My Consolation Prize

 

Talk about being terrifically unproven to riding the coattails of a successful person to make an All-Star team.

   Long, long ago, in an elementary school gymnasium not far away...
   In 4th grade, at Rushmore Avenue School in my good Long Island town, I was an All-Star basketball player.
The prestige, the accolades, the chicks I would meet, and so went this unrealized delusion.

   "Behhhh", went the scoreboard buzzer, "Melnick, get in there for Ross," so said the gym teacher and coach, Mr. Dyer.  I eagerly entered the game, not quite sure of my immediate tasks and goals, and how to make them happen.
   I was, after all, a 4th grade hoopster, or so Mr. Dyer thought.  My older brother, Steve, had gotten me into this mess entirely without his knowledge.  Steve was a senior at our town high school and a member of the varsity basketball team, which would go on to win the Nassau County boys basketball championship in March 1970, the school's only county hoops crown, to date.

   This fact didn't help me one bit.  I was a hoopster, alright, but not by my own accord.
   Just being Steve's younger brother, like other sports families in the world, didn't make me a solid hoopster.  I was 9 and had zero, as in no, game. No game.
   In later years I developed some game, my career high on the junior varsity squad was 8 points in one game. Woo hoo!  The big hoops colleges were not pursuing me.  Maybe if I pick up my grades a bit, and so goes the delusion.
   

   On the basketball court, I was possessed. Full of what was never determined, yet it was not basketball prowess.

   Back to game, I was on the court, I was in the game. Pete, the best guy on our team passed me the ball, I bounced it once and shot at the basket I was very close to. To my surprise, the ball went right in. Two points!  I was elated. This game is easy!  As I turned to the team bench and the coach for praise, the other gym teacher, also the referee, abruptly blew the whistle, stopping play.  Mr. Dyer, quite peeved, perhaps at his decision to choose me over more deserving 4th grade cagers, grabbed me by the shirt and put his face in mine. 
"Melnick, do you know how to play this game?"  He explained that I had just scored a bucket, in the wrong basket, two points, for the other team!  My response was a feeble, "Yes?"  To which, coach Dyer spat "Just sit here on the bench. Watch and learn."

   The game went on without me. Our team won the game, so as time went on, hopefully my debacle of a hoops debut would be forgotten.  It seems that I was, these many years later, the only one who remembered that day.
   With Pete being the game MVP, (I so wanted to be him, up until 10th grade when he squandered his sports abilities and burned out on drugs), I realized at 9 years old that all the other players were more valuable than I was. School was in session.
   As a reward, as a consolation prize, if you will, I received an item that I still may have in the Melnick archive.
Not a winner's trophy. Not a participant's tee shirt.  Didn’t even get a "good game" or "nice going" from the opposing coach or players. The consolation prize for this nine-year-old hoops-challenged boy was a 3-inch by 2-inch oval patch, with green lettering on a white background (our school colors). The nifty, but non-awesome iron-on patch read: "Honorable Mention."
   There would be a few more small time glories for me in this one-horse town. 

R. Melnick,
2-20-2021.