Never Not Funny: Middle School Marty

I'm pretty sure a great man once said that it's important to acknowledge when you've done some wrong. (Marion Barry maybe?)

I agree with him. Friends, let me acknowledge that that last entry was wrong. Well, not so much wrong as simply not very good, though it was wrong in a number of places, and I will do my best to hold the untruths up to light in the coming days. But for now, an entertainment softball that can't possibly not be funny: me playing middle-school CYO basketball.

This sirloin cut of a story has been marinating in me since January '04, and I genuinely believe now is the perfect time to put it to flame. Not only because I want to redeem myself after that aggressive, half-inebriated abombination of an entry, but also because today marks my first day (and possibly only day, depending on whether or not Coach Miroslavc keeps me on the squad) that I practice with the CIEE basketball team. [Note: I wrote this much before I left for practice on Friday.]

I want to tell you all a little-known diddy about my 8th grade CYO basketball career, which requires that I tell you a little bit about my former life as a porky, pre-pubescent ball of awkwardness and excess-confidence (standing opposite my current life as an almost husky, post-pubescent gentlemen and scholar with excess-confidence).

I started 6th grade at St. Anselm's Abbey School. My parents were lovingly foolish enough to give me power of attorney over my own middle-school choice. I picked St. Anselm's (over Holy Trinity, where I would transfer to a year and a half later) because they had a killer buffet spread at their open house. I didn't think I would mind the all-boys environment, especially if I had access to Sushi and cocktail weiners every day of the academic week. It should come as no surprise that a young man who makes important life choices based on the quality and quantity of edible miniatures looked like this in sixth grade:


Almost 3 chins. And a combed out Irish-Afro. Whatup, ladies.

So to cut a long story shorter, I hit the St. Anselm's snack bar hard every day of sixth grade, packed on a few more L-beezys, and made almost no friends. For these reasons, I transferred to Holy Trinity (fondly, HTS) after a third semester at the Abbey.

HTS was a whole new ballgame. I was now going to school with girls for the first time since I started "liking" girls, and also for the first time since I had become almost as wide as I was tall. In case I haven't been clear enough about this yet, I was fat. So fat that I was about 3 double-quarter pounders (or dinner, whatever you wanna call it) away from developing Type-2 Diabetes. Seriously, my parents had to sit me down in seventh grade and say something along the lines of, "If you don't lose this weight soon, you will develop type-2 diabetes. Like your retired grandfather has."

So I took this to heart and started to involve myself more actively in athletics, such as basketball.

Unfortunately for me and the 7th-8th grade C team, I transferred into HTS after the 02-03 squads were set in stone, so me on the hardwood had to wait until November. But I took the off-season very seriously.

Between January 03 and October of the same year, I was down the block hoopin' whenever I got the chance. Shootin'-around, runnin' lay-up lines by myself, 1 on 1, 2 on 2, 3 on 3, pretending I was at the Verizon center running point for the Wiz -- no matter what the circumstance, I was balling hard. And, naturally, along with all my hard work came my new, harder image.

I downloaded Get Rich or Die Tryin' and the Blueprint 2 onto my brand new 2nd gen iPod (the one with 4 buttons above the wheel), and I started wearing jean shorts and baby blue Jordan t-shirts, among other questionable garment decisions.

I watched 8 Mile 200 times in between hours and hours logged on NBA Ballers 1 and 2.

Stephan Marbury: Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen

I had a fantasy basketball team and I watched every minute of both televised rounds of the 2003 NBA draft (Bron-Milko-Melo year. By the way, Detroit, you REALLY fucked that one up).

I followed the NBA not only because I had to keep pace with my flashy, wigger image, but because I wanted to see what I was up against when I declared myself for the draft a few years down the road. Sure, I was a little thick, but I honestly believed that if I grew 7 or 8 inches and stuck with the fundamentals, I had an outside chance of being picked up in round 2 of the 2012 draft. That would be after I spent my mandatory 1-year of college at a respectable, private basketball powerhouse like Duke or 'Nova. As far as I knew, I couldn't be stopped. I was a baller, a shot-caller, and I wasn't quite sure what 20-inch blades were, but you better believe I wanted them on the Impala.

Fast forward through spring and summer, to when my new swag and improved jumpshot came back-to-school. Well, let me tell you, hard work pays off. I brought my A-game to every single 20 v 20 pick-up basketball game in the HTS recess area, and by the 2nd week in September I was no longer in the bottom three of the pre-game selection pool. By the 3rd week in October, when a ringer or two wanted to talk to girls instead of hoop, I was actually a captain. Things were lookin' up for ya boy, and we were only two weeks away from tryouts. I couldn't dig up any photos in the Marty Dolan archives, but here's approximately what I looked like in my 8th-grade basketball digs.

