Slides 89 and 92

The Slide:  Me wearing my basketball uniform in our living room

The Date:  November, 1967

The Photographer:  My mother

            It’s a November afternoon. I’m two weeks into the basketball preseason.  I’m a pretty good small town athlete and a starting forward on my Junior Varsity team.  Following practice we received our new uniforms though to call them new would not be entirely accurate.  The uniforms had been passed from the Varsity to the JV several years before and they were old even then.  I got #44 and I’m happy about it.  I know every player who ever wore that very jersey. Now the jersey is mine.

            I’m sporting white canvas Chuck Taylor basketball shoes.  Though they offer little support, “Chucks” have been the shoe of choice for at least a dozen years.  I remember looking in old yearbooks where my father stood with his team wearing dark shoes—what he called “leather uppers”.  They looked ugly to me and I wondered, “Who would wear leather shoes on a basketball court?”  Answering my own question I thought, “No one. That’s who.”  A couple years later some guys at adidas and Nike asked themselves the same question but came up with a different answer.

            My socks are high and my shorts are…well… very much so. Both are the style of the day.

            The previous year I’d been the high scorer on my team and was proud that the statistic was recorded in the yearbook next to a picture of me. 

 The caption read, “Bob Stromberg, high scorer on the Jr. High team tries for two in a game with Bradford.” I scored one hundred twelve points for the season.  The yearbook failed to note that my teammate, Tom Huffman, scored one hundred and eleven.  The omission didn’t surprise me. Why would it be mentioned? He was, after all, only second highest scorer.  I’d clearly beat him and won the title for myself.  That’s why the yearbook called me, “Bob Stromberg, high scorer…” 

Following our last game (a game in which I’d scored two points and Huffman scored fourteen), he said to me, “I almost beat you Strom!  I measly point!  One little foul shot!”

            To which I said, “No you didn’t Huff.  You almost tied me.  You would have needed two points to beat me.“  I felt bad for him but hey… the bragging rights were mine.  It’s now nine months later and I’m hoping to once again excel. 

            I came home after practice and shouted, “Hey Mom.  We got our new uniforms.”

            “Oh good,” she said.  “What’s your number?”

            “Forty-four,” I said.

            “Well put it on and we’ll get a picture.” Minutes later I stood in the corner in front of the TV.  “Stand up straight,” she said. I did and the flashbulb lit up the room.

            At first glance what appears odd is the picture’s context.  One cannot imagine why I would be standing in the living room in a basketball uniform.  If it were a little league baseball uniform, having just put it on, I might be ready to hop on my bike and peddle to the game.  But there is no natural scenario in which I would wear a basketball uniform in the corner of the living room.  The reason, of course, is because my mother said, “Well put it on. Let’s get a picture.”  I didn’t argue with her because I’d been waiting eight or nine years to put it on.

            Through my elementary years, my father taught at the high school and later became the principal.  Very often, as a little boy, I tagged along with him to ball games.  Even as a kindergartener I knew every player’s name, number and position.  Sitting in the bleachers I watched pretty cheer leaders line up near the locker room doors.  I rose with the crowd as the players burst out, dribbling single file past center court in their satin warm up suits.  I dreamt of being one of them.

            During football season on cold autumn nights, outside under the lights at “away” games, I huddled next to my father.  The smell of hot dogs and cigars mingled in the cold air as the cheerleaders in stretch pants and varsity jackets lined up by the goalpost.  I rose with the crowd as our players in orange and black roared on to the field.  I wanted to be like one of them.  Oddly, even then, I imagined how it would feel if others wanted to be like me.

            Through elementary school and jr. high my greatest goal was to play football and basketball.  It’s all I thought of.  In the autumn we played back yard football every day rain or shine—particularly rain. All summer long we shot baskets on any hoop we could find.

            I began to suspect, early on, that I would never be a great athlete. I didn’t allow myself to think about it much but the truth is, I wasn’t fast, quick, or strong.  Nor did I possess a competitive drive.  These were prized athletic qualities and three out of the four could not be faked.  What I did possess was adequate size for a small town athlete and I had what coaches called “good hands”.   “Good hands” meant I could catch a football if it was close enough to hit me in the head and I could make a basket if I was wide open.  These attributes were good enough to gain a little notoriety.  Following a successful freshman football season I was one of a handful picked to play varsity the next year.  Of course I didn’t play much, but playing on varsity was not as important to me as being on varsity. 

