My Losing Season (4 page)

The sophomore sensation, Bill Zinsky, was more than holding his own. He cut around Danny Mohr and stole a rebound from him. Mel launched into a stream of invective and profanity.

“Goddamn it, Mohr—don't you have any guts? Don't you have any fucking pride? You're four inches taller than Zinsky—he should never get a rebound from you. Not one. Block him out, Mohr! Jesus Christ! Is there anybody with any guts in there? Don't give me that look, Mohr! Give me some goddamn rebounds.”

Dan Mohr's face carried hurt and aftershock that his teammates still remember. If Mel's volcanic temper had met its foil, it lay in Danny's proud but deeply humiliated face.

“You got something to say for yourself, Mohr?” Mel asked.

“I'm trying, Coach,” Dan said. “I swear I'm trying.”

“Shut the fuck up, Mohr. You're nothing but a can of corn. Now block out your goddamn man. Keep him off the board. Like this.”

At least once a week, Mel demonstrated to the big men how to keep their man off the boards. Very few in the history of college basketball could rebound as well as Mel Thompson, and it was thrilling to watch him block Dan Mohr. Mel stretched his body out, crouched low, and his wingspan seemed gigantic. He felt around behind Danny then clasped him with his two great flared-out hands, then backed Danny out and away from the boards with his backside. He moved his feet fast in tiny, almost dainty steps, but when the ball came off the board he pounced on it with a hunger that all the great ones have.

“See,” he growled. “That's how you do it. It takes heart, guts, courage to get the job done. You got the guts, Mohr?”

“Yes, sir,” Danny shouted.

“Bullshit, Mohr. You ain't got shit.”

The whistle blew and we lined up for a half hour of defensive drills. We walked through our defensive assignments, moved through all three zone defenses. The drills Mel used for defense were boilerplate and common among almost every basketball team. But Mel had always seemed uncomfortable coaching it, and this part of practice he wanted to get through quickly. His theory about defense was this: I give you a man and you stop the son-of-a-bitch. Don't expect any help from your teammates because they've got their own man to worry about.

That was Mel's inflexible philosophy, the one he played out in college and the one he lived by as a coach. He was inarticulate when it came to explaining how a defense was supposed to work. He screamed a lot, but there was little teaching going on. Then the whistle blew again and we readied ourselves for the scrimmage game that took place toward the end of every practice.

“Here's the first team I want,” Mel said. “Mohr, Bridges, Zinsky, DeBrosse,” and he paused and looked at me and Tee Hooper. “And Conroy.”

Rat threw me the blue jersey of the starting team, and my heart danced. My prayers to the gods of basketball ricocheted off the steel beams of the Armory. For the first time in my varsity career I had been chosen as a starter by a coach. The second team turned their shirts inside out and wore the green jerseys of shame. But with pride, the second team called themselves the Green Weenies.

Danny Mohr jumped center against sophomore Al Kroboth, and Al won the tap. My final year began in earnest. The Green Weenies played like their very salvation was at stake. I led a fast break at full speed down the court and heard Johnny DeBrosse filling the lane on my right, Bill Zinsky on my left. I turned my head toward Johnny, picked up the ball, made a motion to feed it to him, then flipped it to my left, right into the hands of Zinsky, who laid it in off the board.

“Quit hot-dogging it, Conroy,” Mel growled at me. I tossed the pass to Zinsky while looking at DeBrosse, but that was why it worked. I knew it even if my coach did not.

The first fifteen minutes of our first scrimmage of the season, the Green Weenies played like five All-Americans. The old pattern was reconfiguring, with Mel riding the sophomore Zinsky with irritation bordering on obsession. Nothing Zinsky did pleased our impatient and caustic coach. Zinsky began to look tentative and unsure of himself. I slapped him on the behind and whispered, “Don't let him get to you, Zeke.” As a senior, my job was to protect the sophomores from melting under our coach's crossfire of criticism. I called it the “Mel Test.”

But when the test suddenly came to me, out of nowhere, I wasn't prepared for it. Seeing Johnny trapped by Halpin and Hooper near the baseline, I sprinted down to help DeBrosse out. He lobbed the ball to me, and I took two dribbles to the right, then went up for a jump shot. My shot went in, but a whistle blew. Mel said, glowering at me, “Conroy, what do you think you're doing?”

“Shooting, Coach.”

“Shooting? That's exactly what you're not supposed to do, Conroy. You can't shoot. Everyone knows that. I bet even you know that. Trade jerseys with Hooper.”

I turned my jersey inside out and rejoined the second string, my native tribe. I huddled the guys together and I said, “Okay, Weenies. I'm back where I belong. Let's kick their asses and make Mel go wild.”

