Prologue

     I had just finished a round of golf on a Friday in June, 2019 and was having a beer at the 19th hole when my cell phone rang. My eyes perked up when I saw Bob Jester’s name light up on my screen. Bob was an old high school basketball teammate of mine who had been difficult to get a hold of in recent years, favoring snail mail to e-mail, avoiding texting, and always having a full mailbox that made it impossible to leave him a message. But on this day he was calling me, so I quickly excused myself from the table and answered his call, sensing that something must be up for him to be calling me out of the blue.

     Sure enough, Bob relayed to me some sad news: the son-in-law of our high school coach had passed away unexpectedly earlier in the week and there would be church and burial services in Westfield, NJ the next morning. While Bob checked to get the details of the services, I called fellow teammate Larry Simmons to relay the news. Larry, Bob and I quickly made plans to meet in Westfield the next morning for breakfast and then attend the services together.

     I had not seen my coach’s daughter Cheryl in years and hardly knew her, and had never met her husband, John Wilkinson. The Wilkinsons had settled in neighboring Scotch Plains where John was very active in youth sports programs, just like his father-in-law Neil Horne Jr. had been. Neil Horne Jr. was the reason I had to be there. Neil had been there when my father died in 1995 and again when my mother passed away in 2007. We buried my mom during a snowstorm in February of that year and were fortunate that anyone would brave the conditions that morning, but Neil and Rose Horne were amongst the handful there at Fairview Cemetery as the snow gently piled up.

     Neil had been there for them because of a single season I had spent playing for the now retired coach back in the early '70s. My parents had witnessed that season up close, all 125 days of it. The season that took place nearly 50 years earlier had brought much joy and happiness to those of us that experienced it, and for some of the people that were there, it’s not an overstatement to say that the season changed our lives.

     The three of us made our way into the packed church off Rahway Avenue and took seats near the rear. Over the next hour we listened to close friends and relatives eulogize John Wilkinson, and then waited as family members slowly filed out as the service concluded. As a teary eyed Rose Horne came down the aisle in our direction, she caught a glimpse of three familiar faces looking right back. Her spirits seemed ever so slightly uplifted by our presence as we took our turns embracing her and offering condolences. We then joined the procession on its way to Fairview Cemetery on the other side of town.

     Funerals make you think. They make you appreciate what you have, perhaps most especially the limited time we have here on earth. The time we still have left and the time we’ve already had…and all the memories that go with it. When the burial concluded as burials do, with the gathered people dispersing back to their cars and their disparate lives, Bob Jester and I retreated back to my car. A reception was to follow shortly at Ferraros in downtown Westfield. On our way there we decided to make a brief stop at our old stomping ground – Gumbert Park, where playground hoops used to seamlessly complement the three Little League baseball fields situated in the park. We pulled up next to the newer courts, which had long since replaced the older ones where we used to play some 100 yards down the road. We pulled into the small parking area right next to the nearest of four courts that sat side by side, and watched as a handful of players were playing some half-court hoops. It was a far cry from what Bob and I experienced at the old courts just down the street where some real basketball magic took place. It was not a stretch to say that those courts were the very reason we were sitting there that very day. I told Bob to roll down his window and tell them “we got next” ….

     I suppose that day was the tipping point. I had already started writing this book in my mind, imagining what its contents should include. That was the easy part. The hard part was convincing myself that it would be worth it…that anyone would care…that those memories should be reduced to writing and thereby preserved forever. I thought about the alternative, about not writing this book, and the prospect of that season fading into nothingness over time…effectively being buried without a headstone. In the end I simply couldn’t accept that. Those 125 days were too special. The recent resurfacing of previously dormant memories was strong evidence of that. I suppose in some ways writing the book would be a way of saying thanks to all my teammates and coaches who helped make it all possible. For everyone else, it would be a way of sharing everything I‘ve learned from a lifetime of basketball, as a player and a fan, as a starter and a bench player, as a student athlete and a member of the real world, as a parent and a child, as a coach and a player, as a teacher and a student, as a young person and an old one. Perhaps most importantly, it would be a chance to relate a basketball fairy tale, a story of what basketball can be, and once upon a time actually was.

     Two weeks later I walked out the back door onto our deck with laptop in hand, then sat down, opened it up, and started typing. I had taken the first step in making sure our story would never be forgotten.

Stephen Reddy, Author: a ball with no points