MY FATHER’S THE ONE who got his pants pulled down, which if you ever met him, would seem like the last thing he’d go along with. But I was there, and I saw it: my father, standing at the foul line, and the Harlem Globetrotter sneaking up behind him and tugging the hem of his shorts. My father acting surprised and yanking them back up real fast. And all the children and their parents laughing and pointing. 

And I saw the way my mother’s jaw set, which told me nothing good would happen next. And then I saw the anger in my father’s eyes, even though he was supposed to be in on the act. That’s how it went. 

///

AS FAR BACK as I can remember, my father shot baskets every day. He would return home from his job at the Squirrel Hill Fitness Center and move four wheelbarrows from the garage into a half circle in front of the basket in our driveway. Twenty-five balls altogether—six in each wheelbarrow and one to start with—and his aim was to shoot them all in less than a minute and a half. 

“It’s what you can do under pressure,” he always told me. “It’s gotta get so you don’t even think about it.” 

When I got old enough, he let me hold his stopwatch, which sat flat and heavy in my palm, its round silver surface slick and cool, its long hand thin as a needle. 

“You ready?” my father asked, staring at the hoop, gathering his focus. 

“Sir,” I said.   

“Go,” he said, and fired off two shots before I could even tell if the hand of the watch had started to move. 

Ball after ball rose in high arcs and then down and straight through the hoop so the netting curled back upward against gravity. Both of his coaches at the University of Pittsburgh—first Bob Timmons and then Buzz Ridl—tried to cure him of that high-lofting shot. But my father formed the habit as a kid, playing against guys twice his height, and the feeling for it had settled into his hands and there was no chance of changing it. So after a while, since he almost never missed, the coaches left him alone, and in his junior year, my father set the school’s single-season scoring record.

  Once the last of the twenty-five balls left his hands, he shouted, “Stop,” and then he pulled his right hand down like a gun and pointed it at me, and by that point I better have stopped the watch.

“Well?” he said, as if he wanted me to tell him, but he’d always walk over and look for himself. There was something so majestic and undeniable about seeing where that needle had frozen. 

He shot at least four rounds a day, every day, even if it was winter and already growing dark.  

///

I NEVER HAD ANY TROUBLE just watching—never felt the need to participate too much—because there was something soothing and elegant about those long lobs, something hypnotizing. After a round or two, a certain peaceful sleepiness settled over me. 

And my mother must’ve felt the same way, because she went ahead and let my father buy twenty-five basketballs and four wheelbarrows to hold them in. I mean, the average wife would probably be all right with one or two basketballs, but once her husband kept bringing more and more home, you might expect her to be like, Honey, maybe we should cool it with the sporting goods. 

But my mother never did that. She just went along with the balls and the wheelbarrows and parking her car in the street because there was no room in the garage anymore. And she often watched my father through the kitchen window while he shot, and if he’d done well, she would pat him on the behind and say something sweet. 

She didn’t praise him every day, of course. She had a sense for knowing just the right times—because my father wasn’t one to abide false compliments—and just the right ways to lay one on him. And whenever she did, my father would reply with a shy grin, because he wasn’t the most comfortable person about that kind of stuff.

///

EVERY SUMMER, my father took two days off from his job at the fitness center to drive to Philadelphia and try out for the Seventy-Sixers. And every summer, without fail, he would call my mother to say he’d made it past the first round of cuts. But these were the years before the three-point line, and the Sixers wanted big, powerful guys like George McGinnis and showy players like Dr. J. And so each year, not too long after that first call, we’d get another, less excited call, and my mother would sit me down and say something like, “Your father’s coming back home now, and I’m gonna need you to be extra thoughtful and polite when he does.” 

No one could say my father was a sulker, but those first few mornings after he returned home would be quiet, and sometimes he swore he’d never try out again, but my mother and I knew better.  

///

IN 1979, the honorable NBA commissioner Lawrence Francis O’Brien oversaw the adoption of the three-point shot, and the following season, a young, awkward-looking guy named Larry Bird won the league’s Rookie of the Year award, which signaled that someone like my father, even eight years out of college, might start getting appreciated for his skill with the long shot.

So again, with renewed hope, my father packed his things and drove to the tryouts in Philadelphia, and again he called my mother to say they invited him to stay till Sunday, which meant the second round of cuts, and we waited for the fate of that third call. But this time when it came, my mother held the phone against her chest and screamed at the ceiling, “Ohhhhhh, thank you, God.”  

When she returned the phone to her ear, her face was wet with tears and she was sniffling and laughing at herself and asking, “OK, what do I have to do?”

She listened for a moment, and then said, “Drew, your father wants to speak with you.” 

I took the phone and put it to my ear.

“Drew-badour, it’s your father,” he said, which was weird, because he’d never given me a nickname before. “I’m a Seventy-Sixer now,” he said.

“You’re gonna be on TV?”

