From the January 29, 2010 Issue of the County Journal...
My comeback as a basketball player began last Friday night when I took the court with the blue jersey of the Hornsby Baptist Church. I don’t attend the church, but my particular church doesn’t have a team and the guys were nice enough to let me join them for the season, with no strings attached (I had to buy a $10 t-shirt). They said I could remain a Presbyterian, which is nice.
(They did ask me how I felt about “dunking” and I told them I could barely touch the rim. I may have misunderstood the question.)
It was nice to play with a scoreboard, a clock, someone keeping the book and keeping track of fouls, which meant (in theory - see below) every time I went down the lane someone didn’t just grab me to stop me from scoring. It was an official game.
It’s a church league and the opposing team kept the theme of fellowship throughout the game, maybe because they thumped us. We behaved also, with one possible exception. And being a church league, we did have a miracle occur during the game.
However, the lame did not walk.
Our starting center scored a basket early in the game, stepped on someone’s foot and spent the rest of the game with an ice pack on his ankle, yelling, “rebound,” which had he been in the game, would have been his job. And since our other two “big” guys didn’t show, this hurt our presence on the boards and led to the loss.
Nor did the blind see.
To be fair, I must say the referee did miss them on both sides of the court. He missed calling fouls when we had the ball, but he made up for it by calling a lot of them when they had the ball. So it evened out. Sort of.
What was the miracle?
Unfotuatley, the mute spoke. Even though he should have kept his mouth shut. But, given my heritage, the miracle may have been if I HADN’T said “C’mon!” at least once.
But, even with all that, I think we would have lost anyway. And if this column doesn’t get me kicked out of the league, I can’t wait to play again.
Darrell Teubner, Editor
