EZ and the Intangibles

by Katz, Bob;

  This was not true. If Mrs. Jamison had discussed it with me, instead of with Mr. Freeman, I would have told her the truth. I had plenty to think about. I was okay being by myself. It didn’t bother me getting cut from the team. I didn’t need them and they didn’t need me. But Mrs. Jamison didn’t consult me. She conferred with Mr. Freeman and the two of them agreed to ask Coach Rutledge if the team could use an official statistician.

  I was good at math. I understood basketball. And I had a habit of spending too much time by myself. Win-win was how they saw it. Slam dunk.

  I could’ve said I had better things to do than helping out the team by keeping dumb statistics. Didn’t they have robots to do that sort of job? I could’ve said I was insulted by the offer. I could’ve said basketball was a sport I wanted to play, not watch others play. Or I could’ve said, sure, I’ll do it but only if I’m allowed to practice with the team. That thought occurred to me, and so did a follow-up: in practice, coach would gradually come to realize my value as a player; eventually, I would be promoted to the team; eventually, I would be sent into the game with our team trailing by one point, and the clock ticking down, and the ball in my hands at the top of the key and eventually…

  I told Mr. Freeman to tell Coach Rutledge that I’d give it a try. Maybe this would be a way for me to help the team. But I didn’t see how.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The basketball court in our school gym was slightly shorter than regulation, and narrower. Also, there was something weird about the lighting, especially on winter afternoons at the far end of the gym where natural light streamed at a low angle through the windows. But everything else about it was normal—painted white lines on the court, foldout bleachers along one wall, and a large electronic scoreboard high in the corner illuminated with orange and red numerals.

  I agreed to meet Coach Rutledge later that week, at one of the first team practices. I was curious how a man who was so successful in business had time to spare in the middle of the week to coach a school basketball team. It turned out that Coach spent a lot of time on his cell phone during practices, so maybe he was simply very good at multi-tasking. Successful business people supposedly are.

  Coach told me that I could sit on the end of the team bench while I was keeping stats. He was probably under the impression that this would appeal to me and would make me feel like I was part of the team. It did not appeal to me.

  There was only one thing that would ever allow me to feel like I was part of the team. I told him I’d rather sit in the risers, if that was okay.

  “Your call, EZ.” He followed me up to the second row. Out on the court the team was doing drills.

  Coach sat beside me and handed me a ledger covered with a black material that felt like leather. Coach opened the book and showed me where he had already mapped out on the pale-green graph paper how our statistics should be kept. Across the top of the page Coach had listed columns for each of the several categories, and running down the page on the left side he had written the names of each of the twelve players. We were no longer called the Otters. We were now called the Lynx—the Longview Lynx. Coach wanted a mascot for the team that was cunning and quick.

  Coach patiently explained what he wanted me to do and why it mattered. He believed that statistics can highlight buried truths (buried treasure sprang to mind), truths that can be used to improve an individual’s or a team’s performance.

  I won’t go into much detail because it’s not that interesting unless you really care about numbers.

  While Coach wanted me to keep track of a few standard categories like rebounds and assists—points scored were recorded by a parent who sat at the scorer’s table—this was not my primary function. “That stuff,” Coach remarked, “is like Green Eggs and Ham. Elementary.”

  Coach was most interested in what he called “unconventional categories.” These included defensive deflections (how many times we tipped or changed the direction of a pass or dribble), offensive touches in the paint (how many times each player had the ball in his hands while near the basket), “hockey assists” (the pass that precedes the pass that leads to a basket) and, finally, whether our scoring efficiency improved when passing it three or more times (as opposed to Troy keeping the ball to himself).

  I could tell Coach was proud of his reasoning and his method. “These are intangibles,” he explained, stabbing a sturdy forefinger at the column across the top of the page, “and games can be won or lost because of them. Bottom line, it gives me more information about what the players are doing out there, and it sends the players a message that they should be working at other things in addition to points, rebounds, and assists. Intangibles.”

  It made sense, but something was bothering me about this plan. To do what Coach wanted, to do this job well, I’d have to watch the game in a different way.

  Coach put his arm around my shoulder, consolingly. It was almost as though he was reading my thoughts. “That’s right, EZ. You’re going to have to watch the game differently. The game within the game is what I’m after. Think you can do that?”

  I had no idea if I even wanted to try. “Sure” is what I told him.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  We were in a conference with teams from seven other towns, playing each once in a seven game schedule followed by play-offs at the end of the season. We were undefeated for our first six games. None were very close.

  Troy was the best player in the league, and the leading scorer, but that stat was not my responsibility. I tallied my results—touches, deflections, and the rest—in the hefty black ledger, which I gave back to Coach after every game. I never knew what exactly he did with the information. Personally, I was not convinced that any of it was very useful.

  I had, however, noticed something interesting. But it was not something that Coach had asked me to keep track of. I kept this tally on a sheet separate from the ledger. It was something I kept to myself, for the time being, an off-the-books stat.