“I guess so,” he said. My father was never much of a laugher, but I could hear in his voice that he was smiling. “Now I need you to be real good and help your mother pack up the house, all right?” 

///

PRIOR TO THAT AFTERNOON of packing, I never got the sense that my mother harbored any hatred for our home. Although far from luxury, we had a routine, and with the routine came comfort. But seeing her in that moment told a different story. 

She wasted no time or sentiment on the old place, leaving the moment she hung up to go get boxes and Bubble Wrap and packing tape. 

Within an hour, she removed the legs from the dinner table and leaned it against one wall, wrapped all the dishes in newspaper, gathered the stuff that wasn’t going and heaped it on the den floor. She moved with an indelicate haste, hoisting boxes, kicking doors open with her feet, sweeping things from tabletops into trash bags with a forearm.   

In stages, after a couple days, the house became barren, and I saw flaws I never knew were there: water stains, warping in the wood, holes where once hung pictures and my grandmother's needlepoint samplers.

“Good luck to Mr. Orley when he tries to find someone else to rent this place,” my mother said.  

She looked up from a half-packed box and noticed my unease. 

“It’s OK, Drew. Where we’re going next will be much nicer.” 

She waved a hand toward the checkerboard linoleum. “No more cheap floors. No more cabinets that don’t clasp.” 

I’d never taken issue with any of that before, never even noticed. 

She pulled a strand of hair behind her ear and said, “Why don’t we start your packing?”

///

WE CARRIED A BOX upstairs to my room and set it next to my bed. 

“You’re gonna have a whole new room,” she said. “You can have a bunk bed if you want.” 

I opened a drawer and began to carry items one by one, placing them in the box. 

“It’s going to be fun,” she said. “An adventure.”

She lifted one of my sweatshirts and threw it into the box from across the room.

“Bet you didn’t know I’m as good of a shot as your dad,” she said.

She threw a sweater like a Frisbee and it spun into the open mouth of the box. 

To prove I wasn’t gonna be a baby about things, I tossed a pair of socks, and then she threw another. I tried to throw my burgundy cords, but she blocked them. And then blocked them again. So the third time, I faked.

“Ah ha ha. Tricky,” she said. 

Then I threw the pants at her head, which I thought was even trickier. 

“What a stinker,” she said, and picked up another set of socks and winged them at me.

That’s when I went for the pillow and prepared to brain her with it.

“Oh yeah?” she said, and picked up my beanbag chair.

I’d never seen my mother like this—she being more quiet with her warmth—but I could sense that it was important for me to get caught up in the excitement, which is why I charged her, swinging away. 

We were out of breath when the phone began to ring and my mother, laughing, said, “Hold on, hold on. Time-out. Oh, I’m gonna get you for that one.”

But of course I kept hauling away, because I was a kid and couldn’t turn it off the way an adult can. 

“What?” she said, the phone to her ear now.

And then she waved her hand and held up a finger—one of those please-give-me-a-minute fingers. So I cooled it a little and watched the enthusiasm ebb from her face.

“No, it's OK,” she said. “We haven't gotten very far.”

Mother listened a minute, and then said, “Yeah, I mean, we started. But it isn't like the house is turned upside down or anything.”

That was the only time—that I know of, at least—my mother straight-up lied to my father. The house was completely upside down.  

“OK. It's OK,” she said. “Yes, I told Mr. Orley, but . . . Please. We’ll figure it out when you get home.” 

My mother placed the phone back in its cradle and looked around at my room: the clothes everywhere, the way my mattress had shifted from its mooring during our scuffle.  

“I need you to clean this up,” she said, her face sagging with shame. 

“What…” I started.

“Please,” she said, and then left me there, pillow still in hand.  

I sat there a moment, still expecting an explanation, but it would be a few years before I’d learn that a late trade with Chicago for Ollie Johnson meant my father was the fourteenth man on a thirteen-man roster. He returned home late the next night, and when I woke in the morning, he was already up practicing his shot. Billy Cunningham, the coach of the Sixers, told him to be ready, that he might get a call at any time. 

So for several weeks, we held on to that hope. Soon, the preseason games started, and my father watched them with a devotion I’d never seen before, talking to the guys as if they could hear him, saying things like, “Come on, Mo, you have to force him to his left.”     

One night, early on, my mother stood and walked to the stairs.

“Where you going?” my father asked.

“Just feel like reading,” she said.  

My mother never quite recovered from the day of the pillow fight. She started going to the library and checking out stacks of books at a time. I would hear her downstairs very early in the morning, before light, and in the afternoons she’d nap on the sofa, a book resting by her head.  

///

EACH DAY my father continued to practice, harder now, seeking to be faster and fitter. He limited his rounds to a minute, rather than the old minute and a half, and between them he would do wind sprints up the block. 

We were only a few months into this new routine when my mother left a newspaper ad on the table before breakfast.

“What’s this?” my father asked

“Some basketball thing. I thought you might want to see it.” 

The ad read:

Come Try Out!