Having owned my new PC laptop for 3 months now, I've decided that access to "Paint" remains the only clear-cut advantage over the Macintosh brand. 

A - My hair color probably best resembled the color orange, but there were a lot more shades goin' on. During the summer between 7th and 8th I developed this fantasy with "shag" hair (I don't think I was alone, considering the shag was the quintessential 9th grade purple eagle hairdo), and I figured all shags had to be blonde, so that summer I regularly assaulted my thick, curly, brown hair with a Sun-In like substance, creating a few blond-orange patches that gave way to my blatantly brown roots. Of all the regrettable things I did in Middle-school (and were talking a LOT of things), I think the Sun-in debacle ranks cheifly among them.

B - At the time, I was keeping my perpetually unstoppable unibrow at bay by taking my father's razor straight down the bridge between my thick, Belushi-esque brows. There's a tremendously embarrassing 8th-grade school photo of me proudly on display in my living room at home that testifies to my poor brow management. I really wish I could post that guy, but in case you forgot, I'm still in Prague.

Bam.

C - I never could, nor will I ever be able to do this.

D - Chin #2.

E - I actually wore #23. Nuff said.

F - My shorts fell well below my knees because the "baby fat" resting on my waistline required a 2X waist while my femur require a mere M length.

G - My black, NBA logo crew socks I rocked at every game. I also had a matching headband and wristbands that I frequently wore, but I forgot about those when I moused this masterpiece.

H - My Reebok Answer 1's. You know how I do.

I - That's supposed to be a Reebok logo.

J - I only made my calves actually look like calves for the sake of the naked eye. Seeing as I am a proud member of the chicken-leg community, I'm pretty sure my calves will never have that nice, back-shin ledge. But I can dream, can't I?

K - Also, apparently my right eye was four times as large as my left eye... Cut me some slack this is the first time I've used paint since like 4th grade.

Let me breifly step off the beaten path here to school you DMV-challenged folks about CYO basketball in the greater Washington, DC area. Above all else, we DC Catholics take our competative basketball very seriously. Whether it be the every-other-Saturday clinic at BS until you were 10, the glory days of organized middle school competition, or the pasture that is the high school league, we show up twice a week in the winter -- one practice, one game, that simple -- to showcase the skills we really wish we had. At this point in my pious, Catholic life, I was in the thick of things, CYO-basketball-wise. 8th grade tryouts -- the fuckin' Catalina Wine Mixer of Catholic middle-school athletics.

If I recall correctly, HTS fielded three teams for 7th and 8th grade boys. "Mid-Atlantic" was the A-team, "Varsity 1" was the B, and "Varsity 2" was the C. Why they couldn't have the balls to just call a spade a spade and go with the A, B, C denotation is beyond me now, but I guess you have to sugarcoat everything for fat, squat wiggers that don't make the A team. Which is precisely what I ended up being.

I was broken. I cried audibly for hours, and then on the inside for days. All that time in front of the basket -- early mornings, late nights, blistering heat, freezing cold, that strange, dirty smell you get on your hands from dribbling a basketball on wet pavement -- for nothing. Varsity 1. I suck.

But I sucked it up. Against my initial threats of suicide and never leaving the house again and killing coach whateverhisnamewas, I soldiered on and played with Varsity 1. And we killed it. We went undeafeted until we lost the B-league championship and I cried in front of every girl in my class.

But that's neither here nor there. The story I want to tell you is about my one shining moment in the Mid-Atlantic spotlight. My one basketball achievment that most of the people in the St. John's gym on that beautiful winter eve have probably already forgotten, but that I will remember forever. And it goes a little something like this.

Most of the HTS basketball community, myself especially, thought I got robbed at tryouts. I knew, and I knew they knew, that I was Mid-Atlantic caliber. My suspicions were confirmed when one day, nearing the halfway mark of the season, Mr. Tom something, our athletic director (who I think still holds the title for worst BO ever), asked me to dress with the Mid-Atlantic team. Some people might have been sick, or some people might have just felt bad for me. Either way, I was in the big leagues, even if it was only for one game. And here's why it was only one game.

I arrived at the St. John's gym that Sunday night -- the Mid-Atlantic squad got to play on the nice hardwood court at St. John's on Sunday nights while the Varsity 1 squad spent their saturday mornings in the St. Elizabeth's athletics room (could not possibly call this place a gym. It was a little bit larger than the first floor of my house, which is not large.), which was floored with that stale, rubber-eraser type material and covered in innumerable different colored line markings just in case anyone wanted to play volleyball, squash, baseball, badminton, or indoor crickett after their round of hoops. They cover all the bases, those Catholics.

