“All life is an experiment. The more
Experiments you make, the better.”
- Emerson,
R.W.
His name was Fredrick K., but everyone knew
he was ‘Freddy Freeze.’ Yes sir, as a
ball handler, none of us had ever seen anyone the likes of Freddy. In a close game with just a little time on
the clock and a narrow lead, Freddie Freeze ALWAYS took the ball!
Military
life winding down…
It was 1970 at Ft. Rucker, Alabama. The war was over for some of us and we were
spending our last year doing our military jobs before leaving the service. I was living in a trailer with my best friend
Dave, and ‘Widetrack’ the dog.
We hung around with a few fellas, but it
was late summer and I needed more than my part-time bar waiter’s job at the
Officer’s Club to keep myself busy. As
has been so often the case in my life, the unexpected happened. Even though I lived off base, an occasional
Saturday morning would find me in the gym shooting basketball.
Game
on…
One of these mornings, the Ft. Rucker post
basketball team was practicing. It was
the beginning of the season and they were working on drills. The team was a half and half mix of white
guys and African American players. I
can’t exactly recall how it happened…maybe it was a shoot around…maybe it was
they were asking around for another player or two…However it happened, I found
myself on the team. A captain was the
coach and it turned out all the white players, except me, were officers.
My first preseason game was with a local Community
College…I warmed the bench.
Interestingly, so did the black players.
We all sat and watched the officers get their clocks cleaned by a group
of local junior college players. I
thought we had a great mix of players on the squad, but it was 1970, we were in
the Deep South, and frankly, I was naïve.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t experienced racial
prejudice. In fact, once I had to buy
food for a couple of my high school teammates when we played junior varsity
basketball in Grafton, West Virginia. We
had finished an afternoon game before the varsity played, and left the gym to
grab something to eat. The small restaurant
wouldn’t serve the black guys…I bought the food and we sat outside on the curb
and ate the hotdogs. Hot dogs! Yeah, but
it was the 60s.
We played a couple more games at our home
gym before the season actually started. I
got a few minutes of play as did the black players, but on balance, the
officers played…and lost. What we didn’t
know is the post commander had come to watch, and was apparently unhappy with
the results from ‘his’ team.
Life
is change…
We practiced every afternoon at the Post
Gym for a couple of hours. After the third
loss, the complexion of the team changed with the suddenness of monsoon rains turning
a sunny sky into a downpour of unrelenting rain. That afternoon none of
the officers showed up for practice. In
fact, neither did the coach.
We started our normal shoot around to warm
up, wondering whether we had ‘…missed the memo…,’ when a short red headed first
lieutenant, with a drop-dead gorgeous woman by his side, came in the gym and
called the team together. As quickly as
the door slammed in the faces of Eva Duarte
de Perón’s rejected lovers,
the captain was gone and Lieutenant Miller became our new coach.
Miller announced, he had never played
basketball, didn’t know the game and was nervous about this assignment. So nervous, he had brought his wife along for
moral support. We were stunned by our
new coach AND his attractive wife. It
was one of those moments of cognitive dissonance – you know, our coach knew
nothing about the game (not so good), but his wife
was really attractive (not so bad)!
The commanding General felt there was a lot
of talent on the team that wasn’t being properly used, and so with the
swiftness of a dropping guillotine blade, made the change. From that day forward, we never saw our old
coach or any of the officer players again!
Then
there was Freddy…
Miller asked how many guys had played
college ball…five of the six African American players had college degrees and
had started for their respective basketball teams. Freddy Keith?
Well Freddy had played playground basketball in New York City. For the uninitiated, New York street
basketball is some of the best played anywhere on the planet…and we had an
authentic NYC play grounder on our team!
Freddy had not originally been on the team,
but was well known as the best player on base.
Unfortunately, he was also known as a significant troublemaker. Outside of the gym, he had been a real
problem, and in spite of having been in the military for almost three years, he
was still a private first class – the lowest ranking enlisted man outside of
basic training. He had been busted more
times than a professional lady working Times Square in his beloved New York
City!