The Pittsburgh Basketeers are seeking high-quality players who possess enthusiasm, character, and a love for the game. If you think you have what it takes, please join us for tryouts this Saturday at the Fitzgerald Field House. 

The Basketeers provide an outstanding opportunity to pursue a career in basketball, in a stable and professional environment, while receiving a competitive salary and traveling all over the country. 

An ideal prospect for the Basketeers excels at both sport and entertainment. Must be intelligent, athletic, and possess two forms of valid identification!

“The Pittsburgh Basketeers?”

“I don’t know. It said it was stable.” 

“They’re one of those teams, the ones that travel around with the Harlem Globetrotters.”

“You’d get paid to play.”

“I get that. But Basketeers?”

“Dammit, Steven. I’m trying here.” 

Things got quiet for a moment, because dammit wasn’t a common word in our house, and it was even less common coming from my mother. 

My father picked up the ad.

“It’s a stooge team, Ann. A bunch of rodeo clowns.”  

“It’s basketball. It’s getting paid to play basketball.” 

“When that Russian team wrote to me, what did I say?”

My mother remained silent.

“I said Russki basketball wasn't real basketball. And this . . . this ain’t even Russki ball.” 

“You got so close last season, and I was thinking if you had a chance to play all the time . . .”

My father cut her off.

“That phone could ring at any minute. I told you what Coach Cunningham told me.”

“Stop it. Stop calling him that. He’s not your coach. Stop pretending like he is.”

My father winced and looked down at his oatmeal.

She perched on the chair beside him and placed a hand on top of his, lifted the ad from the paper, “Competitive salary.” 

“I appreciate you looking out for me, I do. But you just don't know what you're talking about on this one.”   

“Drew,” my mother said. “Would you go play outside for a little bit?”

///

FOR THE MOST PART, my father did as he pleased, but in moments like this, when my mother asked me to go outside, it signaled a special circumstance. And sure enough, that Saturday my father tried out for the Pittsburgh Basketeers. And a week after that, he packed a suitcase and went on the road. It all happened so fast that none of us knew what to expect or had any idea of how much he’d be gone. 

He traveled with the Globetrotters nonstop, and I began to get postcards from cities like Dayton and Erie and Rochester. Places I didn't think would have postcards. Bowling Green, Chattanooga, Fresno, Corpus Christi. A new city almost every day. It made me miss the old routine: him arriving home from work and changing into his sweats and Member’s Only jacket, wheeling the balls out to the driveway. All of it. 

///

MY PARENTS’ CLOSET was way off limits, but I didn’t care. With my father gone and my mother always reading or completing some kind of mail-in test, I snuck in one afternoon and took the stopwatch from his jacket. My first plan just involved holding it awhile, feeling its heft in my hand, maybe sliding the catch so that its cover opened and I could look at the dial. But after a minute or two of that, I slipped it into the pocket of my burgundy corduroys and carried it to my room. 

After a few days, when I knew it’d gone unnoticed, I took to carrying it around with me everywhere, timing things. There was something about watching that long thin hand plod around the dial that seemed to ease the passage of time, and if I stared at it long enough, I could sometimes get that drowsy feeling that came over me when I watched my father’s long shots.  

And when I say I timed things, I mean everything: It took six minutes twenty-eight seconds for my mother to brew coffee. Seventeen minutes forty-seven seconds to fix her new hairdo. My bus ride to school averaged sixteen minutes thirty-five seconds. I learned that episodes of Magnum PI weren’t really an hour—more like forty-eight minutes. Sure, I guess lots of people know that, but that’s how I discovered it. 

And at night, I played this game: I’d lie in bed in the dark and start the stopwatch and picture my dad shooting his shots, and then I’d stop it and turn on the light to see how close I got to one minute. I did it enough that even now, almost thirty years later, I have a pretty good feel for how long a minute can last. 

///

I OFTEN ASKED my mother when we could go watch my father play, but she never gave me a straight answer. Even when I nagged beyond a reasonable boundary, she said things like, “We’ll have to find out when he’s in town next.”

And whenever my father called—which he did around four o’clock on Tuesdays and Sundays—I would ask him about games, and he would simply say, “You wouldn’t enjoy it.” 

But I never stopped asking—I even called the Globetrotters’ headquarters and had them send me a schedule, so the next time my mother told me she needed to find out when he’d play in Pittsburgh, I could tell her November 11, a week before my birthday. 

“Hmmm,” my mother said.

“Lots of people go to the games. It's not like he would even notice us there.”

“We’re not going to be dishonest,” she said.

  “It wouldn’t be,” I said. “It’d be like how you’re becoming a real-estate person.” 

“That’s different. I told you that’s like a surprise.”

“This can be a surprise.”

“Listen to me,” she said, getting real serious. “If your father finds out about my studying, you won’t have a birthday at all.”

So I left it alone for a couple weeks, until we visited Rolland’s Bakery to pick out my birthday cake. 