The Green Weenies broke from the huddle with a mission. For the rest of the afternoon, we trounced the first string. It was clear to me from the first practice that I would play second-string guard for my entire senior year. I fought against despair. But I was a team player and was devoted to my sport and knew my responsibilities. I would make the first team better and make John DeBrosse and Tee Hooper better than they were supposed to be, by trying to stop me. Dressed in the color green, I made that vow.

We had practiced for one week when a camera crew arrived to report a piece on the upcoming season. I was one of the players Coach Thompson asked to appear on camera with him. We were dressed in our game uniforms, and Coach Thompson put his arm on my shoulders and said, “Pat Conroy is the finest dribbler and passer on this team. If Pat scores one or two points a game and runs the team well, we can't ask any more from him this year.”

I walked back to the locker room in a state of shock. I undressed slowly, letting his words cut into me, like shards of glass. For weeks, his remark, that I could score only one point a game, ate at me. It haunted and followed me all over campus until I started to believe it. Its power was corrosive and subterranean.

I tried to hide it from my teammates and I tried to be funny in the locker room.

After the third practice, I walked toward the steaming shower room with my tall, beautifully built teammates. We were now in the middle of Mel's system, and we would be exhausted until the middle of March. But we were young and high-spirited and resilient. And we were all so hopeful about this season.

“Hey, Root,” I said to Danny Mohr.

“Fuck you, Conroy,” he said.

“Mohr, you're nothing but a can of corn.”

And my team, my wonderful team, we laughed, I swear we laughed together. We could do that at the beginning of that dreadful season. I swear we could.

CHAPTER 3

AUBURN

A
S
I
STARE AT
T
HE
C
ITADEL
'
S SCHEDULE FOR THE 1966
–
67 VARSITY
basketball team, I mourn for the quicksilvery racehorse passage of time. Its swiftness has caught me with the same ineffable start that comes to every man and woman who lives long enough. It remains as the single great surprise of any life.

In the locker room, I got dressed for the game that would be the first game of the last year I would play organized basketball with real uniforms and real crowds and coaches who received paychecks because of their knowledge of the game. The tension in the locker room was almost electrical, special—like the atmosphere might be on Mercury, able to sustain only certain rare forms of organisms. Outside, the crowd was beginning to form and the parking lots were filling up with the makes of automobiles I now see only in period movies. The voices of strangers streaming down the sidewalk outside our locker room came to us through the cinderblock wall, barely audible, unformed, but brimming with excitement. What a good thing it is to go to games. What strange joy is felt as you leave the flatness of your daily life, the fatigue of routine, and the killing sameness of jobs to move among thousands toward a brightly lit field house at night. They passed by us in the darkness, their expectations risen by our first game with Auburn University, hope cresting that our team would prove memorable, and if we were lucky, legendary.

Auburn. It sounded so Big Time to a boy like me. “Good luck against Auburn, Pat,” my mother had said on the phone, and just hearing her invoke the great name made me feel the weight of my own self-worth. I thought the entire universe would be watching me and my teammates take on the War Eagles that day in 1966. Auburn was in the Southeastern Conference, one of the proudest and showiest in the country, and recruited big-name athletes for a big-time program. I loved it whenever little Citadel invoked the myth and story of Goliath and scheduled us to play the great schools. Whenever people ask me about the teams I played against in college, I always say, “Florida State, Auburn, West Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Clemson.” Never do I reply with “Erskine, Wofford, Newberry, and Presbyterian,” who were the patsies and sacrificial lambs of our schedule.

In the big games The Citadel's corps always showed up in force, and that day there were nearly eighteen hundred of them on hand to offer their lionesque, full-throated allegiance to their team as we took the court. No one could rock a gymnasium like the Corps of Cadets in full ecstatic cry. When the Corps unleashed itself during the passionate fury of games, the energy was both intemperate and unforgettable to visiting teams. For us, it was like having an extra man under the boards, a sullen, mean-spirited one that could be worth six to eight points in a closely fought game.

In the locker room we heard the thunder of our violent tribe, and we felt the butterflies hatched in our stomachs. Danny Mohr sat at the first locker, the farthest away from the entrance; Jimmy Halpin sat next to me painfully putting on his knee brace; I laced up my Converse All Stars next to Mohr and regarded my image in the full-length mirror across the room.

Coach Thompson arranged us according to a strict class system: the juniors came next with DeBrosse sitting next to Halpin, followed by Bridges, Bornhorst, and Cauthen. Everyone on the team knew to keep Bob Cauthen and Doug Bridges separated. There was always a dangerous chemistry produced when those two scraped against one another.

