I want to apologize for not having written a thing over the last few weeks. I’m suffering like everyone else over the election; Biden’s victory only tendered us the worry of a coup, the threat of which seems finally to have passed. The last thing to worry about is what Trump can break on his way out: Bomb Iran? Torpedo a garbage barge? Or simply inspire frustrated little boys like the Proud Boys to go shoot it out with someone? It’s all on the table, and it makes me sad and anxious, and I can’t write like that.
Also, my back has crumpled up like a thin paper bag. Unlike with my knee and hip, I have it on pretty good authority that you can’t get your back replaced.
Anyway, I can’t walk or stand or do anything upright for more than ten minutes without the pain becoming excruciating. One of my many doctors noted, “He doesn’t seem to have any options left.” So I’ve been dealing with that. Who wants to live like that?
In any event: Eddie Johnson died a couple of weeks ago at age 65. No cause of death was given; he died in prison. He had had drug problems while on the outside as well as a large agenda of criminal activity.
He was a guard on the Auburn University basketball team in the late 70’s. He came from Florida, was 6’2, 180 pounds, and was African-American. He was a leading scorer as a guard on Auburn’s team, was a team leader. After leaving Auburn (I don’t know if he graduated, but I saw in his obituary that he was a good student in high school), he joined the NBA Atlanta Hawks. He was their leading scorer for a few years in the 80’s and made two All-Star teams. In short, he was a remarkable player.
I watched him at Auburn and enjoyed his very fast game. He had a funny jump shot, which should have been easy to block but was not: he held his hands far out in front of his face, and then simply flicked his what must have been very strong wrists at the basket. He was a dead-on shooter with a quick move to the basket.
When I was in college at Auburn, I played a lot of pickup basketball in the gyms. Alabama in those days wasn’t yet a hotbed of good high school basketball; maybe it still isn’t. They play football there. And when was the last time anyone heard of a kid from Alabama making baseball’s majors leagues?
So the quality of the pick up games was inconsistent and sometimes so downright ignorant that one just wanted to walk away. As my friend Mark Murphy did one night when some kid insisted on setting moving picks, which are great on the football field but forbidden in basketball. Maybe that’s a good metaphor for what those games were like.
One who knew about the South would not be surprised to hear that holy-roller religious groups would take over a gym for a night and advertise all-night basketball games with unlimited Coca-Cola. I suspect they thought that they were setting people up to be converted, but few souls were moved, and the Christians played lousy basketball. One night they brought some sound device and played one Elton John song all night, over and over; I can’t remember which. Perhaps it had some religious significance? Didn’t they know that Elton John was gay?
Anyway, the game was always organized by some lean, blond-haired guy inevitably named Dean, who had a popping Adam’s apple, thyroid eyes, and big dark glasses. He never played, which had to be a good thing, but stood off to the side, grinning, playing Elton John over and over.
We played in a big, loud, dark old gym with four or more courts, all lined up, one after the other, so that, if you were taking a shot from a corner, you had trouble seeing the hoop. And dusty: someone with allergies would be well advised to stay away. The light was so dim that a yellow haze seemed to filter over the players.
One night, I arrived at the gym just as a game was forming, and I joined in. Eddie Johnson was there, and he joined the other team. He wasn't really interested in our game; he spent most of it way the hell out there on the sideline throwing up shots and mainly hitting them. He was wise to stay clear of the action, as he had potentially millions at stake, and he was risking a lot to come down and fool around with the clumsy likes of us. If one of us slipped on that dusty floor and were to fall into him and blow out his knee for him, well, let’s not talk about that till a couple of paragraphs from now.
For instance, I got to know a guy, J.B. Brown, who was a star second baseman on Auburn’s baseball team. I think he took classes from my father, or his girlfriend did, and Dad, never one to pass up a friendship with a fellow jock, got to be buddies with him. (Dad had a magical way of attracting people. He was funny, and kind, and a good listener, and he made you think, ah, a Polish Gene Kelly.) J.B. came to play in those games, and sometimes I’d guard him, which was funny because he was so fast. But one night, he went up to shoot, and somehow the universe tilted wrongly on its axis, and I blocked his shot.
It was a moment of pure racial harmony. Black and white boy alike fell on the floor laughing at poor J.B., who was very gracious about it. He knew he was Head Boy no matter what lucky honky blocked him.
He was drafted by the Chicago White Sox and did very well. In a spring training game, he hit a double off of a Braves pitcher, Larry McWilliams, whom only I will remember. The next time up, J.B. said Mr. McWilliams, having learned his lesson, threw him three devastating curve balls.
The next fall, J.B. came back to Auburn to work on finishing his degree. I wasn’t in this game, but reportedly, as he sprinted away on a fast break, some goober stepped on his heel and blew out J.B.’s ankle. Ankles never heal. J.B. was never the same, and he never played for the White Sox.
In an effort to keep this blog post from becoming about young African-American men who go to college and are destroyed by the system one way or the other, let’s return to Eddie Johnson and our pick up game.
As I said, Johnson mainly practiced his three point shooting, well out of harm’s way. At some point, though, somebody switched off or something so that I was guarding Johnson on the baseline. He was facing the basket, and I was between him and the basket. Someone yelled, "Don't let him go baseline!" I put my foot right next to the line so he'd have to run into me to go past me to the basket, which of course wasn’t cool: When a real live college scholarship athlete joins your game, you should go out of your way not to end his career.
I can still see him. He stood there dribbling, and cocking his head and frowning at me, like he was confused about something. Then I blinked, and I swear, he just wasn't there anymore. I felt a little wisp of air as he went by me. I turned around in time to see him laying the ball in the basket. I mean, truly, I never saw him go by. And I didn’t feel him go by, either, and I had my stupid foot on the baseline. It is possible that he disapparated a la Harry Potter, but I did feel the brush of air as he went by.
(Let’s speculate for a second on what kind of idiot yells at me not to let Eddie Johnson go baseline. He’s probably running a bank branch in Birmingham.)
Eddie Johnson’s obituary was generous, considering the life of drug-related crime and, worse, sex abuse, that he got into after he retired. Everyone said that he was magical during the season and a nightmare in the off-season. The people who worked with him appreciated, if nothing else, his talent. One coach said, I’ve never seen anyone with a faster first step than Fast Eddie Johnson. Every obituary I read referred to his “explosive” first step. No kidding, I’m here to tell you. Yet in one sports blog’s end of year wrap-up of the sports people who died this year, Eddie Johnson was nowhere to be found. Man, Eddie, I remember you, anyway. I don’t know why I tried to keep you from going baseline either. Rest in peace.
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