Rolland’s was a holdover from the old routine, the highlight of every Sunday, when we’d walk there and select something for breakfast. You could smell the ovens from three blocks, thick with the scent of cooked sugar. 

We entered the shop and stood in front of a glass counter packed with pastries. Rolland hailed from Hungary and never said much more than “You want?” and “He’s a good boy,” but man could he bake: Bundt cakes stood next to butter cakes beside Boston creams that lay like chocolate hockey pucks. Devil's food next to fat rascals and French fancies. Pumpkin cakes alongside pound cakes and pineapple upside downs. And a meringue that must’ve been eighteen inches high. All of it stretched before me in that glass case, like a diorama of diabetes.     

“Any one you want,” my mother said, handing me a binder filled with pictures of cakes.

I looked at Rolland, I looked at the cakes, I looked at my mother. There was no finer position for a nine-year-old boy to be in, but I also knew that if there was ever a moment to get my message across, it was now.  

“I’d rather go to one of Dad's games,” I said. 

My mother’s jaw set. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Rolland has a lot of great things here.”

As if on cue, Rolland snuck back into his kitchen, returned with a sliver of something spongy and vanilla, and then handed it across the counter. “You want?”

I took the cake from him. Looked at my mother with caution. Took a bite that almost compromised my conviction.

“No,” I said. “I want to go to one of the games.”

“I can ask him for you,” she said. “But I can't make any promises. And you can't change your mind about this. If we leave, we’re not coming back.”

I looked once more at the cakes, and then told her I was sure. 

Rolland smiled, shrugged, said, “He’s a good boy.”  

///

MY FATHER ARRIVED HOME two days later, looking tired in a way I’d never seen. He hugged my mother for a really long time and made a big fuss over her new haircut, which everyone seemed to like. It kind of made her look like a dark-haired version of Farrah Fawcett Majors. 

“Ahhhhhh,” my father said, picking me up and carrying me to his chair. “Forty-three days on the road. I counted them like a prison sentence.”

“You’ve lost weight,” my mother said.

“A man can’t live off continental breakfasts.”

I squirmed some, because I wanted to seem older and being held across my father’s lap wasn’t an older thing to do. 

My mother leaned over me and kissed him again. “You don’t have to worry about continental breakfasts here.”

///

DURING DINNER, my father said no.

“It’s all I want for my birthday,” I said. 

“You see me shoot baskets all the time.”

“Not anymore,” I said.  

“Ann?”

“I’d like to see you play, too,” my mother said, making a minimal effort—perhaps fearing I was a bit of a wild card when it came to the real-estate secret.    

“Come on. Help me out here.”

“It’d be nice to see what you do while you’re gone.”

My father turned to me. “I’ll be home all this week. Tuesday night,” he said. “How about we go down to Sears and get you a BMX?”

He pulled out all the stops with that bike offer. The cake was one thing, but a bike . . . 

My mother looked at me in a way that told me to take the deal. But I held strong—surprised myself a little. “No, I want to go to the game on Saturday.” 

“This isn’t like the games we watch on TV. The guys do goofy stuff. They dance and throw water on each other.” 

I was just about to ask why they throw water on each other, when my mother stood up from the table.

“If it’s so shameful, then just quit.” 

She carried her plate to the kitchen and dumped it in the sink—half a pork chop, mashed potatoes, applesauce—which was a major deal because, you know, it was paid for by forty-three days on the road. 

She walked through the kitchen, to the front door, and then out of the house. My father rushed after her, and I rushed after him. 

From the doorway, I watched him chase her down the sidewalk and catch up with her.

///

IN THOSE DAYS, my father drove a Pontiac Parisienne: navy blue, with white imitation-leather seats that had cracked to reveal their foamy insides. 

Ashtrays were built into every unused surface, and when I sat in the backseat, I would open the two positioned on the backs of the seats in front of me and pretend they were handlebars and that I was the one driving.  

“Drew,” my father said, scanning the road.

Most of the important things my father ever told me, he told me while staring at something else. 

“What you’re gonna see today . . . you know how in movies people pretend to be other people?” 

“Sir.” 

“Just think of it like a movie.”

“OK,” I said.  

“And you should know, we don’t ever win.”

“Don’t say that,” my mother said. “You never know.”

“No, actually, I do know, Ann. The guys we’re playing today have beaten us more than eighteen hundred times in a row.”

“Jeez, Steven, ease up a little.”

“What? I want him to understand what he’s going to see there today.” 

“You’re being a bit much about it is all.”

“It’s his birthday. I’m trying to level with him like a grown-up.”

My hands tightened on the insides of the ashtrays, and I kept my eyes trained on the traffic.  

“Are you listening back there?” my father said.

“Sir.” 

“There’s going to be a moment today when instead of playing like normal human beings, they’re gonna pretend they’re playing football.”

“This sounds like a weird game.”

“It is,” my father said and looked over at my mother. “But the salary is competitive.”