Anyway, when I got to St. John's I was filled with more angst and gusto and butterflies and caterpillars and birds and many more metaphorical creatures than I can possibly explain in words. The lights were so bright, the gym was so big, there was only one set of colors on the floor -- it was showtime, baby, and boy, did I put on a show.

I don't remember my stats, but I remember I played surprisingly well. Well enough for coach to run me during most of the third and the start of the fourth. But my time was cut short by a tiny, little incident, and here now I finally arrive at the story. Whew, I really love to talk about myself.

So that night the HTS Crusaders were pitted against the Holy Redeemer somethings. Now this won't make much sense to anyone not from the DC area, but let me clarify something. This wasn't Kensington Holy Redeemer. This wasn't even College Park Holy Redeemer. This was Sursum Corda Holy Redeemer, and everyone on that team was very black. They also happened to be very small and I think they were all in 5th or 6th grade, so it was a pretty close match throughout.

Their fans were also very black, and they were also very loud. This is not a stereotype of black people. It just so happened that these particular black spectators were louder and more aggressive fans than the yuppie moms and dads on the HTS side of the pond. Because not only was the HR cheerleading squad in the house, but I'm pretty sure everyone from Sursum Corda was in the house too.

As the game progressed, the tension rose. My Crusaders were playing down to our underaged opponents, and those fucking cheerleaders would NOT shut the fuck up. I got sent in for releif about 5 minutes into the third, and wasted no time establishing my presence on the court (as if my sheer physical size was not presence enough).

I used my fresh legs to get the advantage in the paint, and before I knew it I was bringing a new fire to the HTS side. And I was not being humble about it. Mixed in with all my rebounds and layups were a number of chest-slaps, "yeah, baby's," and raise-the-roof arm flaps, among other emotionally-charged, awkward gestures. I was making a fucking scene, and the Holy Redeemer cheering section was eating it up and spitting it back out at me ten-fold. I distinctly remember one mother jumping up in a fit of rage and yelling something at me really fast. I don't remember what she said, but I probably yelled something offensive back. Or just grinned, as I am apt to do in conflict-situations. I thought I was Reggie at the fucking Garden. And she was Spike. And I loved it.

So this back and forth stuff went on for 5 or so minutes. They'd score, they'd make a big whoop, we'd score, we'd make a big whoop, they'd turn it over, we'd make a big whoop, we'd turn it over, they'd make a big whoop, and so on. But then the ice broke.

Early in the fourth quarter, I went up strong under the basket and someone came down strong on my head. Technical foul. Two shots. This is the moment you've been waiting for Marty. Your moment in the sun. You could be the hero, or you could be the goat.

Well, turns out I was kinda both.

Much to the pleasure of the Holy Redeemer fan section, I missed the first shot. All sportsmanship was LONG gone at this point in the game, and those HR moms were bringing down the house behind me. Everyone in the general vicinity of my left ear wanted me to miss that second shot, and they were vocalizing their desires. Loudly.

I iced it. Big time players make big time fucking plays, baby, and I was so big time. But not for long. After I saw the ball swish past the iron, I twinkle-toed my little fatass over to the Holy Redeemer cheering section and let out a big, fat, "SHUTUPPPPPPPP!"

Technical foul. Two shots. I got pulled, and I never saw the Mid-Atlantic floor again. But we won the game, and to this day I like to think I played a formidable role in that 8th grade, Mid-Atlantic, regular season, playoff-non-implicating victory.

As for Friday, I played alright. Did some good things, did some bad things; ran hard for the first five minutes, contracted a wicked cramp, then walked pretty much the rest of the game; made a couple shots, missed the majority of my shots; per usual, I attempted a number of almost-Steve-Nash-dirty no look passes that, in basketball, are technically called turnovers; also per usual, I almost constantly yapped "here's your help," even when I was double teamed and of no help, thereby creating more of a distraction for the poor, young Russian kid that ran the point for our side until I took over; but, to my credit, I did pull down every board I went up for. Every team needs a Rodman. Or a Birdman. I think I'm gonna go get a crazy-scary tatoo before our next game.

So I got that goin' for me. I'm unofficially part of the team (I slept through our game on Saturday so I don't really know where I stand), and I can only hope to bring the same fire to this squad that I brought to HTS Mid-Atlantic Crusaders almost 7 years ago. We'll see what's good at practice this week.

In other news, it's been pretty uneventful since I last posted. I went out Friday, and didn't go out last night. I'm getting weary of the club scene, and the dorms haven't had hot water all weekend, which is awesome. My morals and my wallet are both wearing pretty thin right now so I'm gonna lay low until I venture to Munich next weekend for Oktoberfest. Fuck to the yes.

Nashledanou (goodbye in Czech - definitely not spelled correctly),

Marty