Chapter 7

Los Shorts de Bob Cousey

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TOCAYO
Part 1
Prologue
Playa Norte
Charly the American
A Catholic Education
Cold Showers
A Peruvian Name...
Tossing Armando...
Los Shorts de Bob...
Inside Immaculada
Warming the Bench...
A Little Socrates...
Running From Lola
Ping Pong Politics
A Perfect Basketball Day
A Man Needs His Friends
A Pig In a Hole
Condors Over Ticlio
Wrestling in the Plaza
Handcuffs and Curfews
Rochabus
A Hero Hiding
Hitting A Brick Wall
Part 2

Coach Rink, he was not conditioned. He did worry about Immaculada's record. If he were Peruvian, he would say, I rub Immaculada's record across my balls. No, Coach Rink was worried about our attitude. With good reason, as I have just explained. He delivered a pointed lecture at the end of practice. We had to believe in ourselves. We had to forget the past. It had nothing to do with the present. If we were convinced we were going to lose, we would. Simple as that.

I, of course, disagreed. Perhaps I was tired of hearing Charly complain about the floor, the balls, the players, the gyms, and the way Peruvian basketballs bounced. Maybe I was just trying to irritate him because he was starting to be a nicer person and I don't know, I thought I could afford to be myself. "Yes, Coach Phil Rink,” I said, “but if you cannot win, you are an esmarter person if you know this, and so you are a happier person, because you are not unhappy because you lost a game that you expected to win when you were always going to lose, correct?"

Practice was already over when I made that statement, but Coach Rink told me to run up and down the stairs ten times. While I ran, Coach Rink passed out the uniforms to the other players. The uniforms were beautiful, the prettiest in the league. They were made of navy blue satin with gold seams and gold numbers, and had ornamental gold belts with brass buckles. Charly, of course, did not like them. The numbers were too flashy. The shorts were too short.

"Maybe that's what the Celtics wore in 1952," he said to me while I caught my breath in the locker room, "but if I walked onto a court in New York City wearing those clothes I would have been raped."

On his way out he stopped outside of Coach Rink's office and asked for a bigger uniform. Coach Rink said that was the biggest uniform they had, but that he would see what he could do. Charly did not like what Coach said, so he decided to be mad at me. We got into the car together, but did not talk. A kilometer away from my house he started to lecture me. "A winner needs a winning attitude," he said.

"No, gringo,” I said, “the winner, he have the thinking of a winner because he wins very much games."

"Horse shit!" Charly was very angry. "You don't win a game unless you are convinced you can win it!"

I was glad he was angry. I would make him more angry. "No, ees not like you say, because you become convinc-ed that you can win only when you win too many games. Santa Rosa, we will never become convinced."

Charly dropped me off at the top of my driveway and told me I would never become a champion if I did not think like one. Closing the car door, I replied that I did not want to think like a champion, that I wanted to think like myself and hope that what I was destined to be was a champion. As expected, Charly drove off mad at me.