hands over these last few years). Then a friend loaned me a copy of the Gene Hackman film Hoosiers, about small-town, midwestern basketball in the 1950s, and I began to understand.

Watching the film, I realized the schism between those that wanted to save the gym and those that didn’t have a dog in the fight was not so much a gap between political or fiscal philosophies (even though the bogus narrative always seems to come down to that), but a gap between casual sports fans (even folks that oppose sports) and those that feel that athletics is a critical aspect of life — an integral part of physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. Notes on perspective: I grew up in a family that was ESPN before there was an ESPN. Sundays in West Haven, my Uncle Sonny would have the Jets on the big TV, the Yankees on a little portable TV, the Giants on the big radio, and the Mets on the small transistor radio, all going at the same time in the same room. The Italian ladies, my mother, grandmother, and aunts, were in the kitchen slowly making the sauce for that night’s dinner (my grandmother was a purist: only the Yankees or New York Rangers were allowed on her kitchen radio). Overlapping all this was me, my sister, and cousins in the back yard, hitting, throwing, catching or kicking something.

More importantly, Hoosiers also pointed out that there was not just a schism between hard-core and casual sports fans, but that there was also a fundamental lack of understanding of just how important basketball is to rural communities — especially on the Shore. Hall of Fame coach Phil Jackson, who was born in Deer Lodge, Montana, understands: he hasn’t forgotten his earliest days as a player, learning the game from the former captain of the Wolf Point basketball team — his mother. He sums it up: “Basketball is more than metaphor. It is so much more than metaphor.” We are all well aware of the urban mythology around inner city ballers such as Earl Monroe or Allen Iverson, but basketball means just as much in rural places.

Hoosiers also highlighted the notion that basketball, like soccer, is popular in poorer areas because it has low overhead, especially relative to football or even baseball. It is because of this communal entry point that it is the integral glue that holds so many rural, struggling communities together. What is striking about the film are the basketball sequences which were shot in many of the original, historic midwestern gyms — they all have a remarkable resemblance to the gym in the old Cape Charles High School. In our case, the gymnasium at Cape Charles High was always known as the Matchbox, and opposing teams did not relish coming here to play. Like the Celtics, who knew where all the dead spots were on the parquet floor of the Boston Garden, Cape Charles ballers knew all the nuances of the Matchbox, and used that home court advantage to vanquish many opposing teams. But that, of course, was in the past. Those memories, as real and affectionate as they are, are now relegated to nostalgia.

Let’s be real: a lot of basketball still gets played around here, from Northampton to Broadwater to Nandua to Arcadia. Still, at a community level, I feel like we’ve lost something by removing all traces of the sport from our town. It’s nice having soccer goals in the park, but socially and culturally, they can never replace the hard courts (or overcome cotton growing on our Little League fields for that matter). Over the last couple of years, the loss of our basketball courts has splintered this small town. There may be a tiny, marginal opportunity to piece it back together by making the construction of new courts a priority for 2015. Even if we do decide to try it, it won’t be easy. There are many moving parts, and many points of view. Like the sport itself, it will probably end up being a bit messy. But if we can keep our minds and hearts open and pure — who knows. Sometimes the game — and life — will take care of itself. Sometimes it won’t.

Sitting on the front porch steps, my butt getting cold and wet, I’m watching Joey practice his behind the back and through the leg dribbling on the sidewalk in front of our house. A dull, dripping fog is starting to roll in, carrying the sound of squeaking rail cars further, as if they were right in the back yard. I know I should get up and go inside to dry off, but I decide to just sit there and get colder and wetter. After all, isn’t that what Cape Charles fools do? I have to admit, the bitterness of losing the old school is still there, but I try to let it seep away, little by little, as I watch Joey take a shot at the imaginary rim and I taunt, “That was a brick, Joey.”

“No way, Dad,” he responds. “That was nothing but net, a three pointer from the corner!”

The developer of the old school, toasting victory with his friends in Richmond and here, has to be thinking the same thing when he reflects on how he manipulated Cape Charles fools like me. “Yeah, brother. Nothing but net.”