Memories of a Basketball Game

      At a certain age, memories become malleable. They begin to fit the stories we’ve told again and again, the telling of the memory becomes more real than the memory itself.

      I’ve been thinking about the tricks of memory recently because I’ve been thinking about the most exciting sports event I’ve ever attended. I’ve been to the World Series several times, to the Stanley Cup Finals, a Super Bowl, the NBA Playoffs, and tennis’ U.S. Open. I’ve seen, in person, Willie Mays and Michael Jordan, Pele and Jim Brown and Bjorn Borg. As a one-time professional sportswriter, it was my job to be at thrilling sports events.

      But in my memory, nothing—not before, not since—compares to the excitement of a boys’ basketball game I was at more than half a century ago.

     The details are both hazy and remarkably distinct.

     It was, I think, a late Friday afternoon at the old Madison Square Garden, the creaky old beer-stained arena on 50th Street and Eighth Avenue. It was a big event, back when high school basketball in New York was big. It was the boys’ final of the Public Schools Athletic League, the PSAL, and DeWitt Clinton, my Bronx high school, was one win from the championship, 32 minutes away from an undefeated season.

      As the sports editor of the high school newspaper, I sat courtside, pretty much like a real journalist, I thought. I was just to the right of the team bench and could see the guys on the team clearly. I knew some of them, had spent four years in the same building. I had taken trigonometry and Spanish classes with a handful of the players. Now all seniors together, this was finally our moment.

      Or maybe not.

      First, we—not yet a professional sportswriter, I did not know there was supposed to be no cheering in the press box—had to get past Boys High. They were from far-off, intimidating Brooklyn. Connie Hawkins had gone there. Several of their players — including Vaughn Harper and Eldridge Webb — would later star in college. They had won the city championship the year before. They were tall. In warmups, they all dunked.

      Our best player was Willie Worsley, five feet six inches.

      Our center, Ed Gilfeather, was six feet three inches.

      Boys, I think I remember, led for most of the game, but we stayed close, our cleverness almost matching their physical superiority. By the end of the third quarter, though, we trailed by seven or eight. In a low-scoring, tight affair, the lead seemed, truly, insurmountable.

      And then we surmounted.

      Little by little, Clinton got stops. Little by little, we got a basket here and there, a circuitous drive and layup by our short guy. A double-clutched jumper from the key by our second-best player. An impossible tip-in by our center.

      Now, just seconds were left, and we trailed by one. But we had the ball.

      To this day, I don’t know if what I remember now actually happened, or happened sort of this way. There is no digital archive I could find for my high school newspaper, and the game was played in the midst of a lengthy New York newspaper strike, so no professional sportswriters were there either.

      There is no official record, then, just these unofficial but somehow nevertheless indelible memories.

      My memories say that we missed a jumper with a second or two to go, and in the fight for the rebound, our center was fouled. Gilfeather went to the line. Two shots.

      He took a very long time getting ready for the first one. He inhaled, exhaled, and bounced the ball several times.

      He made the first one and the game was tied.

      Gilfeather, in my recollection, then backed off the line, exhaled again.

      He stepped to the line again. A number of inhales and exhales. Slowly, agonizingly, he got into his foul-shooting stance and shot.

      I really can’t say with absolute certainty that what followed happened, but I think it did, at least I want to think it did: the ball bounced around the rim, once, twice, then, maybe out of exhaustion, fell through.

      Clinton 48, Boys 47, and the buzzer rang. I have found, recently, confirmation of the final score. So, it did happen, if maybe not exactly this way.

      Of what followed, though, I have no doubt the memory is absolutely correct: we raced screaming out of the Garden, onto Eighth Avenue, into the city, shouting, shrieking, exulting like — at least in my case — we never would again.