Real Super Heroes and Mortality

I got a call from a childhood friend recently.
He told me that Brian F., one of my neighborhood heroes had died.
I don't think he even knew how much of an impact he had on my life.

I thought about it for a minute, trying to digest what my friend just said. I waited so long that he repeated it.
Images of Brian and his team mates returning to the Red Hook housing project in Brooklyn's south west, 76th precinct, in a boisterous celebration, loudly cheering themselves and extolling their school name while standing next to a shimmering gold-colored trophy that stood as tall as him at about six-feet five.

That year, they were the best high school basketball team in the city and more importantly, Brooklyn, taking the title for John Jay High School located in Park Slope. I never went to neighborhood schools and only saw the local young men playing in the park. They were a lively bunch of guys who, to me, seemed like lusty pirates. They seemed to always be working out, or playing b-ball., softball or working out. But they were always laughing, and when the day turned to night and there was not enough light to play anymore, they drank and were having a great time.

Another of my heroes, Jimmy J., lived in my building. It was the oddest thing. He and the fellas were cool. I was the bookworm and they tolerated me. If they needed to know something they'd ask, but they rarely did. I'd over hear them saying things like, so, you're smart, can you kick my ass? Luckily I was much younger than they were. Too young to understand the peril I may have been in otherwise.

In any event, on some summer days, I'd just sit and watch them play. It was better than front row seats in the Garden. I really wouldn't know, the only games I saw were on TV, but theze guys were as good as Earl the Pearl and had jump shots and moves and trick shots I had never seen in the NBA. These guys were good, even when they were just playing a pick up game.
Nothing was worse than being the guy who was playing the absolute best defense they possibly could only to have one of the fellas back you into the pain or take you to the corner, call the shot, say, "Game!" end the contest, call, "Next!" or walk to the bench, pick up their light jacket or warm ups and coolly walk off the court. That was the kind of playa I wanted to be. They were my Michael Jordan before MJ came on the scene.

"I'm Blackman!" Born Black would yell and run around the court with a towel tied around his neck. He'd jump into the air at full run, with his arms stretched in front of him. It was the funniest thing I ever saw. And still ranks as one of the funniest things I've seen in my life.

Sometimes an ass****, too drunk to play or just lacking the skills to keep up with these Titans, would get on the court and realize they were about to lose, of course - some folks just hate to lose. So, they'd begin making bad calls to hold on to the losing battle.
But, as they realized the result was inevitable, in a fit of rage, they'd take beer bottles from steel-drum trash cans and smash them on the court - sending shattered glass flying, effectively ending the game and any games to follow. The park attendant locks the thick bristled broom locked up in the park house.

Sometimes the contests would shift to Wine Park, tucked next to PAL Miccio - the Police Athletic League center across the street from the Larsen's Bakery that Entenmann's later bought out. Wine Park was painted and seemed like the home of the old skool Red Hook playas who, like most people drank wine there. It was a park you really didn't want to pass by alone - at least I didn't when I was a kid. It could be cool, but it could be dicey too - drugs, alcohol and criminals seemed to congregate there. How did I know there were criminals there? I knew...
Oh, I'd also stop and watch them play a dice game called C-Low there - that was the first time I saw a dice game first hand.

The cool thing about Wine Park was that local artists has been commissioned by the parks department and the Police Athletic League to paint a mural on the brick wall on the north side of the park. They painted pimpin' Dolomite with a full 'Fro and a depiction of a Troglodyte and Bertha from the song Bertha Butt Boogie. I knew I was close to home whenever I saw that mural. I smiled every time I saw it.

Those games and tournaments in Wine Park were legendary too, but the court wasn't regulation. I didn't know it right off, but Coffee Park was. The think Wine Park had was that it had night lights. There was something about playing into the evening.

Moose and his weekend pPark parties, break dancers and the fool who stole Moose's power amp. Once, and never again. Moose and his friends began carrying firearms.

As I grew and they began to hold tournaments in Coffee Park, I noticed how clean it was. It was one of the cleanest parks in the area because they made sure it stayed that way. I was always an wearly riser either biking, swimming or Wandering, so I went to the park one day and to my surprise, I saw a few of them sweeping glass shards from the court. I'm not jockin', but these were young toughs with the best game in the region who respected the court. That opened my eyes. The court and that area seemed to be a neutral place; Anyone could come out as long as they did so respectfully. Some didn't and regretted it, so didn't and got laid out. Others just got chased out, never to return. Fighting was a necessary part of life there.
No one dared mess with them be it the Italians, the Puerto Ricans or Blacks from other projects.