  Scoring-wise, Troy was quite productive when he had the ball in the paint and his dad screamed, “Shoot the ball!” When this happened, it resulted in a basket thirty-five percent of the time. How did I arrive at this stat? Easy. I tallied the number of times Troy got the ball in the lane, then separated that total into two groups—the times when Coach yelled at Troy to shoot, and the times when Coach said nothing. Then I took the first group and divided that number (let’s call it twenty) by the number of made baskets (say seven). Thirty-five percent. Not bad for sixth-grade kids.

  When Coach did not shout out, Troy was far more likely to pass the ball to one of the players who was wide open, particularly since Troy was usually double- or triple-teamed. On these plays, our offense performed even better, scoring over forty percent of the time.

  These numbers told an unexpected story. Even though Troy was far and away our best player and leading scorer, we scored with slightly greater efficiency when he passed the ball. Yet when Troy had the ball in the paint, he was inclined to pass the ball only when our coach, his dad, kept his mouth shut.

  The percentage difference between the two groups was small. But if you believed that numbers provided useful information that could come in handy, strategy-wise, any number was worth considering.

  My conclusion: if the game came down to one final play, our chances would improve if Coach Rutledge kept his mouth shut.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  One other statistical category that Coach wanted me to pay attention to involved the referees. Even though our record was now a perfect six wins with no losses, a team should always strive to improve. That’s what Coach told us. It’s what the sports announcers said also.

  We sometimes had two refs at a game, but more often only one. A few of the refs were high school students; some were adult men who were not always in the best physical shape. There was one man who was assigned to a lot of our games, home and away.
He had a bulging beach ball of a stomach that curved the vertical black-and-white stripes of his referee jersey into a kind of optical illusion that made his belly appear even larger. He was mostly bald, with a fringe of black hair around the sides of his head, and a nose that was red and slightly off-center. Rafael Ott told me that his breath smelled of beer, but I never got close enough to know.

  When this ref worked our games, he was usually alone. Supposedly he’d been a college ref when he was younger. Coach instructed me to keep track of how many fouls this ref called against us versus how many he called on our opponent, and chart the number of free-throws he awarded to each team. Plus, he wanted me to track how many free throws Troy shot in games officiated by this ref versus how many Troy shot, on average, in games involving other refs.

  I asked Coach exactly why he wanted me to monitor the even-handedness of this particular ref.

  “He and I go way back,” Coach snorted. I waited for further explanation, but that’s all Coach told me.

  The ref in question looked unkempt—his zebra shirt hung out of his pants and his whistle twisted over his shoulder. He seldom bothered to run the full length of the court if there was a quick reversal of the ball after a steal. But his numbers did not differ much from the other refs when it came to fouls. On average, he called twelve fouls per game on us, and ten on our opponents. The high school refs averaged fourteen calls per game on us, and eleven on the other team. The truth was, we fouled more. We were more aggressive. We were coached to play that way. That was the most likely interpretation.

  Troy actually got to shoot more free throws in games that were refereed by that ref, but only by an average of one more per game.

  I mentioned to Coach that the numbers did not appear to reveal what he thought they would. “It’s still a small sample,” he told me. “Stay with it.”

  During halftime the plump ref with the crooked nose came over to sit down directly beside me, in the second row of the risers. Maybe he’d realized that I was paying extra attention to him. It was the game against Nelsonville—an opponent who had lost only once, and our main rival.

  The man did smell of beer. Beer and toothpaste. He had a silver whistle hanging around his neck and there was a thread of spittle dangling from the end of it. He was heavily perspiring and his cheeks were pink.

  “Good game,” he commented.

  It was a good game—for us. We were up by fourteen and pulling away.

  “Two well-coached teams,” the ref continued. “You a player?”

  That caught me off guard. I mean, what did he think, with me dressed in jeans and a Cleveland Browns sweatshirt, sitting behind the bench with a thick ledger book and a pen?

  “Got cut from the team, right? And you’re helping out with the stats? Thought so.” After a moment’s pause, he added, “You might enjoy reffing. Plenty of challenges. Keeps you involved in the sport and keeps you in shape.” He playfully patted his ample belly. Then he stood, tucked the whistle between his lips, and let loose with a screeching tweet. Play ball.

  Amazingly, Nelsonville stormed back to win. It was our first loss of the season. The turning point came when Troy fouled out with two minutes remaining. He’d never fouled out of a game before. The Nelsonville player he was guarding kept backing him into the paint, closer and closer to the hoop, and Troy—with his dad hollering, “Stuff it down his throat!”—kept swatting at the ball and getting whistled.

  His fifth foul, however, was offensive. Troy tried to bulldoze past his defender and got caught pushing off with his left arm. From where I sat, it looked like a reasonable call.

  Coach slammed his clipboard on the bench and raced onto the court. Mr. Lunt, our assistant coach, sprinted out after him. The dad who was working the scorer’s table held up five fingers. Five fouls. Troy hung his head and started to shuffle off the court, but his father shouted that he should stay right where he was.

