Advantage Disadvantage Page 6

  A favorite of the boys was the football-blocking dummy. Often, Coach Battle asked Marcus to use this inflated canvass bag with two handles to simulate player contact while the team shot layups. This drill attempted to increase the odds of making shots while being fouled. Depending on Marcus’ whim, the players received either a light “love tap” or a harsh push that landed them on their behinds.

  Jamal excelled as the weeks wore on. These drills improved his fundamental capabilities. Being six foot two was not a great advantage in any of these training sessions. To thrive, he had to advance his skills. As he acquired more and more skills, Jamal became more dedicated to the game. He absolutely fell in love with basketball.

  ***

  Despite being the tallest player on the team, he earned the right to play away from the basket as point guard. Jamal had progressed from an average player with an indifferent assessment from T.J. Battle to the best player on the team. His basketball future was considerable. He bonded with the other players on the team, and he and his dad grew to appreciate Coach Battle’s strict disciplined approach to the game. Marcus loved how Jamal looked forward to playing basketball, or even attending practice, and his on-court improvements were obvious.

  Instead of becoming bitter about his in-limbo legal status due to the O’Hare Airport incident (he was still suspended from his Security and Compliance Manager’s job at the Board of Trade), Marcus felt blessed that meeting Bobby G. led him to getting his son a spot on Battle’s NAU team. Bad things happen for a reason; sometimes producing a great result.

  The team practiced for several weeks under Coach Battle’s rough supervision. He alternatively treated the boys harshly like criminals on the streets of Chicago, to the compassionate understanding of a father. He was great for the boys. They were looking forward to the first tournament of the season in Illinois. Teams from all over the Midwest came for this weekend tourney. Games used the local college’s arena floor on the regulation collegiate layout. Teams from out of town always drew a large crowd – these were elite seventh grade players from Minneapolis, South Bend, Milwaukee, Indianapolis and St. Louis.

  Vole or Kerbe sponsored most of the teams. Representatives from these companies operated product information tables and sold logo shirts and shorts. Many of the local high school coaches were there, checking out their future stars. Slimy street agents lurked around. Bobby G. was a fixture at this tournament. Not only did he help fund Jamal’s team by sponsoring T.J. Battle, he worked the crowd like a well-schooled Chicago politician. Tournaments like this were a great way to conduct research and build relationships. He hustled this weekend, planting seeds for future moneymaking opportunities.

  While his team was loosening up in their pre-game layup line, Coach Battle approached one of the referees assigned to the game. They had known each other for several years. The referee had worked some games back when Battle’s sons played high school ball, and more recently, he ran into him at NAU games around the city and suburbs.

  Coach Battle smiled and said, “Hey Rechter, have you worked any games at Garfield Park lately?”

  “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you T.J.?” the referee said laughing.

  “Neither will the guy who’s walking towards us!”

  A well-dressed man approached. Billy Rechter recognized the face.

  “Hey Ref. What ‘sup, Coach. How’s the team lookin’?” asked the man.

  “I owe you one, Bobby G. The Imari kid is a budding basketball prodigy. He’s developed so quickly… my best player by far.”

  “No prob, Jeeves. I owed his pops a favor. I just ran into him a few minutes ago and he genuinely thanked me for hookin’ up the two of y’all.”

  “Hey Ref, you should’ve stuck around at Garfield. The game was the bomb.”

  Shaking his head, Billy Rechter replied, “You guys are crazy. I would never work a game like that. Did you win?”

  “I always win, Holmes. C’mon.”

  ***

  By the end of eighth grade, Jamal had become T.J. Battle’s basketball phenom. Several coaches from parochial schools recruited him in an attempt to get him to enroll and play at various places around the city. Jamal and his dad had discussed this decision at length; ultimately, he decided to play at the local, public suburban high school in East End. He disappointed many parochial school recruiters, but certainly pleased one lucky coach.

  After the last NAU game under Battle’s tutelage, Jamal and Marcus were at a loss of words to express their sincere thoughts:

  “T.J., I can’t thank you enough for taking Jamal under your wing and teaching him the correct way to play basketball. He is not done learning or growing, and I think he will continue to get better, but without your help he would be an awkward and tall, uncoordinated freshman in the fall. You were great for him.”

  “Marcus, it was a labor of joy to help with his development. Jamal, you have unlimited potential – you are on a short list of elite players that I have been lucky enough to coach. Don’t mess it up kid.”

  “I won’t Coach,” Jamal responded. “Thanks for all you’ve done for me and our team. We had a great run, right?”

  “Sure we did. You have the trophies to prove it. But your run is not over…you can really accomplish stuff on the court and off.”

  “Beside the trophies and metals, I’ve also got the sore muscles from those crazy drills too, Sir!” Jamal respectfully joked back.

  “T.J., will we see you again?” asked Marcus.

  “That could happen in a few ways….one, if I need to arrest you.” He laughed. “Two, I moonlight as the onsite officer for a few high schools in Chicago and in the ‘burbs during events, and three, when I can I’ll drop in on your high school games every now and then.”