Then came our dazzling collection of sophomores: Bill Zinsky, whose game was finished and mature; Tee Hooper, the tall slashing guard who had beaten me out for a starting position; Al Kroboth, the relentless rebounder; Greg Connor, the ex–football player whose intensity was a burning thing; and Brian Kennedy, irrepressible, clumsy, a little too loud for a sophomore.

I made my way up and down the line of dressing teammates, trying to relax the sophomores. I remembered the terror I felt before and during my first varsity game two years earlier when The Citadel had played West Virginia in Morgantown. “Last year the upperclassmen tortured you and tried to run you out of school,” I said. “This year they'll treat you like gods.”

“Like they treat you, right, Conroy?” Cauthen asked.

“It's my third straight year as I stride this campus like a god,” I replied. “I consider myself a Zeus-like figure.”

“More like a leprechaun,” Bob added.

“That was a racist reference to my Irish heritage and my diminutive size,” I told the sophomores. “But know this—Bob fears my rapier wit.”

“Say what, Conroy?” Bob asked.

“And my vast vocabulary,” I said, returning to my locker.

“Hey, Conroy,” Danny Mohr said as I pulled on my warmups.

Rat warned us of our coach's arrival. “Fifteen minutes, guys.”

“Who's gonna be captain this year?” Danny asked me. “Muleface say anything to you?”

“Not a word,” I said. “Maybe he'll make you, me, and Jimmy tri-captains, since we're the only survivors of our fabulous freshman team.”

“God, we'd've been great if we could've stayed together,” Jimmy said.

“He wouldn't make just you captain? Would he, Conroy? You're just a fucking Green Weenie.”

“Don't worry about my feelings, Root,” I said, and Jimmy Halpin almost fell off the bench laughing.

“We don't know what he's going to do,” I said. “But he's got these three charismatic, Patton-like leaders to choose from.”

Bob Cauthen, who made a habit of teasing me before practice and games, yelled from the middle of the locker room, “Hey, Conroy, how are you and the other homos getting along down in the English department? I hear the English profs are one hundred percent faggots.”

“I lost my Maidenform bra, Bob. Could you help me find it?”

“At least I know how to take one off. Unlike you, Conroy.”

“Get ready for the game, Cauthen,” DeBrosse said.

“Eat me, DeBrosse,” Bob said. “Anyone who thinks we can actually beat Auburn is full of shit.”

Doug Bridges laughed as though he had just been told the funniest joke in the world, and Halpin joined him, then Bridges shouted, “Hey, Conroy. Our
team,
man. You can feel it coming together, can't you?”

Bob, wilted a bit in the glare of the sophomores, said, “If we were worth a shit, we wouldn't be playing at The Citadel.”

“Hey, sophomores,” I shouted. “It's the positive attitude in this locker room that'll lead us from victory to victory to victory this year.”

My remark brought a strange, troubled laughter from the sophomores. Always, in the time I played for Mel Thompson, there was this unsettled, lunatic disjointedness to the atmosphere. In the locker room, you felt everything except what it was like to be part of a team. Year after year, the sophomores were cast adrift in the cynical laughter in an atmosphere that should have been joyous.

I tried once again to help them relax. “Best sophomore class in the history of this school,” I said to them, then leaned down to Bill Zinsky. “This school isn't gonna believe this good a basketball player got through the plebe system.”

“Quit the rah-rah shit, Conroy,” Cauthen said. “That bullshit don't work. Especially not here.”

Then Coach Thompson entered the locker room, wearing his game face, a midwestern scowl that looked like cloud covering, and moving with that loping shambling walk that had become a trademark to us, his face exuded no light, just various textures of darkness. Everything Mel did was studied and habitual, and he allowed no accidents or hazards to disrupt the afternoons and evenings of his life.

Al Beiner worked in the equipment room getting the balls ready for the warmup drills as Rat Eubanks put fresh towels in our lockers. Rat went behind me and massaged my neck with a towel still warm from the dryer. I put my hand behind my head and squeezed his thin wrist. Before every game during the year, this was our secret, unnoticed ritual.

Coach Thompson walked by us silently. He smoked his cigarette with deliberate slowness, then went into the shower room to urinate.

I offered a prayer to the God I was afraid of losing: “O Lord, I ask that something good come to me from this basketball season. My career, so far, has been an embarrassment to me. All I ask is for something good to come to me.”

Coach Thompson returned from washing his hands, threw his cigarette on the cement floor, and crushed it beneath his polished, tasseled black loafers. Our coach was a fastidious man and a sharp dresser. Other teams might outplay the Citadel basketball team, but none of the other coaches in the Southern Conference could outdress Mel Thompson.