  The ref with the big striped belly put his hand to the small of Troy’s back, a kindly nudge toward the sideline.

  Coach commanded Troy not to budge another step, then walked straight up to the ref, and stood toe to toe with him. Coach was much bigger, and stronger, and angrier.

  The ref tooted his whistle again and, pointing his outstretched finger toward the bleachers, commanded Coach, “Outta here! Now!”

  Coach pulled back his arm like he might throw a punch, but instead jabbed his middle finger right in the ref’s face.

  The ref stood his ground. In a calm, measured voice, he told Coach that he was ejected from the game and had to leave the gym immediately or he’d be banned from the league for the rest of the season.

  “You just try it, big boy,” Coach threatened. But he was walking away as he said it.

  I didn’t know what statistical category any of this fit into. This didn’t seem to be about the numbers.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Normally we received a letter from Dad every two weeks. His next letter did not come for another three weeks. Usually, there was an easy flow to his handwriting, as though the words were tumbling freely from his heart. This letter had a different appearance—there was something crimped and stubbed in the slant of certain letters, particularly the k and t and y. It made me wonder if he’d damaged his hand.

  Mom had warned us that Dad was having a harder time of it lately. He’d made a friend in prison, someone who had been convicted of a similar crime, not robbery but something to do with other people’s money. Dad had recently told Mom in a phone call that this man had attempted suicide. It wasn’t the sort of thing to put in a letter—and certainly not one that would be read aloud by me to ZZ.

  This letter began like the others. “Dear ZZ, EZ, and my beloved BZ…”

  But the tone was different, and so was the content. This was not about all the good times we’d had in the past, or how we’d have them again, soon as he was free. This letter seemed more like a sermon, which was strange because Dad had never been much into religion. A couple of times we had gone to a candlelit service on Christmas Eve at the Unitarian Church, but that was about it.

  The letter began: “Be truthful. Be honest. Be faithful. Be yourself.” No amusing introduction; no clever observations; no wondering how ZZ and I were doing in school; no congratulations to Mom for her promotion—she was now manager of the out-patient clinic.

  “Play hard,” he wrote. “Play fair. Stay fair. But make no mistake. Life is not a game. Winning is not the only goal. Winning isn’t even always a victory. Do unto others exactly as you would have them do unto you.”

  ZZ interrupted. “What’s that word, ‘unto’?”

  I hated having to read these letters aloud to ZZ. I did not enjoy getting kneed and nudged and having to pause every ten seconds to explain simple things. How could a kid be such a tremendous athlete and also be so dumb? Didn’t the same brain that controls thinking also control muscles and movement and balance?

  “It means ‘to.’ Unto means the same as ‘to.’”

  “So why not just say ‘to’ then?”

  I shrugged.

  We were on the sofa. I was sitting at the opposite end, but now ZZ slid next to me. He was like a puppy that way. When he got excited or insecure, he needed physical contact to calm him down. Just my bad luck.

  “Dad’s really smart, isn’t he, EZ?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sometimes too smart. That’s what Mom says.”

  “I guess.”

  I resumed reading the letter. “‘May your hands always be busy. May your feet always be swift. May you have a strong foundation when the winds of change shift.’”

  “That rhymes!”

  “He put it in quotes.”

  “So?”

  “I think that means someone else wrote it.”

  “Another prisoner?”

  “Enough already with the questions!” I turned the l
etter over. There was more writing on the reverse side. “May you grow up to be righteous . . .”

  “BORING,” ZZ squawked in his whiniest, most obnoxious voice. “This is boring.”

  At long last, the magic words!

  I’d wanted to stop. He wanted me to stop. A dream come true. I folded Dad’s letter and inserted it back into its envelope. Our book session could now begin. Marvin Redpost for ZZ, Treasure Island for me.

  “I’m tired.” ZZ yawned, flagrantly patting his mouth in case I missed the point. “Read to me.”

  “You are old enough to read your book yourself.”

  “Read me your book.”

  I opened Treasure Island and shoved it right into his face. I was angry. “I’m on page 162. You don’t have any idea what’s going on with the story. Read your own book.”

  “Mom said I can come to the championship game on Saturday and help you do statistics.”

  “She did not.”

  “Well, can I?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t know how to help.”

  Now ZZ was angry. “Who cares about dumb statistics? You only do it because you’re no good at playing.”

  “You’re absolutely right, ZZ. As always. Now please let me read!”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Sixth-grade basketball play-offs could be compared to the famous March Madness college basketball tournament—except we only had eight teams competing. And the entire tournament was packed into one weekend instead of an entire month. And the weekend was in February, not March.

  The location of the tournament rotated among the various towns that participated. This year it was held at the Longview High gym, out by the industrial park. Coach Rutledge wanted me to be there. Why, I wasn’t exactly sure.