By Bart D.
Co-Founder
Follow the author @Bart_cfn or the site @bestdamnpoll on Twitter.
Editor's Note: this was written last year, obviously, but with the reaction I got, I re-posted it.
I told myself I wasn’t going to write one of these this year. This was the end. I’m nearly 30 now, and I should be over the nostalgia of being a mediocre college basketball player. I can barely grab net anymore. Then again, I also said I’d never get married, have kids, or resort to drinking garage beer. Oh well.
Every year, it pulls me back in. Like an ex girlfriend that will never work out, but you just can’t help yourself but to take her out for the evening knowing there’s less that 0% chance it will work out any better than it did in back in college.
I was driving around a few days ago when this Taylor Swift song popped on called “Back to December.” It should bother you that I drive around getting worked up over Taylor Swift songs. It really should. That’s when I knew I was done in for this piece. Unlike her though, I won’t give you a 3 minute sob story about being unsavory to my significant other, causing a grueling break-up. .
This weekend is gripping. This month. It hits me every time, like a 70 degree day in January. It takes me back. It’s pure. It’s fleeting. It’s perfect. It’s a microcosm of the wide range of human emotions. Tonight, I saw grown men go from elated, to terrified and teary eyed, back to elated in the span of 5 minutes. I saw grown men you’d pay 50 grand not to meet in an ally reduced to tears. It’s wall to wall basketball. It’s realization that Tru TV exists, and after watching the shows they offer, there are so many reasons I wish I never knew it did.
And then I went outside to shoot around. Pittsburgh lost tonight. In gut wrenching fashion. Before I came unglued, I figured I should harken back to my teenage years, when the world was more ahead of me than now, in the rearview mirror as nothing more than stories for a few beers with your buddies. When I was broken, I grabbed my ball and went outside. And I was broken, at the moment. The way you are when a girl you like breaks up with you. For that single moment in time, the world had ended. There was a chill outside, and not a soul in view. The only sound being the thump of the ball against the pavement and the sudden “clap” of the net when the ball pushed through. I go back to March, all the time.
I’m not a Pittsburgh fan. I like the town, but hell, I have no ties to them. I don’t own a single shred of clothing that says “Pitt” on it, and odds are that I never will. Why did this, of all things, drive me to the brink of insanity, beating on the carpet, knocking on wood, dancing around the living room like a 15 year old on meth?
March. That’s why.
It’s a dream I live, over and over again, yearly. My knees age, my body tells me that I’m closer to the bitter end, but for one more year, I live it. I live the salty 5 am suicides. The bitter losses. My first basket. My last. I live the squeak of shoes on a hardwood floor. The clock Coach broke so we wouldn’t know if he was lying when he said we were only doing defensive slides for 30 minutes. I live the slow, painful peel of athletic tape off of bare ankles, taking another 2 hours of my life along with it. I live the road trips, the sweat, the tears, the friends I’d never make again if I lived 1,000 more lives. I live the per diems. The pretty girls. The losses. The wins. I live the moments I’ll never forget with the people time tells me I shouldn’t remember so well. Like my teammate Wayne, who refused to sleep at the top of beds out of superstition. Or LaMario, who fell off the hotel bed every night. Nineteen years old, and he still never learned to sleep in a bed correctly. Heck, I'm smiling as I write this. I live the cold showers after a beating, and the peaceful night’s sleep after a win. I live the late night BS'ing about being far better than we really were, and the cold reality of how wrong we were when it ended. I go back to March, all the time.
March. It makes you fans of someone you never otherwise would be. I’d have traded my car for a Pitt win that night, and in the grand scheme of things, maybe it meant 15 bucks in a few bracket pools. Maybe it meant nothing, and everything all at once. That’s what March does. It grips you. It takes you back, or helps you pretend you were ever there in the first place. Dreams erode every year in March, and are created in driveways across America that same night.
You go from having one favorite team, as we all do, to having 4-5. You live and die with a whole new fan base. You watch moments unfold that you’d never imagine you’d remember, but will most assuredly never forget. I remember sneaking behind my parents’ couch to watch Michigan-North Carolina. They thought I was asleep. I remember watching Jalen Rose and Juwan Howard’s last game against Arkansas. As the horn sounded, I ran up to my room, all of 11 years old. I got on my knees and wept into a pillow, like I’d just lost my puppy to the tires of an unforgiving semi going 50. I can’t recall ever crying so hard, though I’m sure I have.
March is special. It’s fleeting, fast, and a drug that comes through town only once a year. Whenever I think I’m insane, that I think maybe, just maybe, I embellish it too much…I pop on the tv. And Jacob Pullen is crying. And Yancy Gates is crying. And entire teams are holding hands, beating on the ground, coaches choking back tears. Fans with their hands clasped in desperate prayer. And I know in that moment, it’s not just me. I’m not insane. I’m captivated. I go back to March, all the time.
After about a half hour, I figured I’d had enough. The night was aging, and you can only hit so many 15 foot jumpers on a slanted driveway that kicks the ball into the next yard with every made shot so much. I had a chilled sweat, just enough to put me in a dream I once had but will never recapture. Time, again, rendered that portion of my life just a memory. I took one last crack, because I never walk off a court, park, driveway, or floor without making the last shot. Because you never know when it will be your finale. Tonight, I’ll get on my knees and pray. That next March, I’ll be in the same moment, a year older. Next year, I’ll be 30. For one weekend, I’ll feel like I’m 20 again. I’ll go back to March. All the time. Only if I’m lucky.