Until I was in my mid-40s I spent a lot of Saturdays and Sunday afternoons playing basketball at the neighborhood pool down the street. Except for an occasional bank shot I couldn’t shoot worth a hoot, but I tried to make up for it by playing hard on defense.
Neighborhood kids played with the men, starting when they were 12 or 13 years old, until they grew up and moved away. By the time they got to high school most of them were better than me but I was bigger –fatter– and I knocked them around some. Actually, I knocked them around quite a bit.
One Saturday afternoon I went down to the pool, hoping to play, but there was nobody there except for John Huffstetler, the best basketball player to come out of our neighborhood.
He was playing in college. At Campbell University.
I said to him, “John, come on out here and let me abuse you some.” And he replied: “Mr. Stith, your days of abusing me are over.”
Postscript: He did come out and play and he was so, so right.
NOTE: Huffstetler, who played at Campbell in the mid-1980s, still holds the school record for consecutive free throws made at 35.
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