  “I’ll make you proud, Coach.”

  “Jamal, you already have. Stay out of trouble, get good grades, and for the Love of God, keep your elbow up on your jump shots or it’s back in the pool!” he kidded before shaking hands and hugging the player and his dad.

  Chapter Nine. The Whistle Blower

  William (Billy) Rechter was born forty-five years earlier in the near south side section of Chicago named Bridgeport, famous for including the homes of the father and son duo Mayor Daleys. Mostly middle class business owners, factory workers and city employees populated these neighborhoods.

  Billy had a solid B- grade point and a .250 batting average in Pony League. He loved sports but never played for his school’s teams. It was a given from the time he was a toddler that he would attend college. He limped into a run of the mill state university for average students like him finally hitting his stride as a nineteen-year-old college sophomore. Subjects became interesting, and playing intramurals against like competition turned out to be fun. While his dorm mates partied at the bars, he found purpose in the library and at the recreational center. While working out one day he stumbled on a new way to make expense money – refereeing basketball and umpiring softball intramural games. The manager of the campus recreational sports staff offered him a job after some small talk about sports. He could earn cash for “watching” sports.

  It was easy for Billy to produce an excellent grade point average in Political Science, a subject he loved. When his senior year rolled around, he was not sure what he wanted to do for a living, so he applied to Law Schools around the Midwest. Ultimately, he attended DePaul Law School, proud home to alums such as Benjamin Hooks of the Civil Rights Movement, the father and son Chicago Mayor duos, and John Stroger of Cook County government fame. Law school did not come easily to Rechter; he studied nearly every waking hour to land in the middle of his graduating Jurist Doctorate classmates. Billy did not head for a lofty Wall Street Firm, he was lucky to become the in-house counsel for a firm rehabbing condominium lofts.

  As the years progressed, he honed his craft to target the burgeoning Windy City real estate market. A twenty-year building boom allowed him to fly the coup to become a self-employed practitioner. He mastered his wor
kday responsibilities in a legal field hardly tied to litigation. Billy had gained much control of his schedule. He joined the elite East Bank Club in downtown Chicago and began to play basketball again - not with the ex-Bulls and collegiate talent that played regularly on Court 1, but with the other guys – weekend hackers. When he hit forty-years old, his playing days were numbered and he looked for other ways to compete. Billy played a lot of golf and tennis, but remained unfulfilled. A friend suggested that he resume his basketball officiating at the high school level and he checked into becoming an official.

  The Illinois Interdisciplinary Athletic Association (IIAA) located itself in the middle of the state, 75 miles south of Chicago. It began in the late nineteenth century to encourage and regulate participation in boys’ high school sports. Billy had to acquire three references for the IIAA application, one of the three being associated with a school in some way. Recently he helped close a property sale for the Principal of a local school who offered to assist. After sending in a small fee, the state association sent verification cards to each of the three people on his application. When these verifications came back without complications, IIAA sent National Federation of High School basketball books to Billy: Rules, Mechanics, and Case Studies. The annual take-home test followed shortly. Billy completed one hundred true/false questions on the test, but many were obscure, picayune, or subjective. He looked up each question using all three books, and in this initial process, he began to develop the respect for officiating that he never felt before.

  Billy contacted a few of the assignment chairpersons as soon as he received his credentials. He applied the iron-on IIAA logo to his striped shirt. He had become “patched”. One assigner with a twelve-school conference appreciated his college recreation center officiating experience and signed Billy to work a dozen or so freshman games in the upcoming season. Now scrambling to learn what else was required to complete his uniform, he found his answer in the Mechanics Manual.

  He showed up to his first game already dressed. Billy would later find out that coaches and athletic directors considered this unprofessional. At any rate, he survived his first season mostly working freshman “B” games. Some of his partners were vocal in pointing out his shortcomings; others said stuff only when asked. A certain number of officials at the freshman level were simply there to make some beer money. These people liked to work double headers to make a little more referee dough. Others, especially the young guys who wanted to move up attended outside activities to get better. After one season, Billy was in neither group. The refs working games to make extra money had horrible habits – they rarely switched positions with their partners on all fouls as prescribed in the Mechanics Manual. They hardly used their whistle because they did not want to slow down the game, and many did not really understand the rules completely. Billy worked his quickest game with a crotchety sixty year-old veteran nicknamed, “Keep the Car Runnin”. Another official who usually showed up angry earned the nickname, “Chip the Technician”, because the chip on his shoulder rarely allowed him to work a technical-free basketball game.

  Freshman parents had a lot to learn as well. All high schools hosting a game were supposed to provide the “game management” function. Athletic Directors (AD) usually supplied scorekeepers and ensured an appropriate secure facility for the referees to get dressed and conduct pregame, halftime and postgame wrap-ups. They also were in charge of crowd control. Usually, by the time their athletes reached their senior year, most parents had figured out how the games were called and what might have been acceptable. Maybe it was a chicken and egg issue, but it was hard to say why ADs had more crowd problems at the freshman level. Was it that parents did not figure out that they are supposed to root positively for their team (not against the opponents or referees) or that the officials assigned to ninth grade games were the most inexperienced or simply didn’t care?