           In basketball, following a good year on JVs, I was the only junior with important varsity minutes.  It was during this junior season that I experienced for the first and last time what if felt like to a star.  In the din of an important game, I sat on the bench with fourteen seconds remaining and heard my coach shout, “Strommy!”  My knees went weak.  We were down by four points with no time-outs and no three-point line. In the final seconds, thanks to my teammates defense and my opponent’s ineptitude, I scored six points.  In slow motion from some inner world, deep in the corner with 0:01 left on the clock, I launched the last shot from my hip… nothing but net!  The following year as a diminishing senior, I experienced what it felt like to know that others wanted to be like me.  

           I was picky about my shoes.  I didn’t like high top sneakers.  They felt clunky.  Unfortunately, due to the threat of ankle injuries, our coaches would not allow us to wear low cuts.  Improvising, I wore two pairs of socks and folded the outer pair down around the ankles giving the shoes the appearance of low cuts.  I took a little razzing from my teammates but I liked the way they looked and felt.  Halfway through the season I went to a freshman game. All our young players sported my sock styling.  I was a basketball fashion trendsetter.

I competed in athletics from as young an age as possible.  Early on I was one of the best in my grade but kids mature at different rates.  Some of the big kids, who were dominant in jr. high, stopped growing and were left behind.  One of my classmates barely made the teams year after year.  Following our junior year, he finally grew into his awkward body and won the coveted “Athlete of the Year” award at graduation.  Another basketball teammate—a year older than I—competed with me for a starting position his entire senior year.  He went on to a big university, made the team as a “walk on” and had an outstanding college career.

I just got a little better each year and held my own.  I wanted to be the star but the thing about athletics is… you can’t fake it.  You either are or you’re not.  And no one needs to wonder.  You just look at the stats.   Mine were just good enough to be lauded by the younger kids.  I was, however, fortunate to play on a football team that won twenty-three games in a row.  A number of my teammates and I received letters from interested college recruiters. The truth is I didn't have the desire or the talent to play college football. However several colleges couldn't tell that from my game films. I should have gotten out when I had the opportunity but I didn't even know how to quit when I had the chance.

I’d invested such a large part of my identity in athletics that I didn’t know who I would be without a ball in my hand.  To make matters more difficult, in my family you just didn't quit.  You didn’t quit anything! You didn't start a game of monopoly unless you planned to finish it. You didn't quit just because the game went six hours. Quitting wasn't fair to the other players. No, you toughed it out. In the first eighteen years of my life (all the years I lived at home), the only thing I remember quitting was Cub Scouts. Even then I'd stuck it out for a whole year.

 I somehow grew up believing that quitters were bad, unambitious people who never amounted to anything, vagrants not worth the cardboard they slept beneath. Take Old Dicky, for example.  Old Dicky our town drunk (who wasn’t all that old), slouched against the town square World War II monument, snoozing away hot summer afternoons.  He was the quintessential quitter.

My grandpa said he remembered Dicky when he was younger.  “Well, I’ll tell you, Bobby, he wasn’t the brightest kid I’d ever met, but he was a nice little boy till he started quittin’.  Quit Little League.  Quit Junior Firemen.  Quit high school.  He even quit work at the bottle plant.  And for what?  Just look at ‘im now.  If that’s not the saddest excuse for a man I’ve ever seen.  Just makes your heart ache.”

And of course I knew you didn’t have to look too far to find other examples.  There was Al Capone and Oswald and that crazy guy who killed the nurses in Chicago.  They probably all quit junior high choir or something.  Quitting revealed a basic flaw in one's character. Quitters didn't have the stuff to stick it out when the going got tough.

I'd wanted to quit a bunch of things, as a kid, but I didn't.  Now I think I should have. In high school I took geometry, trigonometry and calculus. I started to get lost about three weeks into my first freshman term and never found my way out of the confusion. This caused tremendous stress and made me feel intellectually inept. I've never completely recovered. In college I took Math 101 pass-fail, passed by a hair (I have no idea what that is in metrics), and have not opened a math book since. 

And Spanish! Mi Gloria! Why did I have to take four years of Spanish? Why couldn't I have taken two years like some of the other kids? No one spoke Spanish within three hundred miles of my town except maybe my Spanish teacher, and I don't think he spoke it very well. I know I couldn't understand a word he said—which was, for him, a continual irritant.

“So Senor Stromberg.  Apparently you do not think that the Spanish language is worthy of your time. Is this not so?”

I could have said, “No”.  This would have been proper usage in either Spanish or English but I thought it best to remain silent and look straight ahead. 

