That's How the Ball Bounces

One year ago I went to Oklahoma City to attend two rounds of the NCAA tournament. As a lifelong fan of KU basketball it was a fantastic present from my wife to send me. As I was driving down I thought about all the fun I could have and it occurred to me I might be able to get two or three good columns out of the experience. Then Ali Farokhmanesh happened.

The University of Northern Iowa punched their ticket to the Sweet Sixteen, punched the ticket for the Jayhawks to take a trip back to Lawrence to face disappointment and recriminations from fans and media and sent me back to my cheap motel room in the middle of a blizzard.

A year has passed. I am over the March Sadness and can remember the fun.
For the KU versus UNI game last March I was seated in the second to last row from the top (yes, the usher was of Sherpa descent…or should I say Sherpa ascent). The view was not all that different from watching the game on a giant screen television, a giant screen television that was fifty-seven feet away. Everything else was better than watching on TV.

The vast majority of people were rooting for the Jayhawks but there were about 8 guys sitting together a few feet from me who were obviously from Iowa and cheering wildly for their guys. There was no animosity between the two factions. At one point there was one of those calls by a referee which can be easily (and vehemently) argued either way depending on who you want to win. One of the UNI fans stood and yelled at the ref (knowing the laws of physics and sound travel my guess is his epithet hit the floor around 3:30 the next day). The KU fans nearby hooted. The UNI guy laughed, turned to all of us wearing crimson and blue, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Hey, you’re gonna win. I’m just havin’ fun.” It turned out he had a lot more fun than he expected.

Even though I do let losing a basketball game affect me more than I ought to basketball has given me a lot of positive experiences and helped me develop some of my better attributes.

From 2000 to 2006 I worked with the Dodge City Legend, a minor league basketball team which was part of the now defunct United States Basketball League. I started out as the mascot (Marshal Hoops) dressed from the waist up as a cowboy and from the waist down it was more mascot like. I wore the same basketball shorts the players wore and I had a pair of tennis shoe cowboy boots hybrids. Since it is not really politically correct to wear six shooters in a family entertainment venue I had two mini basketball hoops attached to my belt where Wyatt Earp would have holsters. I was a public goofball and I had a blast. Later I worked my way up to being the general manager. That doesn’t happen very often.

My oldest daughter, Emilyjane, was a ball kid most of the time I worked with the team and she got to know the guys better than I did. She developed friendships with some players and they always treated her great. Once a former NBA star joined the team, he was going to be a huge help as we tried to win a championship. His first game with the team something didn’t happen the way he wanted it to and was downright rude to Emilyjane. The other members of the team made him apologize to her. Picture it. A seven foot one inch athlete standing in front of a four foot nothing middle school girl saying he had been out of line. Is that great or what?

Emilyjane probably got the most out of it but my whole family was shown in no uncertain terms that people from very different backgrounds than our own were really great people with more things in common with us than not. A couple of the guys still e-mail her once in a while. Lazarus Sims played with the Legend three different seasons and came to dinner at the house. He played for Syracuse back in the 90s (even beating my beloved Jayhawks in the 1996 NCAA tournament) and now is an assistant coach for them. Whenever the Syracuse Orange are playing on TV we all carefully inspect the screen and whenever he is visible we all jump and scream, “There’s Laz!”