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March
Male Bonding
There's a gash under my left eye. My right thumb
throbs like a sonofabitch. I keep seeing stars. My
whole body hurts. “I'm 46; I’m too old
for this shit,” I think on the flight back to
Boston from Florida, where I had been sucked into
an all-out basketball war by Seamus, the one person
who can do that to me.
My strategy during the games was to pick my
spots—look for a momentary lull in his defense
and go Kamikaze through that opening before
returning to my slumped-over, hands-on-knees
defensive posture. The court was slick after a
tropical shower, making the ball heavy and footing
tricky. Halfway through the contest I felt sure I
was going to have a heart attack.
As we do whenever we play, Seamus and I agreed
to complex rules of engagement: best two out of
three games to 15, and you have to win each by two;
loser's outs; use of profanity is a one-point
deduction (I lost more points than I care to
admit); shots made from beyond the arc are worth
three if you are down by six, otherwise they are
worth two; one timeout per game for me (I spent
each lying on my back with a shirt over my
eyes.)
I have four inches and 50 pounds on my opponent.
I’m right-handed, but I’ve developed a
behind-the-back move to my left. I can't shoot
lefty, but if I get good enough position going left
I can get the ball to the rack. And I've been
working on a pull-up jumper as well as a reverse
layup to the left. Seamus is worried enough about
my ability to go left that once in a while I can
glance that way and burst right for an easy
bucket.
But I don't have the legs to win in a three-game
match. I have to win in two or its lights out for
me. So I always work hard to win the first game and
then settle in for a slugfest in game two. Our
game-two scores usually go into the 20s. If the
score is tied late, I launch balls from behind the
arc. More often than not pure desperation provides
the motivation for me to try delivering the dagger
shot.
On this day, I won the first game, 15-13, on a
couple of hard drives right. I was ahead in the
second game, moving to the hoop with relative ease
until one time, as I tried to make a layup, Seamus
pushed me in the back. And then on another layup,
he did it again.
"Don't do that again," I warned him. .
The next time I got the ball, I set up sideways
with my left shoulder forward, dribbling the ball
low to the ground in a posture faintly reminiscent
of Magic at his peak. I glanced left found a clear
path to the right, and then…another push in
the back.
I waited until Seamus had the ball before
retaliating. He has a better shot than I do and 10
times the energy. But he still seemed afraid. He
doesn't quite know what it means to play hard,
really hard, when it counts.
I let him go past, and as he approached the
basket and jumped for his layup, I pushed
him—hard, maybe a little too hard. As he
landed on his back, I heard the ugly sound of
shorts and sneakers and flesh scraping against
pavement.
He bounced up with rage in his eyes. If I were
anyone else he would have punched me in the nose.
Instead, he looked down and muttered to himself. He
called the foul and took the ball.
From there, the game was like skiing downhill;
it was over quickly. I couldn’t score another
basket. Game three was closer. I got a little run
going, but he put me away with a bomb that I didn't
have the legs to get out and contest.
His defense was smothering. He had found a
different gear, and I couldn't keep up.
We didn't talk on the walk home, until finally
he noted that I should expect to get older and
fatter every day for the rest of my life, while he,
at 13 years old, was expecting to grow taller and
stronger. That night, I heard my son tell people
that he not only beat his dad, but that he beat him
up.
He was right. My body, wedged into the airplane
seat, is aching. But I smile anyway. Getting beaten
up hurts, but getting beaten by my son felt
good.
©2011, Tom
Matlack
* * *
While all complain of our ignorance and
error,
everyone exempts himself. - John Glanville
Tom Matlack,
"I am a sucker for real-life heroes, particularly
the ones that get overlooked. My profile work grew
from my first published piece, THE RACE, which
describes my own life altering experience in an
athletic event barely worthy of the local paper.
Coaches and athletes in the sport of rowing were my
initial focus before expanding to mainstream sports
like professional basketball. Music, film, and
television have proven fertile ground for heroic
journeys of a different, but related, kind.
Finally, I have continued to write bits and pieces
of my own story in an attempt to inspire and
enlighten."
Thomas Matlack was Chief
Financial Officer of The Providence Journal until
1997. He was the lead investor in Art Technology
Group, which reached $5 billion in market
capitalization in 2001. He founded and ran his own
venture firm, started companies like American
Profile (sold to Disney for $260 million) and
Telephia (sold to Neilson for $560 million), before
turning to writing. His work has appeared in
Rowing News, Boston Common, Boston
Magazine, Boston Globe Magazine and
Newspaper, Wesleyan, Yale,
Tango, and Pop Matters.
In 2008, Matlack founded
www.TheGoodManProject.org,
with his venture capital partner James Houghton. He
has appeared on national and local television and
radio as well as print across the country. The fall
of 2009, Matlack led a non-conventional book tour
for The
Good Men Project that
started inside Sing Sing and ended in Hollywood
with a screening of THE GOOD MEN PROJECT
documentary film followed by a panel discussion
including Matt Weiner and Shepard
Fairey.
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