///

AS MUCH AS MY FATHER TRIED to temper my expectations, all of his efforts were trumped by the sight of the Fitzgerald Field House.

“Is that where you’re playing?” I said, abandoning the ashtrays and leaning toward the window.

“I have to park over in a side lot,” my father said. “But I’ll drop you guys in front.” 

My mother and I entered the arena and walked along a running track that circled the court, and then climbed the stands to our seats. I scanned all of it, in awe: the court’s clean blond maple, the banners hanging from the arced ceiling, the baskets with their complex arrangement of hinged, hydraulic limbs, and, of course, that enormous scoreboard suspended above us, looking like a twenty-ton TV. 

This was where my father got to play—stadiums like this all over the country. 

///

SOON HE CAME OUT in his uniform—white with purple trim and a purple number—and he began to warm up with the other Basketeers. Some of the men jogged back and forth across the court, some sat stretching on the periphery. My father practiced his shot, which looked different when sitting fifteen rows back in the stands, seemed to float even higher, seemed to fall even faster from its peak.  

A towel boy retrieved the ball each time and then passed it back to my father, unaware of my envy. Already I was wondering how old you had to be to become a towel boy. 

“What your dad was saying about the movies,” my mother began, and then stopped. “Your dad’s a great player, a really great player, you know that. But we can’t cheer for him today.”

“Why not?”

“Because the people here have come to see the Globetrotters. And they won’t understand.”

“They’re against him? They’re all rooting against him?”

“Sometimes people aren’t interested in rooting for you. Sometimes you just have to play the way they want.”

“OK,” I said, and then turned away, not interested in understanding. 

One after another, as people began to filter in from the cold, my father’s long, high-arcing shots found the net. Five in a row, then six. I looked around to see if anyone else noticed, but the crowd was still sparse: a few families, some retirees, an old man in a wheelchair, holding an American flag in one hand and a small transistor radio in the other. 

My father continued to make shot after shot, and I sat there willing each one to go in, convincing myself that if I squeezed my left hand around the stopwatch at just the right moment, they would. And all the while, I looked around at the crowd and thought, Why aren’t you paying attention to this? 

///

A MAN AND HIS SON ascended the stairway that parted the stands, and then shuffled across the row in front of ours until they found their seats. The father’s hair was cut very short beneath his tan cap, and he wore a khaki service uniform. The son wore brand-new sweatbands and a headband, which seemed a little odd to me, because it wasn’t like he was gonna get any playing time. It wasn’t like the Globetrotters were going to stop the game and say, “Hey, if there’s anyone out there wearing wristbands, please join us.”

To be honest, though, seeing them also kind of made me wish I had a pair of wristbands. 

“You all right?” the man in the service uniform said.

The boy nodded.

“Keep your jacket on until it warms up a little.” 

They sat and looked out at the court and watched as my father shot. After a couple minutes, the boy said, “He’s pretty good.”

“Who?”

“That guy shooting over there.” 

The man watched as my father made a shot, and then another.

“Don’t worry about him. He’s not a Globetrotter.”

“That last one was from really far.”

“Just wait till you see the ’Trotters,” the man said. “They’re really good.”

///

ALL THOSE ROWS and rows of seats. It was exciting to think that soon they would be filled. Only they didn’t all get filled. More people showed up, but there were still plenty of empties when the lights dimmed and then brightened, dimmed and then brightened. Right after that, the towel boy and my father walked over to the bench. 

“Sweet Georgia Brown” began playing over the public-address system, and the man in the service uniform said, “Here they go. Look. Look. See ’em?”

The Globetrotters paraded out and formed a circle in the center of the court, dancing and passing a ball back and forth, around their backs, off their heads, off their knees, lurching and feigning and tossing the ball in directions you didn’t think it would go.  

Then one of the Globetrotters walked to the center of the circle, still passing the ball, like a spoke in a wheel, keeping the energy high and fluid. Then the ball was spinning on his finger and everyone in the crowd clapped, and then he lowered the ball to his head and it spun on his head and everyone clapped even harder.

The men kept dancing, kept passing, and then they all stopped at the same moment and ripped their warm-up pants off and threw them high in the air, and the kid sitting in front of me just lost it. To be fair, a lot of people seemed to think that was funny.  

Another Globetrotter moved to the center of the circle, replacing the first, passing the ball, dancing. But this new guy rolled the ball across his shoulders and bounced it off his foot, and then kicked it up very high and caught it on the back of his neck. 

All the other Globetrotters kept dancing, and then, just like before, they stopped, but this time they did this thing where they pretended to be riding horses and turned around in a circle. 

At first, I enjoyed watching their tricks, because I’d never seen them before, but after a few minutes, I just wanted them to play basketball. And a while after that, it seemed like the game might never start. 