  While working a freshman “B” game at suburban Cregier High School, a grandfather of one of the players particularly annoyed Billy’s partner. The old man stood up on a time out and verbally berated this official. The referee told the grandpa to be quiet, and then told him to sit down and shut up. The old man dug in and refused to sit quietly. Home management finally resolved the situation when the AD asked the spectator to tone it down. During halftime, as the referees were walking back to the locker room, the old guy approached the referee and tried to continue his harassment. He clenched his fists in a threatening way, and the referee grabbed his arms defensively. At this time, the grandfather’s son (father of the player) tackled the official, sending all three men sprawling on the floor. The two relatives of the player were escorted out of the gym by a seemingly understanding AD. The next day the Caller ID tipped off the referee that it was his assignment chairperson. He thought the call would be sympathetic to him. Instead, he listened to a five-minute tirade laced with cuss words. Net results: the school blacklisted the official, home and away. Moreover, his stock went down in the assigner’s eyes. The referee community was buzzing with the details of the incident. Billy learned that the old man’s construction company built Cregier High School’s baseball dugouts pro bono. Lesson number one: Do not interact with the crowd; nothing good comes out of it, especially if the idiot in the crowd is a major donor to the school!

  By his second year, he had worked games covering most of the teams in a few conferences. He got to know the coaches and many of them called him by name. Savvy coaches learned that using a referee’s first name personalized the discussion and increased the likelihood of future favorable rulings. During one game, Billy called a player for travelling – a pretty routine call in freshman basketball. The player stared down Billy in disrespectful way. As he sent a substitute into the game, the coach yelled out in a booming voice:

  “Son, this is not the NBA. In high school ball, you cannot walk without dribbling. Grab some bench!”

  After clearly embarrassing the player in front of the freshman parents and fans, he rested the indignant player for the balance of the first half. At halftime, as the referees were walking away from the gym, the team trotted by on the way to their locker room. The coach followed. As he passed Billy, he patted him on the rear and said,

  “Billy, no way was that travelling. This kid is going to be a great player, isn’t he?”

  You have to love a coach who respects officials, calls them by their first names, and even vouches for them in order to teach discipline to his team. This coach was a rare individual amongst his peers.

  After a couple seasons of exclusively working freshman basketball, Billy’s officiating objectives formed. Basketball officiating was an avocation; a hobby that he aspired to conquer. He was fearless about the location of the assignments: black, white, or brown schools. All of them, in the city or suburbs, it did not matter who was playing. Over the winter, he had a discussion with the assignment chairperson. The chairperson told Billy that he would have to do outside activities to improve his skills and competitiveness. He should: 1) attend a summertime official’s camp, 2) become an active member of an officiating association, and 3) regularly stay to watch the varsity officials work their games after his underclass assignment was finished.

  There was a wide variety of summer camps to attend. Some of them were built on a scam. Players and teams paid to play in a particular high school’s summer league with the promise of patched officials regulating the games. Referees paid to work the games for evaluations, and with practice, bad habits corrected. Therefore, the people running the camps collected from both ends, teams and officials. Nice hustle for those who could work it!

  Billy could have cared less about the money. His real estate legal work yielded plenty of income. He looked forward to personalized instruction at the camp as a way to move up to sophomore games. Most camps had a two to three hour classroom session before the league started actual games. Billy picked up good information at the meeting and he looked forward to the on-court instruction. While the camp’s flyer suggested that each cam
per would work two to four games, Billy‘s schedule included nine games. He realized that after the fifth game without any on-court reviews, he was just helping to staff the games free, not obtaining officiating training. The assignment chairperson, aka the summer camp coordinator, required Billy to participate but was nowhere around to help him improve his skills. Major Lesson 2, the basketball golden rule: the assignment chairperson holds the gold.

  Not coincidentally, after attending his first, but worthless camp, his schedule improved mysteriously with an upgrade to mostly sophomore games. Lesson 3: play ball with the assigner.

  At the further urging of the assigner, Billy joined an official’s association, which met once a week prior to the season. The most heavily attended meeting was the second. They called this the “Rules Meeting” because they went through all one hundred questions on the annual referee state test. He wondered if the state cared that so many people in association clusters were getting the same score on the test. The best part of the meetings was the open question forums where dumb questions drew harsh ridicule, and subtle rule situations analyzed. A new official posed one of Billy’s favorite questions after a discussion emphasizing the required movement of the referee along the baseline in order to get a proper angle on the play.

  “What do you do if you are trying to get in position, and one of those cute young cheerleaders isn’t yielding to let you pass by?”

  The wily veteran on the panel answered, “What you should do is ask her if her mom is single!”

  ***