“Conroy,” he said, “you'll be captain for tonight's game.” This declaration caught me and my teammates by complete surprise. If he had asked me to put on a wedding dress to play the game it would not have astonished me more since second-stringers rarely had bestowed on them the mantle of captaincy. One minute before we took the floor against the strongest team on our schedule, Coach Thompson surprised us by humiliating our highest scorer and top rebounder from last season, Danny Mohr, and giving over the leadership role to me, who had demonstrated very little of it. We said the Lord's Prayer and then gathered in the center of the room, placing our hands over the hands of our fiery-eyed coach. His dark eyes smoldered with a malefic competitiveness as he screamed, “The SEC. The SEC. Let's see if we can play with the big boys.”

Al Beiner flipped me a basketball as we lined up to enter the field house for the warmup drills. I handed the ball to Danny, but he gave it back to me and murmured, “You heard what the man said. You're the fucking captain.”

Though Danny would not look at me, his hurt passed through the heart of my entire team. But then Rat threw open the door, and I led the way as my team burst out into the light and the sounds of “Dixie” (played better by the Citadel band than by any band in the world). The Corps rose and roared its praise, its validation of our oneness, our uniqueness—as we took the first steps into the mysteries of time and the reality of the season that would tear us in all the soft places of our young manhoods before it was over.

But I led my team to the center of the court, then broke for the basket and laid the ball in off the glass, taking care that I made the first layup of the new season that had turned suddenly real.

One of the referees came up behind me as I was shooting jumpers from the top of the key and said, “Captain Conroy, would you join us at center court?” It was one of the sweetest sentences in the English language ever directed at me, but I saw a wounded grimace cross Danny Mohr's face as I ran to meet with the Auburn men. Though I remember shaking hands with the Auburn captain, Bobby Buisson, and noticed that he and I shared the same number, 22, I held on to little of that momentous occasion because I kept saying to myself, “I'm the captain of the Citadel basketball team and we're about to play Auburn University.” Since Coach Thompson had told me every day of my life at The Citadel that I did not have enough talent to play college basketball, that doctrine had assumed a form of catechism, and became one of my most deeply held beliefs. I had never dreamed that I would be in this place and time, under these lights, and with almost three thousand people watching me represent my school and my team.

The referees went over the rules with Bobby Buisson and me, but their voices blurred when I heard a cry of “Conroy, Conroy, Conroy” go up in the raucous cadet section, and I could see my roommates, Bo Marks and Mike Devito, leading the Romeo Company knobs in chanting my name. Bobby and I shook hands and wished each other good luck and I went back to join my teammates.

Unknown to me, I had just shaken hands with the best point guard I would ever play against. My wife Sandra's favorite saying is, “When the pupil is ready, a teacher appears.” Bobby Buisson had appeared in my life at the perfect moment.

Because I was a senior, Mel Thompson started me at guard with John DeBrosse. Danny Mohr would jump center against the Auburn center, the aptly named Ronnie Quick, who was two inches shorter than Danny. It struck Doug Bridges as an oddity that The Citadel had a taller center than Auburn University. Doug himself and Bill Zinsky were both taller than the Auburn forwards, Wallace Tinker, who was six three, and Tom Perry, who was an undersized six two.

Danny Mohr crouched at center court against Ronnie Quick and the ref threw up the ball. As a portent of what lay ahead, Auburn took that tip and flew down the court at breakneck speed, establishing a racehorse pace they would keep up for a solid forty minutes.

I picked up Bobby Buisson, who carried himself on the court with a brashness and a gambler's instinct that delighted me. His greatness shone in the first moments when we stopped their fast break and he dribbled back out to the top of the key to set up their offense. I was Citadel bred and Citadel trained and I knew a natural-born leader when I saw one. The great engines of the Auburn offense started and ended with this radiant and handsome young man. Bobby threw a beautiful pass to the small forward, Tinker, who taught Doug Bridges that he was not the only pure shooter on the floor.

After Auburn scored, DeBrosse took the ball out of bounds and tossed it to me. John did not like bringing it up if he didn't have to. He would simply entrust the ball to me to bring it past their guards.

I ran the ball upcourt, but on the way past the bench I heard Mel yelling at me, “Don't shoot, Conroy. Don't shoot it.”

As I crossed midcourt, Buisson was waiting for me as though I were a pizza he had ordered by phone. He played me too close and he felt like wrapping paper when I went by him. Even with the noise of the crowd, I heard my coach screaming, “Don't shoot.” I threw the ball to Doug on the right side of the court and I ran my route into the corner, bringing Bobby with me. Mohr set a pick for Bill Zinsky on the other side of the court.