Even when it looked like they’d get down to business and the players from each team gathered for the jump ball, a Globetrotter called time-out and walked to the bench and spoke to his coach for a minute, their voices amplified over the public-address system. They started pointing at a player on the bench and nodding, and then they told him to get out for the jump ball. When the player stood up, the whole crowd let out a cry of surprise, because the man was about eight and a half feet tall. He walked to the center of the court and stood there, and the crowd laughed, because the guy on the Basketeers kind of gazed up at him in a way that said, You’ve got to be kidding me. But the ref played it straight, and when he threw the jump ball, the tall Globetrotter didn’t even have to jump. He just tapped it to one of his teammates, who took the ball up court, passed it behind his back to another guy, who dribbled it through one of the Basketeers’ legs and dunked the ball.  

“You see that?” the man in the service uniform said to his son. “You don’t have to worry about these guys. They’re a bunch of scrubs.” 

///

THE GAME WAS WELL INTO the first quarter when three younger guys ascended the stands and sat in the row behind us, about five seats to our right. As the game continued, it became clear that they were rooting for the Basketeers, because whenever my father made a shot, they would cheer really loud and say things like, “Way to go, Keach.” 

“They like him,” I said to my mother.

“Try not to pay attention to them,” she whispered. “They’ve been drinking.” 

Even though they seemed to make my mother nervous, I liked those guys. 

“That’s my father,” I said. 

None of them heard me at first, but one of them noticed I’d said something and asked what it was. 

“Let’s watch the game,” my mother said, tugging on my arm to turn me around. 

“That’s my father,” I said again.

The man elbowed the guy next to him and said, “Hey, that’s Keach’s son.” 

“What?”

“His son.”

“Whose son?”

“The guy, number eight.”

“Really?”  

“Hey, Little Keach,” one of them said. “Your dad’s the man.” 

I turned and smiled.

“And Mrs. Keach, you're pretty.”

My mother’s jaw tightened, and she squeezed my hand.

///

PARTWAY THROUGH the second quarter, my father received a pass and drove toward the basket, which seemed odd because he never tried close shots, but there he was rising for a layup, and then one of the giant Globetrotters was swatting his shot clear into the second row. The crowd spouted a collective “Ohhhh,” and the Globetrotter placed a hand over his brows like a visor and pretended to look for the ball in the distance. 

The ref signaled for a foul, though, and the Globetrotter broke from his showboating to argue. 

“Ref, come on,” the Globetrotter said. “All I did was this,” and then he made a show of roughing up the ref, which got a laugh from the crowd. “And maybe a little of this.”

  The ref blew his whistle in the Globetrotter’s face, and he kind of staggered away as if it hurt his ears, and then the crowd booed the ref and continued to boo as my father made his first foul shot. 

Then the theme song from Mission: Impossible played over the public-address system, and the Globetrotter who fouled my father stopped rubbing his ears and dropped to the floor and crawled toward him. 

“Watch out, Keach!” one of the college guys yelled. “He’s coming for you.” 

The man in the service uniform glared back at them.

One of the younger guys noticed and said, “At ease, GI Joe.”   

My father dribbled a few times and focused on the net and prepared to take his second shot. The Globetrotter crawled closer and closer, until he stood up right behind him, and that’s when he pulled my father’s pants down. 

Like I mentioned, my father acted surprised and dropped the ball and yanked his shorts back up real fast, almost falling over in his effort.

The crowd barked out its laughter and, by instinct, my mother drew me to her side.

“Don’t worry about this,” she said. “It isn’t real.”

Whether it was planned or not, another Globetrotter decided to pull my father’s pants down again, and then the moment he got ’em back up, a third Globetrotter pulled them down once more.

Now my father had told me this would be like the movies, but the expression on his face didn’t seem like acting, and neither did the way he charged at the Globetrotter and shoved him in the chest. Nor did the way two of the other Basketeers grabbed on to his arms and pulled him away, one saying, “Hey, hey, calm down, it's all right.”

The crowd booed, and the man in the service uniform shouted, “Throw that bum out.”   

My father turned away from the Globetrotters and laced his hands behind his head and looked up at the scoreboard almost as if he wished it would fall on him, and that didn’t seem like acting either.  

In truth, the Rolland’s cake–new BMX option seemed pretty good at that moment, because it was tough to see how much my father hated being there. And it was tough to see my mother noticing that, too. Throughout the entire game, she had that look, the one she had after our pillow fight, and I couldn’t help but feel like it was my fault.

If I had the sense that my father enjoyed any of it, I might not have minded the pants thing or the booing or the serviceman calling him a scrub, but it was clear he was in the wrong place. My father wasn’t a showman—no matter how competitive the salary. All he wanted to do was take those long, long shots he’d spent his lifetime perfecting. 

And sure enough, the next time he got his hands on the ball, he pulled up from about thirty feet away and released one that rose so high, I thought it might graze the banners that hung from the ceiling. 

The young college guys stood and cheered when it went in:

“Atta way, Keach,” one said.

“Way to bounce back, buddy,” said another. 

And they cheered again on the very next play, when he made the exact same shot. 

