FIVE SECONDS ON THE CLOCK

FIVE SECONDS ON THE CLOCK

Two months into football season, the coach at Woodlawn High School pulled Henry off to the side and told him to forget about football.He said boys with delicate bone structures weren’t safe on the field with so many stronger, tougher players. “Bones, you’re just not a football player.”

Henry had been stuck with the nickname,"Bones," since childhood because he towered over the other kids and was skinny as a rail. Henry was also somewhat clumsey...his feet had an unfortunate habit of getting in the way of the rest of his body.

Dismissal from the team had a sobering effect on Henry. Normally an exuberant, full-of-fun adolescent, Henry began to brood. Alone in his room, his thoughts would turn to the day he was made to turn in his uniform. His face would burn with shame at the humiliation of it all and his eyes would well with tears.

Henry became a recluse. Neighborhood buddies would knock on Henry’s door after school, “Hey Bones, want to come out and throw the baseball around some?”

“Naw, got to study.”

Henry stayed indoors until the pain of his disappointment began to ebb. In the solitude of his little bedroom, he did some deep thinking. “Hey, look” he told himself. “I love to play ball, any kind of ball. Now all I got to do is figure out what kind of ball the coach will let me play.”

A revelation came to him the following day while shooting hoops in the back yard with his buddies. He thought, maybe I’ll give basketball a try. Heck, I could probably even make the B-Team. His old confidence was returning. It was common knowledge that awkwardness was not such a curse in basketball, especially if you played center. All you had to do was jump high – he could do that – and stand beneath the net waiting to grab a ball bouncing off the backboard.

Henry showed up at the B-Team’s first practice in the old, stained Converse sneakers he’d worn during baseball season. But he wasn’t particularly nervous because Stretch, his only friend on the B-Team, said, “Bones, your thirty-seven inch arms will be an asset to the team. You’re a cinch to make the team.” Henry’s only concern was the dribbling part of the game. When Henry tried to dribble, the ball hit his shoes as often as the floor.

After watching Henry stumble around on the hardwood a few times, the coach said, “Bones, I’m going to let you play. But you got to promise me that you won’t dribble, shoot or handle the ball. We’ll let the more skilled players do that. All you got to do is jump and rebound.”

Under his breath, Henry muttered, “What kind of crummy deal is that?” But, being determined as well as a good sport, Henry didn't become discouraged. He practiced hard, stuck with it and was finally rewarded with a uniform.But the uniform he received wasn't what he expected.

Because of a shortage XX-longs, the coach dug around in the clothes barrel and pulled out one which was a throwback to the 1930s. The shirt was 100-percent pure wool, probably because the gyms back then didn't have heat. It itched like the very devil and looked like a hairy old undershirt with a big number 6 on the back. That’s all, just a big old number 6.

The britches to the uniform were a joke too, probably worn years ago by somebody’s grandfather. And, like the shirt, they itched. The coach didn’t even give Henry a warm-up jersey.

The week before the first game, Henry was doing some tall bragging. With thumbs hooked through his belt loops, he said to his friends, “Yep, gonna play in the big game Friday night. If you want to see something good, you better come on out and watch me, hear?”

The B-team boys usually played before the Varsity game, normally in the early evening when the gym was quiet and virtually empty. But on this cold January night, the gym wasn’t empty. All Henry’s neighborhood buddies were lounging around in the stands, drinking cokes, popping Dixie cups with their boots and waiting to see Henry play.

When the game began, Henry wasn't in the starting lineup. And he hadn’t even played late into the fourth quarter. “We want Bones, we want Bones,” came the chant from the sparsely-occupied stands. Hard-down disappointment set in as Henry slouched lower and lower on the bench, trying to block out the affectionate but taunting gibes of his friends.

With two minutes left in the game, the team had a big lead and the coach figured he had nothing to lose by putting in the shock troops. The entire starting lineup was replaced by a group of ill-attired substitutes resembling denizens of a soup kitchen. Henry was among them.

Up and down the court the shock troops ran. Henry wheezing and itching, running first this way and then the other, mind totally disengaged, not even looking at who had the ball. It was Henry’s first experience with that droning noise you hear somewhere in the brain when the embarrassment is so great you want just to disappear. At the periphery of his consciousness he could hear his friends hooting and chanting, "Bones, Bones, Bones."

Amidst all the commotion, Henry got fouled. It certainly wasn't a shooting foul because Henry was not allowed to shoot. His friends later speculated that some equally uncoordinated player from the other team ran into Henry while he stood bewildered beneath the basket.

There were five seconds left on the clock; long lines of people were filing into the gym for the Varsity game while Henry’s friends were creating a major disturbance. Henry was itching in places he couldn’t scratch and waiting at the foul line to shoot his free throw.

The drone in Henry’s brain was getting louder and even his sight was becoming impaired. It was like trying to see the basket through a fog bank. He closed one eye, aimed and with no confidence whatsoever threw the ball in the general direction of the goal. The ball hit the backboard like a brick, rolled twice around the rim and then, sweet as mother’s love, slid through the net.

Lord, he’d scored a basket! In jubilation, Henry thrust his hands heavenward. His euphoria was interrupted by the referee’s whistle. The ref was pointing at Henry’s foot and waving off the basket. Henry looked down in amazement and saw that he was standing a good 12 inches in front of the foul line.