“Hail the conquering heroes”. Hitler committing hari kari, his dream in flames, in his Berlin Bunker, his mistress Eva Braun’s body nearby, Tojo, Emperor Hirohito’s favorite unconditionally surrendering to General MacArthur.
II
Sammy Match was ensconced in his La Cienega tennis court cubicle. Giving lessons and selling
racquets, coaching Ben Hur’s Charlton Heston in fierce workouts. The Beverly Hills onlookers. Actors themselves like “Boston Blackie ‘s” Kent Taylor.Alan Joslyn playing chess with Allan Mowbary.
III
Arnold “Red” Auerbach out of Brooklyn’s basketball fast break&team play, morphed his competitive adrenalin juices. Drafting Bill Russel and his alter ego K.C. Jones out of San Francisco State.
Coach Auerbach chose Holy Cross’s Bob Cousy as his play maker and point guard, USC’s pure shooter Bill Sharman, another Hall of Famer in futuro (a coach, to too) out of USC;s Trojan nylon nets. His teammates Alex Hannum and Tex Winter, the assistant coach to the chicago Bulls Phil Jackson, the originasl thinker behind their triangle offense, Brooklyn born Michael Jordan and his alter ego Scottie Pippen out of Arkansas making it their carpet to the Hall of Fame. John Paxton and Steve Kerr feeling it from down town.
A 7 footer like Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing,v drafted by the Knicks, anchored the Bulls, giving North Carolina’s Micyhael and “Scotty” their “swish” into the Hall.
A former Yugoslavian morphed as a Serbian Tony Kubek came ofdf the bench, rounding out their championship “fives” .And for capturing defensive rebounds and making the outlet pass one of the twins in the NBA.
A prelude to Jeremy Linnsanity some three our four decades later.
IV
Bill Sharman, an Auerbach protégé, later starred for the Lakers, playing alonside Wilt, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Gail Goodrich, Happy Hairston.
Ed Pauley, the oilman and football player from Ucla, his Pauley Pavilion, nurturing his legacy
into the John Wooden immortality.
X
Within the passing of our time, President Truman’s unleashiung the nurcleur energy over Nakasaki and Hiroshima, decades before Steve Jobs of Apple and Microsoft’s Bill Gates,mushrooming their dreams into the morphing of the corporate world into the computer unmiverse.
V
Branch Rickey of the St Louis Cardinals gashouse gang becoming the Brooklyn dodgers general manager broke the color line by engineering the former Pasadena City College and four star athlete from Ucla, Jackie Robinson
Where else at their offices at Montaque and Court Street in downtown Brooklyn.
His hand and eye coordination had come a long way since his grandfather was a sharecropper. Listening to Don Barksdale spinning Ella Fitzgerald Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday recordsat Don arksdale shop on South Western Avenue in L.A.
VI
The human gamble morphing into the billion dollar lottery. The March Madness
survival of the fittest into the sweet sixteen, the final four, and the and their runn and gun of Red Auerbach’s “cigar like enchilada”
Kentucky and Louisville. Ohio State and Kansas .
VIII
The cigar smoke has transcended the six million, their trashing in the Fuhrer’s concentration camps and Warsaw ghettos.
To navigate the Obama health insurance in face of the planet’s avalanch of diseases. Not only the crippling alzheimer’s molecular genesis, the genome basis of neurological infamys, the cancersa curtailing grwoth and development, one of the Justices asking whether ore not we should be obliged to eat brocoli.
Why ll the sound&fury? Porque?
Did the founding fathers make it mandatory To eat brocoli. Does the pursuit of happiness incorporate brocoli?
And if the brocoli Constiutional barrasters persuade and convince the nine justices of the Obama health insurance merits, where does one draw the line.
In our day it was spinach. Will that be next?
Caulifower? Junk food?
VIII
The scyphus boulders shouldered by Prometheus stand in the way of the Arnold “Red” Auerbach free wheeling fastr break and teram work.
Basketball has come a long way in 6 decades,hasn’t it. But the society and its liberating forces are still caught in the recycling limbo.
The nation has evolved since the Democratic party ignored Adlai Stevesnon for John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, LBJ, Jimmy Carter, “Dutch” or the “Gipper” the Busck father and son Bill Clinton.
IX
Where are the Steve Martins, and Spielbers out of Long Beach, Ca’s junior high sachools> Brining their level headed ness and humor to the hellzappin republic..
X
Arnold “Red” Auerbach lighting up his “enchilada” after another a “w” John Havelchic coming off the bench,stealing the basll, the fans eupting like it was the end of World War2. , the players celebrating on those great Boston Garden floors.
Will the fans be remembered for makingbroccoli the vegetable part of their longevity diets or will they falls back into their eating habits.
Or will he learn to love broccoli, brother.
The city that never sleeps,March 30, 2012