Even my mother, who kept things to herself, clapped at that second one. And because I was right next to her, I could hear her say, “Good. Good. That was good, Steven.”

Three-pointer after three-pointer. Every time my father got his hands on the ball, he shot. It got to the point where the serviceman said, “Someone should guard that guy.” And, soon after, the public-address announcer began playing this sound effect like a bomb being dropped, and then a BOOM sound when the ball fell straight through the rim. He also started saying things like, “Hometown boy Steven Keach connects from long reach.”

///

NO ONE LOOKS at the scoreboard during a Globetrotter game. They’re too distracted by the trick plays and the buckets of water and the way the Globetrotters slide across the floor while still dribbling. But I was paying attention, and with all the three-pointers, it wasn’t too long until the score was tied. And then the Basketeers even edged ahead a few points.  

I think maybe I looked at the scoreboard so often that the serviceman’s son noticed and gave it a look, too. And when he noticed the lead had grown to twelve points, the first thing he did was pull on his father’s sleeve.

“Look,” the boy said, pointing.

“It’s OK,” the serviceman said.

“But they’re losing.”

“All that matters is the score at the end.” 

“But look.”

“Do we need to go out to the car and have a talk about your behavior?”  

///

WHAT I LEARNED SINCE THEN is that the Globetrotters could’ve given the signal for the Basketeers to ease up and let them win. I have no idea why, but they didn’t. Maybe it was fatigue from the extended road trip, or that they liked the drama of a come-from-behind victory. Or maybe they felt provoked by this new guy stealing the crowd’s attention with his long-range three-pointers. Maybe they saw some kind of arrogance in my father that made them want to play it straight-up and show him that even when he makes every single shot, he’ll still lose. What matters is, they never gave the signal.

Instead, they got more serious and more physical. They started double-teaming my father and working the full-court press. They quit their around-the-back passes and attacked the basket, dunking again and again. Still showy, but focused on scoring.

The Basketeers’ lead narrowed to four points, and my father couldn’t get open no matter how hard he tried. The announcer drew the crowd’s attention to the fact that the Globetrotters had battled back from a double-digit deficit.

But perhaps sensing a chance at glory, some of the other Basketeers began to step up. Dalton Sakey, the team’s forward, started making fifteen-footers from near the foul line. And Clarence Cawb, the Basketeers’ big man, managed to follow up some rebounds with layups.

With a minute left, the Basketeers still maintained a four-point lead. The crowd stamped their feet on the bleachers. The public-address guy played “Eye of the Tiger” during a time-out. The boy ahead of me held an arm up to his face and chewed on one of his new wristbands.

Play continued, and when the Globetrotters scored, the Basketeers managed to answer it with a basket of their own. On and on it went like that, until I knew way more than a minute had passed. In fact, it seemed more like two or three minutes.  

I stole a look at the scoreboard and knew that whoever controlled the game clock was slowing it down in order to give the Globetrotters a better chance. 

“They’re cheating,” I said to my mother.

“What?”

“They’re stopping the clock so they have time to win.”

I showed her my father’s stopwatch, which I’d been using to time the game myself.

“What are you doing with that?”

I realized my mistake

“You better give that to me right now.”

I jammed it back into my pocket.  

///

THE GLOBETROTTERS REGAINED THE LEAD with twelve seconds left, the crowd on its feet, cheering. The public-address announcer calling it the comeback of the decade, mentioning a two-thousand-game winning streak at stake. No one seemed to have the numbers straight. 

Two of the ’Trotters guarded my father, so the inbound pass went to Dalton Sakey. He raced the ball up court and passed to Roger Wilkens, who had it batted from his hands. The ball rolled toward center court, and the clock ticked down to the single digits. The crowd held their breath. A Globetrotter dove for the ball, but it skidded again. My father picked it up and shot from about forty feet away. 

The ball rose in the air as if it’d been punted, and then hung for a moment at its apex. Every head turned at once, watching, powerless, because there was nothing anyone could do to change its course. My body was as tense as a piano wire. My mother clapped a hand around me and pulled me so close, I was almost tucked into her armpit. The clock expired as the ball began its fast descent, falling toward the rim as if drawn by a magnet. 

When the shot went in, the college guys near us went crazy, shouting and clapping and one of them saying, “I’m so glad I bet my life savings on the Basketeers.”

“They were due,” said another.

But no one else in the stands seemed to know how to react. Quickly it became uncomfortable. The Globetrotters stood around looking at one another, stunned. One of them charged over to the ref to argue that the game had ended before the shot. 

I failed to understand how few others could recognize the beauty in what they’d just seen. The crowd even began to boo, and then throw things onto the court. 

“You said they’d win,” the boy with the sweatbands said to his father. “You promised.”

The serviceman grabbed his son’s arm and lifted him out of his seat and said, “Come on. Let’s go home.”

The man turned to me as he passed. 

“Tell your dad he ruined my son’s birthday.”