“Well Rrrrrrrroberto,” he said with a long rolling R—a sound I was unable to even approximate,  “I want you to know that I do not care.  Do you hear me? Look at me Roberto.” 

I thought it best to follow his instruction.

“Mi amigo,” he said, his eyes red, anger seething just beneath the service of his otherwise calm demeanor,  “if you would like to quit this class it is fine with me.  And do you know why Roberto?  Do you know why it is fine with me?”  

I felt uncertain.

“Because,” he said.“ I… really… could… care… less.” 

At this point I wanted very much to ask what the whole class was thinking. I wanted to ask, “Senor Mullins, do you mean that you could care less?  Or do you mean that you couldn’t care less?  You said that you really could care less. I’m concerned that you are perhaps not saying what you mean to say.  If you mean that you really could care less then you still must really care.  If that is the case I would like to ask… por  que?”   If I’d had any fighting, competitive spirit I’d have said it but intimidated and embarrassed I remained silent.

Looking back I realize I probably should have quit Spanish.  I’m embarrassed to say that I sat in that class for four years and still can’t speak a complete sentence.  It’s inexcusable.  After graduation, I should have quit football too.  And I would have, had my coach not said, “Hey we could send some game films out to your college.  You never know.” I would have quit had my hometown paper not written a story about several of us who were seeking scholarships.  I should have quit. But I didn’t know how to let go and move on with my life.  It was too scary at the time. There were too many unanswered questions like; if I quit will I end up sleeping over a heating vent or killing a cop? Will I snooze away summer afternoons against the WWII monument?  Will I have to marry someone in the eighth grade?  Well, yes, probably. Those are the kinds of things that happen to quitters.

My college football experience turned out to be worse than I could have imagined. My first-year-coach, Coach Vader (no relation), was a maniac. You remember Woody Hayes when he went nuts on national TV and beat up one of his young players? Remember Bobby Knight and his folding chairs? Remember Jack Nicholson in The Shining? Remember Anthony Hopkins with his mask and fava beans?  Then you get the idea.  Coach Vader berated us in practice, screaming at us nonstop even during meals, his face only inches from the side of our heads. We awakened in the dark each morning to his voice taunting us over the dormitory intercom. Actually many of us were so nervous we’d never gotten to sleep.

It was so bad that two tri-captains, with distinguished college careers, quit on Friday, five days into the preseason. I only made it to Thursday. I didn't even have the guts to talk to the coach. At 5:30 in the morning, on the way to the field house for ankle taping, I turned around, hopped a Chicago cab, and rode off in the sunrise. The cabby said, "A donde vas?" Of course I didn't understand.

"Take me to my aunts in Brookfield," I said extra loudly presuming that the louder I spoke the better he might comprendo.

We drove for an hour and I began to wonder if my cabby was taking me to my aunt's or taking me for a ride. It seemed as though we passed the same Laundromat quite a few times, though perhaps there was a chain called Ronnie's One and Only Cleaners. Several hours later, he collected a good portion of my summer saving with a big smile and a "Muchas gracias, senor!"

I said the only Spanish that came to mind, "Que sera, sera." At least it was true.  I stayed with my aunt for a couple of weeks until school began. I was a quitter.

In retrospect, I think I did the right thing.  My mistake was to begin in the first place. One plays college football for the love of the game, or at least for the love of the scholarship money, but I played for neither.  I played—if only for four days—because I didn't know how to stop. I didn’t know how to move on with my life.  I didn't know that I could be me without a helmet in the autumn.

Surprisingly, when I quit what I was doing I discovered who I was.  I saw that I could do lots of things and still be me.  I joined the college choir.  I played intramural ball. I studied hard—a new experience.  I even began to understand what I might ultimately do with my life.  Most importantly I figured out that what I am is less important than who.

I do not advocate frequent quitting.  There are things we should stick with—hold on to and never let go.  But sometimes the best thing is to quit what we’re doing, take who we are and move on.

I was a pretty good small town athlete.  One day I put on my basketball uniform and stood in the corner in front of the TV while my mom snapped a picture.  I did it because I thought the picture would represent who I was. I didn’t realize that basketball was just something I did.

           Flash forward four decades.  I haven’t held a football in twenty years—unless it said Nerf on the side.  When we moved into a new home I didn’t even bother to put up a ball hoop.  The boys were grown and gone by then and I didn’t feel like shooting around by myself.  When I was a kid I could not have imagined behaving like this but… here I am—more myself than ever.