style="font-size:15px;"> I don’t want the reader to get the impression that I attended a rough high school. In my experience, the above were the only violent episodes in four years. Tuley had an excellent reputation academically all through the twenties, thirties, and forties when my aunt Harriet used to walk to school with Saul Bellow, the future Nobel Prize winner in Literature.
Athletically, I involved myself in two sports. The three dollar tennis racket that my mother purchased for me, and the Humboldt Park practice routine playing pick-up games put me in good stead, for I made the team early and became number two singles my junior year. Not all Chicago high schools had tennis teams, but the suburban teams did have teams and they were the powerhouses of tennis in the Chicago area, a reflection of the wealthy suburbs where tennis courts graced back yards and wealthy suburbanites gave their children tennis lessons. We played against tennis teams from the city and the suburbs, and as number two singles, I won every match my junior year. My number one singles teammate, Bill, and I qualified as one of four Chicago tennis doubles teams to vie for the state championship, but the suburban team we played against, Riverside, defeated us in the first round, thanks to my sloppy play. As a reward for winning all my number two matches as a junior, Coach Tortorelli promoted me to number one singles my senior year. I promptly rewarded his insight by not winning a single match. Obviously, the level of competition at the number one single’s level was a level or more above.
Basketball was the second and only other high school sport I participated in, a sport where I learned my craft at the Deborah Boy’s Club on Division Street, the low ceiling, low arch required shot where I played almost daily pick-up games and where different teams competed in various tournaments. Enough of those games and, as some told me, natural athletic talent, made it possible for me to make the senior team. By senior team, I mean the team for boys five foot eight inches or taller as there was also a junior team for boys less than five feet eight. I worked my way up the ranks, so that by the time I became a senior, I was in the running for the starting first team. I remember at the time feeling that this decision would be the most important thing that could ever happen to me, but at the same time, I had a tendency to realize that it wasn’t very important in the greater scheme of things, so I developed a philosophy of…do you really think this is so important? Would you feel like this twenty years from now when you could look back on this decision, which is bugging you so much right now? The answer is clearly no, so cool it…what happens, happens. I think this philosophical mind-set put me in good stead for other problems faced during the rest of my life.
However, the worry was for naught as Coach Tortorelli picked me for the first team as a starting guard. The other guard was George Olyszewski, center was Joe Grabowski and the two forwards were Izzy Feldman and Kenneth Adalbert. As a starting guard, my job was to get defensive rebounds, disrupt fast breaks, help bring the ball down on offense, and guard the other team’s high scorers. In this role, I did not score many baskets, but my teammates did. We won West Section and played for the City title. In the semi-final game against South Shore, I learned a lesson I will never forget.
South Shore had an All-State player named Jake Fendley. He would go on to be All- American at Northwestern University and play professional basketball. At six feet three, he was one of the taller players in the state with the agility and quickness of a cheetah. When Coach Tortorelli assigned me to guard him, telling me that we could win if I could stifle Jake, I had no idea what awaited me. It would be an awakening. In a basketball era when forty to thirty was a high scoring game, I held Fendley to…twenty-seven points in the first half whereupon Coach Tortorelli had enough of me, replacing me defensively with Joe Grabowski, six feet and seven inches, the tallest basketball player in the state, who fared no better guarding Jake and fouled out. Two examples of Fendley’s expertise served to quickly put me in my place and made me realize that there was another level of basketball greatness that very few could reach—and for sure, I was not one of those few. First, stationed on defense at the free throw line in my best defensive posture I waited as Fendley approached dribbling the basketball. While thinking that he’s not going to get by me, he suddenly disappeared from my field of vision. Where was he…I lost him, but I turned around and there he was scoring two points with a simple lay-up. I did not see him go past me on my left; I did not see him go past me on my right. The only conclusion I could think of is that he passed right through me—he had to be a ghost. I broke out in a cold sweat. The second time, I was in the same position on the free-throw line while Fendley again dribbled toward me. I crouched, bouncing on my toes, determined not to have a repeat of the first episode, only this time instead of faking me out, he leaped up in the air. What the hell is he doing, I thought, the basket is way back there. And I watched as he floated in the air toward the basket for another simple lay-up and two more points. Anti-gravity, I could only conclude. The man was superhuman. That was enough for Tortorelli and I spent the rest of the game on the bench.
But for me, it was a humbling experience, for it instantly dawned upon me that there was another level of basketball expertise that I could not reach.
Thus ended my high school career; a good four years with a fun-filled athletic experience, an inactive social life and an interesting academic experience except for English and math, two subjects I chose to deemphasize as unimportant, although I can say that geometry fascinated me. I was on my way to the University of Illinois.
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