Southpaw (8 page)

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Authors: Rich Wallace

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BOOK: Southpaw
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11
A Winning Tradition
E
ven though it was a Monday evening, Spencer insisted that as many players as possible go out to celebrate the victory.
“Just an hour at some grub spot,” he said. “Who’s up for it?”
Jimmy and Ramiro and several others said they’d go, and a few more said they’d come by after dropping in at home for a few minutes. So ten players crammed into two tables pushed together at the Villa Roma pizza place on the Boulevard—a favorite hangout for Hudson City athletes—and munched on pizza and wings.
“We got nine more games until the playoffs,” Spencer said, raising a glass of soda. “We better win ’em all or there won’t
be
any playoffs for us.”
“We got the monkey off our backs now,” David said, his mouth full of pizza. “That seventh inning—that was the real us.”
“You said it.”
Jimmy sat back and looked around at the group. White, Black, Hispanic, Asian; short and tall, skinny and muscular. Their faces were dirty, their hair messed up. But they all were wearing the same uniform. They were definitely a team.
He’d been tested. A lot. He hadn’t passed every test, but how much did that matter? Here he was, among teammates and friends. A long way from home. Or was he?
“How’re the fish?” he asked Ramiro, who was playing with his drinking straw, holding one finger over the end so the soda would stay inside when he held it aloft.
Ramiro let the soda squirt back into his glass. “They’re good,” he said.
“Not fighting?”
“Nah. They glare at each other from tank to tank, but they’re all safe where they are. I don’t mix them up. You do that, you find ’em floating the next day.”
“I hear you.”
Jimmy picked up a chicken wing and sucked some of the sauce from it. “So who’s paying for all this?” he asked.
“Tradition,” Spencer said with a grin. “The tradition is that the winning pitcher picks up the check. I think that’s how it goes.”
“Hmmm,” Jimmy said, smiling back. He could tease, too. “I think I heard it differently. I always thought it was the guy who got the game-winning hit that paid the bill. Especially if it’s a three-run triple.”
Spencer beamed and shook his head. “I ain’t hearing that noise, Flem. Maybe we can split it.... Ten ways.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Jimmy reached for another wing. He grabbed a couple of napkins, too. Didn’t want any sauce on his uniform.
He leaned back and had two slices of pizza while his teammates ribbed each other back and forth about their haircuts and their accents and girls that some of them liked. Cow country or city, it didn’t really matter. When a team played hard and triumphed, the feeling was the same.
There was nothing better than a victory celebration.
He had a feeling there’d be many more to come.
Read an excerpt from
 
DUNK UNDER PRESSURE
 
Winning Season #7
1
The Specialist
C
ornell Duncan. The guys call him Dunk, but he couldn’t dunk from a six-foot ladder. He’s flat-footed and slow and jumps about two inches. But he knows the game and is a good defender.
And, man, can he shoot.
Free throws, that is. Put him at the foul line and he doesn’t miss.
He made thirty-two in a row one time in practice. Twenty straight is routine.
He makes it look easy.
It isn’t.
He’ll tell you. Last winter he got cut from the sixth-grade team. Didn’t come close to making it. Walked out of the gym blinking back tears and didn’t look at a basketball for nearly a week.
Then he read about a college player at Georgetown who led the nation in free-throw percentage. “Easiest shot in the game,” the guy said. “Or at least it should be. No one guarding you. Just up, over, and in.”
Dunk thought about that and decided that the college player was right. He could shoot free throws. He could make some of them. With a little practice (or a lot), Dunk could become a free-throw magician.
He found a video at the library that demonstrated the perfect technique. Watched it seven times. Then he went to work at it.
He started with a hundred in his narrow driveway every afternoon for a few weeks. When the weather turned icy, he started finding off-moments at the Hudson City YMCA—early in the morning before school, for example, or during the fifteen-minute interval between the evening aerobics classes that his aunt taught.
He could take about sixty shots in those fifteen minutes if his aunt rebounded for him. If she was busy talking to a student, then he’d only shoot thirty. When the second class ended, he’d shoot at least eighty more.
A hundred or more shots a day all winter and spring and into the summer is nearly 25,000 free throws. You shoot that many, you have to get good.
Dunk got real good. So good that he led the YMCA Summer League in free-throw percentage, hitting thirty-five of forty-two shots during the eight-game season. That’s eighty-three percent.
Still, he was surprised when he got a call the day after the season ended, inviting him to try out for the league’s all-star team. That team would be spending several days at the Shore, competing in the New Jersey YMCA state tournament.
Of course, Dunk still was slow and flat-footed and could barely jump over a worm on the sidewalk. But he definitely caught the coaches’ eyes at the tryouts when he hit twenty-three out of twenty-five free throws during warm-ups.
“That kid can shoot,” one coach said to another.
“Nice stroke,” said the other. “Consistent. He makes the same motion every time. That’s the key.”
Guys like Spencer Lewis and Jared Owen and Jason Fiorelli—the stars of the middle school’s championship team—stopped what they were doing to marvel at Dunk’s ability as he worked on his next set of twenty-five. They tried razzing him with whoops and burps and stamping their feet, but Dunk kept his eyes focused on the rim and kept swishing the shots.

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