The Monarch luggage factory, right next to Coffee Park, was broken into one summer. It was liek something from a cartoon. One minute you're just shooting some hoops and then a local runs past holding a suitcase in either hand at track speed. Then another. Then another. Folks soon began running in the direction they came from. Soon, police car sirens wailed and the running ceased. I walked in that direction to see what was going on, only to come across a set of luggage lying in the grass. As I approached it, a voice came out of the tall grass to my left where one of the fellas was lying in concealment from 5-0. "That's mine!" he said, moving the grass with his breath. I wento around to see a factory gate wide open. No one was arrested. Later that evening and for the next few days, the fellas and others coursed through the projects selling nice suitcase sets at reasonable prices.

Fish was removing some parts from an abandoned car. So I thought I'd remove the windshield. I had no idea what I was doing. Nor any idea what to do with it. I didn't even have a car. I didn't understand why he was shaking heis head at me, but I do now. Hooker with the jump shot style that was near impossible to stop when he cocked it behind his head and nearly released it from there in a high arc. Jimmy J's smooth moves and just plain silky jumper. If I could defend these guys I could defend anyone. Of course I never really could. By the time I was old enough, they were moving on to different things. Few of them went to on to play serious college ball. But in the Hook, they still had their legends.

I remember getting up the courage to play on their court one summer. When the ball pounds at a certain tempo in the Hood, it calls the brothers and sisters out like an African drum. I had been watching the NBA season and been practicing. I thought I had enough Red Auerbach fundamental, basketball training in me to know the game. So, full of false pride, I took to the Coffee Park court.

The handball court was my domain. I learned it from Michael E. and we soon dominated the handball courts. All comers sat down and waited. And sat down again.

Before I discovered b-ball, I feel like i was playing kids games like skelly and spinning tops and swinging in swings. Of course it was a girl's attention I was after. It was a Fonseca. She was mixed, Latin, Black and Indian. Her brother was a bad ass, but she was worth the risk. She was very beautiful and very cool, until crack infected the projects and took her from me. Not that I was cool enough or had enough game to snare her. I was still a bookworm, nerd learning the game; not quite a playa yet.

That summer, I got the lesson of my life.
Brian F. heard the drum of the ball and came out with the fellas.
With trepidation and the desire to prove myself, I waited for them to take the court after we beat our last pick up opponents.
It was like the new jacks taking on the elders.
It was like a disaster in slow motion. Everything we threw at them, they had a defense for. They picked up apart with a combination of trash talking and skill.
He blocked several of my shots and generally humiliated me in front of the Fonseca. God, she was beautiful. Not as gorgeous as Nadine Goody, probably the hottest young women in the area - she was out of my league for a while.

That day we were embarrassed on the court motivated me to practice, practice, practice; starting with the fundamentals.
I dribbled around the court for miles before I ever took a shot and with both hands, shot with both hands, spun, crossed over , between the legs, around the back, and watched every televised game I could. I biked, I swam, I ran, I did road work. I also did a painful routine where I stood under the basket and dead jumped - not running jump - and touched the backboard, ten times in a row in sets. If that wasn't bad enough, after that became easier, I started dead jumping and touching the rim with both hands.

I had done miles of roadwork, had played in nearly every park in Brooklyn, Manhattan - downtown on West 4th where the best play, Harlem when the semi-pros play and at Cromwell, Staten Island's indoor facility on the waterfront. I'd go home exhausted many days.

The next summer a similar game situation occurred - he and his crew took to the court and began dominating the game. The game was on and we were hanging tough.

At one point in the game, he out positioned me and grabbed an offensive rebound. He ignored me behind him and casually went up for the easy layup when I timed my jump and stuck his shot to the backboard. He came down and went up stronger than the first time. I jumped and stuck his shot to the board again. Then, he did something that made my day and started my career. He turned with a WTF look on his face to see who was sticking his shots. It was me.

He bumped me out of the way and scored, but that look meant a lot to me he looked at me, like who the F*** was that. That's when I knew I was becoming a playa too. They won the game, but only by one or two points; nothing like the year before. I had changed and he had changed me. No, I didn't have much thug in me, but I was willing to learn. Besides they were more malum prohibitum bad boys not malum inse. More importantly, he gave the the desire to be better and gave me a goal, a level of excellence I wanted to reach. That was something my nerd mentality could understand.

E, C-Moore, Talley and I came along at about the same time. 4-on-4 we were just about unbeatable. If we had a big man, fughettabout it!

Looking back, those times were kinda like the Odyssey for me. Like at the end of the movie Troy, after Achilles was killed, the voice over talked about how they lived in the time of the great ones like Agamemnon, Ajax and Achilles. It was a nice tribute, but I too lived amongst real life, flesh and blood heroes. I grew up watching them succeed and fail. Lose and love, come up and fall down. I've seen them selling illegally and doing a 9-5. I've seen them as playas and then as loving fathers. I've seen them live and now I've lived to see them, at least one of the great ones, die. Good or bad, right or wrong, they are still my heroes.

And sometimes the best thing about a superhero is that in the end they are mortal, just like me. They taught me, that just like them, I can do great things too.