All my life I have successfully avoided the trappings of modern jock-dom. Never driven to win, I've lacked the confidence, skill, and brute machismo necessary to be competitive. Shunning team sports became my credo.
But my one chance at glory—in my mind, at least—was with basketball. All through my teens, I'd shoot baskets, solo, by floodlight and re enact the Reagan-era, white-guy Celtics moves I'd memorized from TV. I'd train for countless fantasy games that took place partly in my neighbor's driveway, but mostly in my head.
Aside from an occasional pick-up game, I only played me-versus-me. I didn't ever play in a real basketball game.
Yet my father's constant refrain, "You really should have tried out for basketball," still haunts me. Perhaps remorseful for missing huge chunks of my day-to-day adolescence, my dad has since changed his line to, "I wish I had pushed you harder to try out." Remembering I used to have a decent outside shot, I began to feel the twin tugs of negligence and regret.
Last winter, at age 39, I finally decided to shoo away those ghosts. I dusted off my hoop dreams and hooked up with a local organization called "Never Too Late." The organization's "basketball workout programs" in Cambridge, Somerville and Jamaica Plain are designed to give over-the-hill players the chance to shine on the court, either to reclaim their old luster or for the first time. At the end of three months of building skills and scrimmaging dangled the promise of real basketball—a tournament with whistles, buzzers, foul shots, and refs running circles around two wheezing teams.
By the first practice session at Matignon High near Boston, it became painfully obvious the patina on my game had turned to rust.
In the 1980s, it had been simple to find my spot on the driveway asphalt over by the blooming tiger lilies, to take all the time in the world, spin and toss up a sublime fade-away jumper that tasted nothing but net. But in 2006, trying to make that jump shot with five players on the opposing team waving their fingers in my face and jabbing my midsection with their pointy elbows—and with four players on my team waving their fingers in my face and jabbing my midsection with their pointy elbows—was another story. Not to mention I couldn't look up while I dribbled. My rhythm, my spot, and my moment—if I ever had them—were gone.
With Never Too Late, I discovered it doesn't matter how sleep-deprived your opponent appears to be. Nor how kindly: those tie-dyed, earthy-crunchy types check their "Give Peace a Chance" philosophies at the locker room door, and a swat with a sweaty ponytail makes for an intimidating defensive weapon. Many a paunch hides greatness.
In practice scrimmages, I found myself a remedial student, learning the basic points of a tactical ballet long mysterious to me. My limbs did not respond to direction. The coach used me as a pedagogical eightball: "Listen up: Don't do what he's doing," he'd say, before exiling me to practice left-handed layups at the other end of the gym.
Fortunately, I've largely outgrown the fear of peer humiliation that would have been paralyzing as a high schooler. Despite my errors—air ball, overshot pass, "travel!"—I told myself I could take the punishment. As I wrestled one of my teammates for the ball, simultaneously giving myself a nosebleed, I gladly absorbed shouts of "Same team! Same team!" ( and "Idiot!" added later, under someone's breath). I didn't mind embarrassing myself so much as embarrassing my fellow players, most of whom know how to take the ball up the court without taking out the ref.
After a few weeks, while I had improved a modicum or two, I was making no great strides. I had admitted "my bad" too many times. I knew this clunky body couldn't handle further debasement on the court. My attendance at the weekly practice sessions became more spotty. Then I stopped going. I never did master the lefty layup.
Yet during my last scrimmage this winter, I played one game well. I made a handful of shots, I pulled down a few rebounds, and I dribbled the ball up court without tripping. Compared to other players, I was merely passable. For me, for that one night, I was exquisite. I had found my spot.
Because of a gymnasium scheduling mix-up, the tournament—my first test with real uniforms, real points and real pressure—was postponed, and I never played. I wasn't disappointed. I had been looking forward to playing in an actual game, but I was also praying to get injured in a snow shoveling mishap a few hours before suit-up time.
Maybe I am a quitter. Or, having retired at the top of my game, I'm brilliant. Either way, at least I'm safe from my glory days.
Ethan Gilsdorf contributes regularly to The Boston Globe, The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, and The Christian Science Monitor. He has also written for Psychology Today, Fodor's travel guides, and The Washington Post.
