GLORIOUS SPRING
Spring blooms spray the hills rolling to the Pacific behind Cayucos California.
A wind chime serenades.
A box set. Hemingway and Joy ready for a snooze.
CONFESSIONS OF A BASKETBALL JUNKIE
It's tough now. The Big Dance is over, the confetti has been swept away. It ended well, one of the most competitive and hard fought games in the history of the men's championships, but that makes it tougher, the withdrawal harder.
When Villanova's Kris Jenkins left fly a three point buzzer beater, basketball fans were in ecstasy. North Carolina and Villanova had spent 39 minutes and 58 seconds of extraordinary athletic and emotional effort. After a month of tourney play when 66 other teams had failed to get to the summit, that a game could come down to a final shot with two seconds left is an exhilaration stupendous.
But now it's over. No more Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sundays of back to back games. That unique harmonic rush of arenas full of thousands cheering, balls and shoes on hardwood, rims rattling, the CBS sports theme, announcers and analysts who become like friends and neighbors no longer fill the sound scape.
Growing up in Indiana, home of Hoosiers, and the Hoosiers, Bulldogs, Boilermakers, Cardinals and Fighting Irish this guy fell in love with the game. We started playing in the second and third grade. High School basketball is a thing of legend the world knows because of the above mentioned Hoosiers. But college basketball is my addiction and that jones is fevered during March. It is indeed a madness, but April brings the hard comedown.
I get mildly interested in the NBA playoffs but it is somehow different, less passionate and without the same buzz. My daughters remind me some of their happy family memories include the almost festive air of the home during basketball season, the aroma of chili, or pizza or chicken wings, or burgers in the air with that hypnotic audio mix of a game on the tv and dad and mom in varying states of enthusiasm or despair. Now we must wait another year as we rehab and withdraw.
But there are sports classic channels and youtube. And course there is tennis, which conveniently fills the calendar. I love tennis. I no longer play basketball, but I play tennis and I love to watch it. The Opens and the Slams are great, but it is oh so quiet and there are no last second shots!
See you down the trail.
