The Story Behind the Story of Summer Hope

For today's newspaper column, I talked about sports ... at least at first. I masterfully pivoted the conclusion of ESPN's "The Last Dance" documentary about the Chicago Bulls into a column about summer hope. You'll have to read it for yourself to see how I did it.

But now, I'm going to pivot back to sports because I considered writing about basketball for the whole column. The Chicago Bulls were pretty much all I cared about in the '90s. We'd get the TV Guide in the mail (remember TV Guide? and mail?) and I'd flip to the condensed weekly sports listings and highlight all the Bulls games so I wouldn't miss any of them. (Thank goodness for WGN.) And if any of them went past my bedtime (which was most of them), I'd be sure there was a tape in the VCR (it's like DVR for all you young whippersnappers) so I could watch the end of the game the next day.

I didn't just watch a lot of basketball, I played a lot of basketball, too. I started out on the hoop next to the Mustang garage. It had no backboard, no net and it felt like it was 15 feet tall. But I shot on it until we got a hoop on our garage, because it's what I had. Not only did the new one have a backboard, it had a whole garage behind it (so I always hit something). I just had to make sure I raised the garage door one row of panels so I wouldn't break any windows. The dribbling wasn't easy (see: dirt driveway), but I had as much room as I needed. I could even shoot from behind the dumpster or hollyhocks for increased difficulty.

Basketball was the sport I played the most as a kid, because all I needed was a ball. I didn't need anyone else to shoot hoops. It wasn't my best sport, though. Playing soccer as a youngster I averaged about 4 goals a game (no that's not an exaggeration), and I was an All-State baseball player in high school (it turns out I have the body of a catcher). But it was nice to relive the Bulls' glory days, and think about all that time I spent outdoors playing basketball. It was simpler times – before responsibility and stress and the coronavirus.

There was hope, and you still had your whole life to grow up and be whatever you wanted to be. Like Michael Jordan, or a journalist who writes about basketball to prove a point about summer. So I'll stop writing now, so you can see how I did it.