SPORTS NOTES was presented with a terrible dilemma on a recent Saturday night, for the first time ever he had been invited to a “sweat.” A “sweat” is an ancient Boonville hippy ceremony wherein all the hippies sit around naked in a very hot structure and howl. I’d never been asked to attend one of these things. And I wasn’t at all certain what the invitation meant. Was I to be at long last inducted into the exclusive Anderson Valley circle of hippies? Or did the invitation simply mean the hippies wanted someone with a strong interest in primitive anthropology to record for posterity the more complicated of their “sweat” rituals?
JERRY TOLMAN’S Sonoma State basketball team was in action the same night against my alma mater, Cal Poly of San Luis Obispo. Cal Poly is a scholarship school, Sonoma State is not. A scholarship school is one that basically pays athletes to enroll and play ball. Such schools have enormous advantages over non-scholarship schools, obviously.
WHAT SHOULD SPORTS NOTES DO? Get naked, sweat and howl with the hips or drive down to Rohnert Park to watch Tolman and Company? Which is more ghastly, a naked fifty-year-old hippy or Rohnert Part? From a strictly aesthetic perspective, neither horror would seem to have the edge. Sports Notes finally concluded, “Hell, you’ve seen one naked hippy, you’ve seen them all. I’m going to the basketball game.”
NOW SPORTS NOTES needed a traveling companion. He ran down the list of his friends and when he got to the third and final name on the roster, Norm Clow, he rang Norm five or six times during the Saturday. It finally occurred to him, “My god, Norm is at the “sweat.” Of course. If the hippies had invited me they probably went whole hog and invited Northern California’s archtypal non-hippy, Norm Clow. Maybe every non-hippy in Anderson Valley was jammed into the “sweat” hut, howling and chanting in one appalling nude stew: Ken Jones, Gene Herr, Smokey Blattner, Deputy Squires, The Manchester Road Freedom Fighters; Clarence Furtado! What a story that would be! And an award-winning photograph.
IT MUST HAVE BEEN quite a spectacle and I’d have given anything to see it, but I wouldn’t give up a basketball game for anything. The trip to Rohnert Park was worth it. The pride of Boonville, Jerry Tolman, played well in a game that was interesting and exciting. Sonoma State was down as much as twenty points, but kept coming back, until finally sending the game into over-time. Cal Poly was stunned. The scholarship jocks looked like they had been hit between the eyes with a baseball bat. They expected to romp over Sonoma State. Cal Poly had some very big guys, too, 6’9” and 6’10”. Sonoma State’s biggest guy is 6’4”. Sports Notes prediction: Sonoma State is slated to finish last in their league, but they’ll do much better than that. They are a well-coached, scrappy, hustling team and a real pleasure to watch.
OVERHEARD coming out of a certain basketball huddle from the coach: “This is better than getting laid, boys. We got these bastards into overtime.”
ONLY IN UKIAH: The Ukiah Lions, a Pop Warner football team, has retired a twelve-year-old’s jersey. That kind of adulation has got to be bad for a kid. Think of the pressure on him now. He’s got to be a great high school player or people will say he peaked at age twelve. If he decides he doesn’t want to play football anymore, can you imagine the flak he would take? Retiring the jersey of an elementary school kid is ridiculous. But then Ukiah is ridiculous. Anything is possible over there.
“… but I wouldn’t give up a basketball game for anything.”
It’s Friday night and I’m lyin around
watchin “Two for the Road”
I remember it being completely different
the first time it showed
And you call up, wanna know where I’m at
Well, obviously, here
And then you come by in 10 seconds flat
after all these years
Honey, if that really is your name
It was pure pleasure that you came
and I’d love to stay and have coffee with you
but it’s time for my Saturday game
You asked how I remember you
I told you straight away
The way you dressed, your pointed breasts
the twilight in LA
The prism-colored triangles
That we’d been two sides of
The candle melted we both felt it
getting late for love
Oh Honey, if that really is your name
Thank you for the pleasure with no blame
and I’d really love to have coffee with you
but it’s time for my Saturday game
1976 (approximately)
Did you happen to catch San Antonio vs OKC last night? It was the start of a rivalry that will go on for years. Wembenyama’s first game back from an injury. He didn’t play the first quarter and the Spurs were down by like 13. Then the big man came in and things changed. In the end the Spurs won. The highlight of highlights came in the tense fourth quarter. Wembenyama (7’4″) was holding the ball low. .Jaylen Williams (6′ 7″) poked it away from him with an upward motion so that it came up over his own head. As he was turned to grab it, Wembenyama extended his arm like Plastic Man and took it back. All this happened in the space of a second… OKC’s Chet Holmgren (7′ 1″) is very good, but Wembenyama is very great… OKC’s other center, Hartenstein, has an image of God (the WM version) on his elbow. So does one of San Antonio’s young guards whose names rhyme (Vassel and Castle).
Somebody could make a funny short, silent film of players protesting foul calls, expressing incredulity… Maybe splice in the actual fouls. Alex Caruso looks like a choir boy after bashing an opponent’s wrist so hard you could almost hear it.