In these troubled times, we can use a little light entertainment once in a while, right? So here’s my attempt at a little comic relief.
My son plays small-school college basketball and recently played in an old arena in Albany, NY, known as the Washington Avenue Armory.
I asked him what it felt like playing on this old local icon of a floor. He said it was cool playing there after going there as a little kid with his friends to watch old Albany Patroons games.
“But it’s depressing because it’s getting really run down,” he said. “It smelled like $hit in there.”
I can still see the outside of that locker room, in the basement of the Armory, brick walls painted some bland, institutional light brown, plumbing and heating pipes running along the ceilings.
I had my one night as a professional sports writer in that arena, outside that locker room, back in the early months of 1990.
One night in January or February of 1990, a local paper I wrote for, the Troy Record, assigned me to cover an Albany Patroons game when the regular reporter got sick or something.
It was a Saturday night. I was like 23, about my son’s age, living with his Nana and Papa.
Shit was rough back then. I was making $32 a story, $37 if I made the front page.
No internet, no swiping left or right, nothing.
Living with my parents with no money, no car, if I had to cover something out of town I had to borrow one of their cars.
I felt like a Big Loser.
When I got the Patroons game that night I was pumped up, they were a big deal around here at the time, they’d won a couple of titles. They’d fill the 4,200 or so seats in the Armory most nights and they’d lead the local TV sportscasts and be on the front page of the local sports sections.
I remember going down to the Troy Record office before the game to pick up the press pass. Had my best jeans on and a nice shirt and a sweet pair of British Knights.
Yeah, Google that, British Knights. They’re still around but they they ain’t what they used to be. For a minute there in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s they were the shit. Seriously. Ever hear the phrase “the shoe ain’t nothin’ without the BK button?” True story.
Anyway, I remember parking somewhere over just off Lark Street, and then walking up toward the Armory, with a big crowd milling around outside, yeah baby, a Saturday night and I had something to do, feeling good, just about jumping out of my skin and out of those BKs.
Had my Troy Record note pads and some sort of 1989 laptop, not really a laptop as we know them today, but it had a full keyboard and a little display where you could see two or three lines of the text you’d typed. I flashed that press pass at the gate, walked on through past the rest of the crowd waiting to get in, feeling like a million bucks. Took my seat at the press table next to the other guys from the local papers. I knew who they were. Felt like a big shot. Like one of them.
I had never covered a sporting event before, but I figured, how hard could it be? This was the minor leagues, after all, the Continental Basketball Association. I watched sports all the time, and by that point in my life I had been playing ball almost seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year, for six or seven years. I could hold my own on some pretty decent playgrounds.
I got set up, looked around, all or almost all of those 4,200 or so seats filled, music pumping. The heart of Saturday night in small-time America.
The game started. I knew almost instantly I was lost. I quickly learned the almost immeasurable difference between high school stars or college Division 2 or 3 guys on the local playground and guys a half-step or less behind the NBA. And the difference between watching a Division 1 game from the stands, or watching my beloved Knicks against whoever on TV.
These guys were insanely fast. All of them. Even the relatively slow big guys. I’d never seen this level of athleticism that close up.
I followed along as best I could, taking notes as fast as my hands could jot them down, missing plays here and there, but gradually getting the hang of the game. At halftime someone came down press row handing out a sheet of paper with some first-half stats and I didn’t even glance at them. I knew that I’d be lucky to cough up the most basic game narrative suitable for a morning newspaper.
Things slowed down a bit in the second half. The Patroons edged ahead and then their opponents, something like the Quad City Thunder maybe, began fouling, and the game turned into a slog of free throws. I began to develop a lede in my head off of this, something about the Pats continuing their march to another division title on the strength of their free throw shooting. Or something like that.
The game ended with a Patroons win. I wasn’t sure what to do next, so I followed one of the local writers who seemed to know what he was doing, Tim Wilkin from the Albany Times Union, down toward what I presumed was the team locker room. The crowd emptied out and the arena atmosphere went from boisterous to eerily quiet within a matter of a few minutes.
I stood outside the locker room trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, just a baby-faced kid trying to get by. Twenty three and I still had years of getting proofed for ID at bars ahead of me at that point.
The Patroons coach, George Karl, came out, holding a large plastic cup of beer, and headed over towards Wilkin. By this time in his life Karl had played major college basketball with North Carolina, had played in the ABA and then the NBA, had coached in the CBA, and then had landed and lost head coaching jobs with the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors in the NBA before washing up in the CBA with the Patroons.
He nodded at Wilkin, who then asked him a few questions.
I started writing down Karl’s answers in my notepad, feeling a little like I had cheated on a test.
I drew a breath, readying myself to ask him a question about how well his guys shot from the line, and as I did, I looked up and saw Karl, noticing me about to ask a question before I noticed it myself, shooting me a look with these piercing blue eyes that veritably screamed, who the fuck let this little fucking kid take a seat at the adult’s table tonight?
I looked down and Wilkin asked him another question or two and then we went back up to the press table to bang out our stories for our papers.
Well, Wilkin banged out his.
He was a pro.
I was an amateur.
I didn’t even know how to type back then; this was before we all used keyboards 24/7. It would take me a while to type things up back then. I had an 11:00 deadline, I think it was, and sometime around 10:45, with the arena empty now, no music, no people, a lot of the lights out, an industrial fan whining in the background and some grounds crew folks sweeping floors and picking up hot dog wrappers and empty drink cups.
I pecked at the keyboard trying to get something down to the paper in time.
Wilkin threw his laptop, or whatever we had back then, into a should bag, put his coat on, and headed out.
“Good luck, man,” he said.
“Thanks,” I replied.
I sat alone at the press table for another half hour or so, finally finished my game story, and then got the laptop modem hooked up to a phone line and sent the story in, hoping it made it in time. Then I packed up my stuff and left.
I knew I’d failed.
And the failure was confirmed when I got up in the morning and went down to the local mini-mart to pick up the Sunday paper. Went straight to the sports section, saw my story hadn’t made it.
And that was it.
I wrote for the Record for another year or so, before venturing on to grad school. I covered local school boards and city councils and that sort of thing, and doing a decent job of it.
But I never got asked back by the sports section.
They knew I couldn’t cut it, and I knew it, too.
