My brother and I have been preparing for our first craft shows in two years for the past several weeks now. Once or twice a week after work or on the weekend, my oldest stepson and I drive to Overbrook to spend a few hours with my brother’s family.
As Rory continues to bond with his youngest cousins in the swimming pool or while devouring large dinners featuring burgers made especially for him, my brother and I work in the section of his garage that was meticulously designed as a shop to continue the old man’s leather crafting business.
Every time we work together, I think of my father watching us, knowing that Dan and I bonding and talking about life was one of his dying wishes. As we make belts that are nowhere near as good as the ones the old man made, we tell stories about Dad. I’m certain we both enjoy talking about our father as much as the work, which is far more complicated and tedious than one might imagine.
During a recent trip to the shop, Dan asked that I look through some boxes he’d pulled out of Dad’s storage unit. I picked out a few things I wanted to keep three weeks ago, but missed a box containing several items. Among those keepsakes were a couple of basketballs the old man had for at least 20 years.
Each basketball has his unique handwriting in Sharpies. Dan and I didn’t particularly care for this sporting gear. They both have the scores of the games from the last time our father beat us at basketball. For my brother, that was in 2002, a 10-8 loss. Dad was 57 and Dan 24 at the time. For me, that was 2010, a 24-21 win for the old man. I was 34, Dad was 65.
These basketballs bring back memories, though I won’t go as far as to say they were always good memories. Shooting hoops with Dad could be fun, but it could also be a humbling experience. He was relentless and probably the most competitive person I’ve ever met.
Games with the old man were and weren’t fun. They were fun because you were spending time together. They weren’t because he did whatever was necessary to win. I heard that Al Davis “Just win, baby” quote hundreds of times through the years.
When he said “Just win, baby,” he meant it. Dad wasn’t opposed to hammering the hell out of his sons on a drive to the basket. He was opposed, however, to calling a foul on those plays. He also wasn’t opposed to bending the rules. Sometimes that meant calling a 10-foot shot a 3-pointer. Other times that meant altering the score. When trailing, he wasn’t afraid to change the “take-back” rule after a missed shot that hit the rim.
I remember my last “loss” to the old man vividly. That was the summer I left newspapers and moved in with Dad. The only rule was that I had to start working out again and get in better shape. We walked and ran the dusty backroads of Melvern all summer, mixing in weight lifting in the back of his sweltering workshop, which didn’t have air conditioning.
We also played basketball several times a week. Dad installed a goal on a concrete slab in his backyard a few years before I moved in. When I say concrete slab, it was no more than that. It was not level, with dozens of cracks and dips. That neither of us broke an ankle that summer was a miracle.
Most of the games weren’t competitive. Even though I was more than 300 pounds and very slow, Dad was 65 with a shot shoulder. More often than not, I won easily. He couldn’t block my shot anymore, and he weighed about half what I did. I typically bulled my way to the basket.
I remember three games that year. The first was the first one we played. It brought back memories of hard-fought games from my youth. On the first play of that matchup, I missed a 3-pointer, and Dad scrambled after the ball on the baseline. The old man drove toward the basket for a layup, and I hustled at him, bowling into his body as he missed a shot. Dad bounced off me and landed on the grass behind the goal, rolling several feet.
I laughed for a second, then realized I’d just obliterated a 65-year-old man. “Foul!” he said, struggling to his feet with grass and dirt all over his body and blood dripping from his elbow. I only know that I won that game because of that foul.
The second game I remember is the only game I lost. Dad lived his motto in that game. “Just win, baby.” There were several 10-footers that he called threes. He refused to call fouls. And, in perhaps the most ridiculous display of cheating, he altered the score.
“It’s 11-9, mine,” he said as he flipped the ball to me.
“Uh, it’s 13-8, mine,” I replied.
We argued before I let it go. I figured I’d end up winning, as I had for two months. He ended up winning by three points. I was so furious, not only that I lost, but also because I knew he cheated, that I punted the basketball. Dad laughed his distinct laugh, then retired the ball after writing the score on it. It sat on top of his refrigerator until the day he moved out of his house in 2019.
Little did he know that I’d taken the ball and written the score down on it the next time we played. That was the third game I remember because I showed no mercy, winning 29-5.
I have the ball now and will keep it the rest of my life. I’ll think of it the next time I cut a few corners to beat my wife or daughter in Uno. “Just win, baby.”