The only thing that saved him from being
put in the post stockade was the ingenuity of his company commander, who out of
sheer frustration told Freddy that if he got into any more trouble, the post
gym would be off limits. A stroke of genius! Freddy coveted the game so much, the threat
of losing gym privileges put him on the straight and narrow. He had ‘…found the Lord…’ and a starting
guard position on the team.
It is hard to express the beauty of a gift that
has been worked and worked, until it becomes sharper than the scalpel of a
world class surgeon. This was Freddie’s
ability with the basketball. It was only
a game, but it was ‘his’ game. Never
before or since…in collegiate or professional play…have I ever seen someone
handle a basketball with the skill, focus, and, yes, love in the way Freddie
played the game. His only reward? To be allowed in the gym to play the game.
The
roster was filled…
We picked up another white guy, who had
played some college ball somewhere in the northern plain states…a forward with
a sweet shot and deadly accuracy from anywhere between 20 and 30 feet. That was it…eight of us – a brotherhood of young
men who loved the game, and in the end each other.
What Miller lacked in knowledge he made up
for with unrelenting enthusiasm and a humbly pragmatic mind for delegation. He knew…we knew – but no one else that he had
virtually no knowledge of the game…we NEVER spoke about it. He assigned specialist 4th class John
P. to captain the team. Miller would be
the ‘coach’ – John would design and call the plays. It was an unspoken reality that served us
well.
The mandate from the Post Commander had
been simply this – WIN! How and with
whom didn’t matter to him…a black team – a white team…he didn’t care – just
win! The only thing that seemed clear…it
would not be an officer team.
It
was meaningful…
I learned a lot of basketball in those
games with those men. I was the highest
jumper on the team thanks to the large ‘rear end’ and strong thighs my mother
had given me. I got a starting role –
not because I was white, but because I could jump and had excellent rebound
timing (gotta thank that mother). To
this day, I cherish the staring slot on that team as one of the great joys and achievements
of my life….no token place in this brotherhood – you made the grade or someone
else did.
Because we were a post team we traveled all
over the south playing other military Base and Fort teams. We also had a girls’ team that traveled with
us on the road. They actually didn’t
travel with us, but we often double-billed at home and away games. They were all African American and they loved
me! When I say they loved me, I mean I
was the starting white boy, the anomaly, and they cheered their hearts out
whenever I scored or defended well. It
was at that time in my life I learned to love women’s basketball, and the women
who play it.
I was the only guy on the team with a
military drivers license, so I chauffeured for all the away games. I actually can’t remember how many games
there were, nor how close the finishes were.
I do remember watching Freddy taking us through the final buzzer more
than once with the magic glue of finger tips from which even triple teaming
opponents could not remove the ball.
When it was all said and done, we lost only
one game that season…it was the divisional championship against Fort Campbell,
and it was close. We weren’t the biggest
(I was center at 6’5” – 1.95m), nor were we the fastest. We were a team of young men who learned to
love Lieutenant Miller for his
openness and enthusiasm…John P. for
his leadership and strategic mind designing plays that worked…each other for the selfless play of the
game…AND our secret weapon – Freddy ‘the freeze’ Keith!
I also learned a few life lessons that year
on that team. I learned that:
- Generals can do
whatever they want
- Creative
leadership can make a difference in people’s lives
- Success happens
best when it doesn’t matter who gets credit
- When people
focus on the task at hand, prejudice has little place
- Some people are so gifted you would rather ‘watch them play,’ than
play with them!
- Love may not
conquer all, but when done right, it can surely satisfy the soul
In the quiet moments as I write this piece,
and reflect on that group of nobody guys…on a nobody team…in a no place part of
the country, what a rich part of my life that was. There was no hometown loyalty, no crowds of
friends and family attending the games…there was us and the bond of the game.
We live such a short span of life, and
really only in the present moment.
Everything not in the moment is either past or yet unknown. In this moment, I have chosen to reflect on
one of the small nooks and crannies of my life…briefly replaying the feelings
toward those men, and running the tapes of the artistry of Freddie Freeze…well,
feelings of love and appreciation are a great way to start the day!
- ted
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