“That’s enough,” my mother said, scooping me behind her. 

“It’s my birthday, too,” I said. 

The man squinted at me and said, “So?”

“Leave ’em alone,” one of the college guys said. “She didn’t do nothing to ya.”

The man looked down at his son, who was crying by that point. He appeared to be calculating how far this could go. And then he just shook his head and edged toward the exit.  

The kid was still crying when they reached the end of the stairway, and I felt sorry for him. Truly, I did. Mostly because his dad didn’t seem like the kind of guy who knew how to handle crying, but also because his heroes had lost, and would never look the same to him again. 

“Thank you,” my mother said to the college guys.

“No problem. That guy was a total jerk.”

One of the other guys said, “Think we could meet your husband?” 

///

MY MOTHER AND I STOOD out front with the college guys, and they explained that since they were students, they could attend all the events in the Field House for free. They said they’d been to four Globetrotter games and always rooted against them—just ’cause it seemed like someone should root for the Basketeers. 

“I went to school here, too,” my mother said. 

“Really? What year?”

She smiled. “A long, long time ago.”

“Couldn’t have been that long.”

“Seventy-one.”

“No way.” 

“Well, seventy-three is the year I would have graduated.” 

The guy nodded as if in deep thought. Now I know that look as the pose of a man pretending to be sober.

My father pulled up in the Parisienne. 

“Steven,” my mother said, “these boys wanted to meet you.”

“That was awesome today,” one of the guys said, his hand already outstretched, reaching through the car window.   

My father thanked the guy, seemed to think that would be it, but one of the other guys said, “I counted fourteen three-pointers. That’s gotta be some kind of record.” 

My father looked at the man, and then looked at my mother.

“One of the fans didn’t react too well,” she said. “These guys helped me out.”

“Where’s the guy now?” my father asked, starting to undo his seat belt. 

“Gone. He’s gone.”   

“I don’t think the Globetrotters have ever lost before,” one of the college guys said. 

My father allowed himself to lighten. “They’re not happy, I can say that much. One of them came to our locker room and said, flat out, that it would never happen again.” 

“Who?”

My father shook his head, tried on a smile.

“I work for the school paper,” one of them said. “I’d really like to interview you.”

“You should do it,” my mother said.

“We should get home,” my father said. “It’s Drew’s birthday and all.” 

///

ON THE WAY HOME, I didn’t feel like pulling out the ashtrays and driving, so I laid across the backseat and watched the skyline change directions as my father maneuvered through the parking lot, passing the exiting spectators. 

Things were quiet for most of the ride, and I removed the stopwatch and lay there watching the long, thin hand chop from one dial marker to the next and thinking about the Field House and all the people in it, all the people who’d booed after my father made that crosscourt shot. I thought about what it would be like if no one ever saw my father play again, about what it would be like if his skill just fell dormant and forgotten, how people would see him on the street or at the supermarket and never have any idea that there was no one else in the world who could shoot like him.

“You could have been a little nicer to those guys,” my mother said. 

“I’m sure you were nice enough for the both of us.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Those guys always show up drunk, treating it all like it’s a big joke.”

“They’re college kids. How would you like them to act?”

The car fell silent for a few blocks, until my father said, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

A moment later, my mother said. “I’m sorry, too.” 

Several more minutes passed before he said, “It’s not worth it. Being away all the time. That’s the worst part.”

“We can talk about it,” she said. “I think we should.”

“And then what?”

“Later,” she said. “Tonight. After.”

///

WHEN THE CAR STOPPED in front of our house, I pretended to be asleep. That was just something I did from time to time, for attention.

“Drew, you up?”

I didn’t say anything. 

“Drew?” 

I lay there.

“Wake him up,” my father said.

I felt my mother’s hand on my shoulder.

“Drew, honey. We’re home. It’s time to go inside.” 

“Not quite time,” my father said. “I have a surprise for him.” 

The three of us walked from the car to the garage, and my father bent down and raised the door. Inside stood a new blue-and-silver BMX. It must’ve been a surprise to my mother, too, because she said, “Wow, Drew. What do you think?”

It was unbelievable is what I thought, and I walked over and wrapped a hand around its soft silver mushroom grip. But even as excited as I was, my eyes drifted over to the wheelbarrows filled with basketballs. 

“Will you shoot a round?” I asked, my hand releasing from the bike. 

My parents looked at each other.

“I’ve already taken a few too many shots today,” my father said. 

“Just one?”

“Don’t you want to try your bike out?”

“Please.” 

My father looked at my mother and shrugged.

“I can start dinner,” she said.  

I already had one of the wheelbarrows by the handles, pushing it out to the driveway. When they were all set up, I removed the stopwatch, and even though that gave away the fact that I’d gone into his closet, my father didn’t seem to care. He just looked at the hoop and said, “Ready?” 

“Sir.”  

“Go.”

I started the watch and stared down at its face as that long, thin hand plodded from one marker to another, steady and true, with no regard for what happened next.