by Paul Perilli
The appearance of an email in my Inbox on the morning of
January 9th brought news of the death of Thomas M, a.k.a. The Bomb. Reading
it, the flood of images of him playing hoop on the asphalt court in our eastern
Massachusetts hometown was immediate. I smiled at the thought of the five-ten
floppy-haired Bomb dribbling in a kind of sideways crouch, his butt leading the
way and his torso protecting the ball from hands that might desire it for themselves.
I felt the heat of a blazing July sun and saw The Bomb lift off the ground in
his white Cons with the pumpkin cocked over his right shoulder in a demonstration
of perfect athletic balance and control. I silently applauded the quick flick of
the wrist, the high arc, and the ho-hum look in The Bomb’s steely eyes after another
sweet sfooshing snap of the net.
Then I remembered something The Bomb said one sultry
summer afternoon when a few thousand games later it seemed we blinked our eyes to
discover we were twenty-one. I have no idea what had preceded it, or if it was
extemporaneous input, but he sent it out there and it stuck: “You’re only
allowed so many baskets in a lifetime.”
It was a prescient and profound declarative statement and
I wondered about The Bomb’s last basket. If it came during a winter league game
when he was forty-one or forty-two and long past his best days. The Bomb now
relegated to one of those hack leagues we used to ridicule, leagues with bad
refs played in ratty junior high school gyms; a strained shot he just managed
to get off over a younger defender that clunked the front of the rim and barely
had enough forward spin on it to roll over the iron and fall through. Maybe
those were his only points of the game and later, changing into his civvies in
a locker room that stank of stale sweat, he decided his time might be better
spent on the Treadmill or Stairmaster.
I saw him raise his eyes and give his head a little shake
at the almost unbearable memory of the magic ease he used to pop in five or six
baskets in a row just a few years earlier, long jumpers from deep in the corner
or out beyond the top of the key, soft little hooks down low over taller defenders.
Free throws were a reach for the coffee cup. Packing his sneakers and shorts into
his gym bag that night I believe he knew there was no avoiding it. In The
Bomb’s view of the world, even he was only allowed so many baskets, and after
them that was it, he was all done.
Back in those early days The Bomb was known for having certain
idiosyncrasies. He’d never play a game on a hoop without a net. He’d never be a
skin in a game of shirts against skins. He also had an aversion for formal leagues.
The Bomb never played for our high school. He understood his game was
incompatible with the control-freak program implemented by the coach, who never
warmed up to The Bomb’s hectic, run-and-gun style. The hours and hours of drills
that were intended to set up a “good” shot in a game situation were a huge snore
to The Bomb. When he had the ball he’d look to shoot, and it went in plenty
often. And The Bomb knew as well as the rest of us that when it came time to pick
sides out on the blacktop you wouldn’t choose the lettered boys over him. And
if you did, The Bomb would pay you back with a succession of facials while at
the same time illuminating the severity of your sin in a mocking voice.
But was that the real Bomb who would try to break you by draining
basket after basket while uttering a string of personal insults? I swear that
was a contradiction in him because off the court he was quiet. He never
bragged, he never offended, he didn’t act like a tough guy. He was a kid from a
poor family. He was a bad student with a limited vocabulary and range of
knowledge. He had an inferiority complex that made him feel out of place in
most social activities. But on the court, with the rock in his hands, some substitute
personality came off the bench and overtook him. A rush of blood that induced
an almost unstoppable onslaught and had him pounding the ball on the asphalt as
if he feared it might stick to it and deny him a move to the basket.
I was a teammate on the one organized team The Bomb played
on for the Boys Club. We were fourteen and fifteen traveling once or twice a
week to Worcester, New Bedford, Lowell, Boston, and other places. Our coach, a twenty-five-year-old
grad student who also drove the team van, named me captain, but in the games I
deferred to The Bomb, and he applied his dazzling freestyle playground skills with
an inexhaustible drive to score points. The result was an average of twenty-plus
per in games that might end up 51 to 42 or 44 to 38. If assists had been kept,
I’ve no doubt I would have led the league on The Bomb’s production alone.
I recall one game, a home game in the small gym on Exchange
Street, when he filled it up for forty-three points. It was one of the few
times I didn’t give a second thought to dish and deal the pill to The Bomb on
almost every offensive set and suppress my own desire to score. I watched with awe
as, without the slightest change of demeanor, The Bomb bobbed and spun and bumped
and sprung in a delirious frenzy that overwhelmed the skinny white boys trying to
defend him. Forty-three points seemed like a million to us in those days, a
performance worthy of a mention on Sports Center. But at that time there was no
Sports Center. Not even a headline to be read on the sports page of The News Tribune that might have raved THE
BOMB GOES FOR FORTY-THREE, BOYS CLUB ROMPS. After the game, in the locker room that
smelled of chlorine, The Bomb was cool about it. We slapped him on the back, impressed
and giddy by what we’d witnessed. He smiled, but not a word came out of him
that might be described as conceit. It was as if he too was surprised by his
effort even though we all knew better. He’d had a good night. He’d have others.
And yet in all of that in all those years I don’t ever remember
dialing The Bomb’s number to find out how he was and what he might want to do
that night. Off the court I didn’t hang out with him much, if ever. When we
were eighteen I went to college and The Bomb went to work lumping rubbish barrels
for the Department of Public Works. It was a job, I understood without condescension,
that suited The Bomb, that he didn’t mind going to nor being seen around town
hanging off the back of a scarred-gray packer.
One of the last times I saw The Bomb remains quite clear
in my memory. I was home for summer vacation before my senior year and went to the
court that first afternoon. Sure as the round-ball’s a sphere, The Bomb was
there with a questioning look in his eyes that wondered if this was the time
I’d come back with a self-important air that would exclude him and compel a defensive
response. It wasn’t. The hoops had nets on them and there were still some games
to play together. Not a lot, but some, before I moved on from South Street for
good. But by then The Bomb was a legend and I wasn’t and when I thought of him
again I was struck frozen by his prophetic words, “You’re only allowed so many
baskets in a lifetime,” knowing all of mine, like his, were already in the past.
Paul Perilli's words of
the day appear in Volume 3 of The
Transnational and The Satirist.
“Trumped!” is forthcoming in The
Transnational.
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