I run up and down the court, holding tightly to my own dreams of heroism. I run the plays my coach wants. But all I think about is how I want to see a replay of that dunk. That pass.
After the game—I did, for the record, score four points on LeBron James—my dad asks the camp director where LeBron is going to high school.
“St. V’s,” he says.
I’d gone to basketball camps at St. Vincent-St. Mary and had almost enrolled there. My dad worked in an office in downtown Akron.
“We should go watch him play,” my dad says. (And we would, for twenty-five years and counting.)
I respond—filtered through my own denial of what I’d seen, my own desire to play varsity—with what in retrospect was one of the most asinine comments in my life. “Yeah, he’s a freshman, but he’ll probably play JV.”
But the next week, after a few nights of sleep, I’m convinced. During lunch at Trinity High School, miles from downtown Cleveland, I argue with my friend, Bryan, who played with me on the JV team.
“The best you’ve ever seen?” he says, mockingly.
“The best I’ve ever seen.”
“Coming out of 8th grade?” He laughs.
“He’s already the best player in Ohio,” I insist.
Bryan laughs again. As a retort, he mentions other well-known high school players from the area. Brian Swift. Roy Hall. Tony Stockman.
“No, no, no,” I say. For the remainder of our sophomore year, I spend a lot of time trying to convince my high school friends that this kid from Akron is something different. I’m a Polish-Irish Catholic at Trinity High School and I rave about what I’d seen like someone claiming to have met the Virgin Mary.
After LeBron wins States his freshman year, I drive the twenty minutes to St. V’s, where the team is autographing posters in the Student Center. Always an avid collector, I think the signed team posters would be a great addition to my growing stock of Ohio sports memorabilia. At eight bucks apiece—the money going to the school “Spirit Store” and the athletic department—I buy four.
I drive home, up 77 North, with the posters neatly stacked in the back seat of my mom’s Dodge Neon. Another Ohio fan, looking for other ways to fill the upcoming void left from my dying basketball life. In a little over a year, three months before 9/11, I’ll join the Army National Guard for the minimum six-year enlistment.
On May 15, 1941, Joe DiMaggio cracked the first hit in what would become a still-record 56-game hit streak. When it happened, Richard Ben Cramer wrote, it “gave America what it needed: something apart from woe and war to talk about.”
Soon after the hit streak, DiMaggio, like many professional athletes at the time, enlisted in the Army Air Forces. Joltin’ Joe had easy tours in California, Hawaii, and New Jersey, but he still lost three seasons of his career. World War II was a total war, essentially involving every American civilian and every economic sector. And many other professional American athletes also served during World War II: Bob Feller, Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson.
Hugh J. Martin
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