Cops and Kids

Another disastrous teenage moment which pushed me to ignore sports

This is an excerpt of a memoir-in-progress which attempts to discover why I’m not interested in sports. I’ll be sharing more pieces of this project on occasion. And I’d love to hear your comments and relevant memories. Please keep in mind that the reference to Ted Nugent occurred at the time he was just a guitarist, and not yet a demented lunatic. The image above is a stock photo, and only mildly representative of the horrific experience detailed below. This was first read aloud at the Edinburgh Castle Pub in San Francisco.

When you grow up in a small isolated town in Montana, the notion of professional sports takes on a different meaning. You’re 600 miles from the nearest team. And only an idiot is going to drive ten hours in a North Dakota snowstorm to watch the Minnesota Vikings.

So other than high school, sports were basically things you watched on television. The Yankees, the Razorbacks, the Bruins, the 49ers. None of them meant any more than the other. They were just a bunch of athletes in a city somewhere. 

But during my senior year of high school, for some reason I signed up to play in the Cops-Kids basketball game. This was an annual charity event, staged between students and members of the local police force. If I didn’t have much interest in sports before, this game would pretty much finish it.

The Kids team assembled for our first, and only practice at the school gymnasium. We were a sorry collection. Pale-skinned band geeks. Fragile math nerds covered in moles. Moon-faced chubbies who wore husky-sized pants. Most of us had never kissed a girl.

Our “coaches” were two members of the varsity basketball team. They weren’t getting paid. There was no extra credit. They got high before practice. They couldn’t have been more cavalier about the whole situation. 

The coaches blew a whistle and gathered up the dweebs for our big inspirational talk, the speech that would motivate us into winners. And I quote: “Okay, um, shit…okay, let’s just go do some lay-ups.”

I’m sure there’s some value in getting a bunch of pink-fingered mama’s boys to participate in a sport. It’s healthy exercise for those atrophied muscles. It gives introverted loners a sense of camaraderie and teamwork. But it was a pathetic spectacle. Balls were bouncing off the backboard, off the rim, anywhere but in the basket. Kids were pulling out inhalers, tripping over their own feet. Our coaches’ reaction? Hearty stoner laughter.

We learned no plays. We practiced no defense. I remember a few of us trying hook shots from center court. And then astonishingly, practice was over. The team met the coaches at the city park and drank a bunch of beer and smoked pot. The feeling was pretty much, hey, it’s just a stupid game for charity. Turn up the Nugent!

The following night was the big game. We all suited up in some stinky old uniforms from the 1950s that someone found in a closet, which were way too big for us, and hit the court. The Cops team was at the other end, warming up. The Man. The Fuzz. From a distance, they didn’t look like much.

The stands were virtually empty. Not much of a fundraiser. In retrospect, I wouldn’t have paid to see it. 

Opening tipoff, Cops got the ball and immediately passed it down court and scored. Kids took possession of the ball, and one of us quickly dribbled it off their foot and out of bounds. Cops got control, moved through our nonexistent defense and scored again. This pattern repeated as often as time would allow. We weren’t just outclassed. We were out-puberty-ed. Peach-fuzz dorks with acne, up against a burly squad of grown men with mustaches. Was this someone’s idea of a joke? 

Most basketball games on TV are cacophonies of noise—crowds erupting in cheers and screams. Ours slowly and painfully churned through eerie silence, interrupted only by an occasional referee whistle. 

I’ve tried to block out most of the experience. I remember being really tired. I think I missed a free throw. While I was under the basket trying to grab a rebound, police officer John Carranza elbowed me square in the face. I shoved him in the back—he had a really hairy back—and was called for a foul.

I have no idea of the final score. It didn’t matter. The point was made. Our team was never going to grow up into a bunch of sports dudes. We were never going to have a beer with a friend, and furiously regurgitate sports trivia to each other. We would never talk about a player on “our team” as if he just lives down the street, even though he’s from Croatia and has played for five cities in five years. And if “our team” lost, we would never get the chance to trudge home from the game in our official cap and official jersey, and feel a profound sense of depression because a group of steroid-crazed cyborg puppets didn’t do what they are paid millions to do. I guess we just missed out on all that.