The Shot

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Wayne Gretzky

Bryce and Homer Drew after "The Shot"

With the NCAA tournament in progress, it was inevitable that “The Shot” twenty years ago by VU’s Bryce Drew would come up.  I watched at Dave’s house on Lake Shore Drive in Miller the day before he and Angie got married.  A March blizzard had blanketed the area with snow and left our Maple Place house without electricity all week.  Seeded number 13 against Ole Miss, Valparaiso was down 69-67 with 2.5 seconds to go when Jaime Sykes in-bounded the ball to Bill Jenkins, who tapped it over to Drew, whose desperation shot from 23 feet went in for a 70-69 upset.  Coached by Bryce’s father Homer Drew, the Crusaders went on to win the next game before losing in the Sweet Sixteen to Rhode Island. 

Sports historians have ranked Drew’s last-second shot one of the five best in NCAA tournament history, along with heroics by Cristian Laettner (Duke 1992), Kris Jenkins (Villanova 2016), Lorenzo Charles (North Carolina State 1983) and Michael Jordan (North Carolina 1982),  In Chicago “The Shot” refers to Jordan’s bucket against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the deciding game of the 1989 Eastern Conference finals or, for hockey fans, Jonathan Kane’s 2010 Stanley Cup winning goal against the Flyers that went in and out so fast it had to be confirmed on replay.

 Clayton Custer and Sister Jean

Over the weekend quite a few miracle shots occurred, including one that put Michigan in the Sweet Sixteen and two enabling Loyola to register upsets against no.6 seeded Miami and no. 3 Tennessee.  The first was a desperation 3-pointer as time expired; the second, an off-balance jumper by Clayton Custer, hit the front of the rim, ricocheted off the backboard, rolled around, and appeared to be coming out before swishing through the net.  In attendance was 98-year-old Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, who has become a media star.  In 1961 she began teaching at Mundelein College, which merged with Loyola, and has been team chaplain for a quarter-century.  The Ramblers had not been to the “Big Dance” since 1985.  In 1963 Loyola upset two-time champion Cincinnati in overtime with an unprecedented four African-American starters.  In 2013 President Obama invited those still alive to the White House.

For the first time ever, a number 1 seed, Virginia, lost their opening round, not on a miracle shot but by an unbelievable 20 points to obscure University of Maryland, Baltimore County.  For me, the biggest disappointment was a four-point Bucknell loss to Michigan State.  Bison star, Zach Thomas, who had scored 27 points, was assessed a technical with six and a half minutes remaining that caused him to foul out of the game.  On several consecutive plays Spartans had mugged the Bucknell center Nana Foulland without fouls being called.  Backpedaling after one such no-call, Thomas said, “What are you watching?”  Most referees would have ignored the remark because Thomas hadn’t been demonstrative nor used foul language.  I doubt a Michigan State player would have gotten the same treatment.  In fact, MSU Coach Tom Izzo acts much worse with impunity dozens of times each game.

On St. Patrick’s Day I wore a green shirt to Abuelo’s Mexican restaurant on bridge night and finished first at Connie and Brian’s helped by Toni making a small slam as my partner.  For years when my mother lived in Bradenton, we’d be in Florida this time of year and go to a great beachfront seafood restaurant.  One year I ordered their St. Paddy Day special and regretted it.  I’m Scots-Irish on my father’s side, while Brian Barnes’ Irish ancestors include a Molly Maguire and a mine union organizer in Iowa. He and Connie, raised Protestant, were teen sweethearts, but parental disapproval and separation during college caused them to drift apart until their fortieth high school reunion.

 Aaron, Tom, Jimbo and Jef playing Railways Through Time

Evan Davis and Anna; photos by Chuck Halberstadt

Evan and Aaron Davis made the trip from Fort Wayne for Jef Halberstadt’s four-day Game Weekend.  On Sunday I played an expansion version of Railways of the World called Railways Through Time.  Railroad lines can go from one dimension to another, ranging from the Stone Age to the future, where cities are named after the likes of Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, and Kurt Vonnegut.  I got off to a good start against Tom Wade (the winner), Jef, and Aaron, but my inexperience at constructing long lines and upgrading trains caused me to fade. Nearby, Evan and Chuck Halberstadt were playing Terraforming Mars with two-year-old Anna looking on.  On the food table was a tray of Sue Halberstadt’s delicious brownies with Kelly green icing.

 Sandpipers at Cracker Barrel; Becca second from left

When I told Chuck about Becca’s Chesterton show choir, Sandpipers, being named Grand Champions at the Watseka invitational and thus qualifying for nationals, he mentioned that he was in Chesterton marching band, which was invited to play at the Orange Bowl.  Members needed to raise $500 for the trip, similar to Sandpipers.

In “Stormy Weather” Ray Smock put Trump’s decade-old tryst with porn star Stormy Daniels in historical perspective:

      One part of me says I really don’t care who Donald Trump had sex with in the past or in the present. I believe that even public officials should have the benefit of a private life. Another part of me says the Stormy Daniels case has a lot more to it than just extra-marital sex.

      The press and the public did not start prying into the sex lives of current and former presidents or of presidential candidates until the perfect storm that became the Gary Hart saga in 1987. Hart was emerging as a John Kennedy-like candidate, young, talented, and handsome. But his political world came crashing down when the press went after his private life.  Hart was having an affair with a beautiful young woman named Donna Rice and among their shenanigans was sailing on a yacht named Monkey Business. You could not make this stuff up. It was too good for the tabloids to pass it up.

      Perhaps only Jimmy Carter, Harry Truman, Barack Obama, and one or two others may be free of some extra-marital affairs among recent presidents. I claim no particular expertise or insights into the private affairs of public officials. It is fairly well documented that Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy all had such affairs. But while rumors occasionally circulated, the press, the old-fashioned print press, the radio, and the early network TV press usually left this sort of thing alone. A lot of reporters knew about these affairs, but they did not write about them.

      The careers of Hollywood moguls, TV moguls, members of Congress, and other prominent American celebrities have been ended abruptly in recent months. How is the case of the President of the United States any different? Why should he keep his job while so many others have lost theirs? Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution and nowhere in American law does it say that just because your name is Trump and just because you were elected President of the United States, that you are entitled to be above the law.

The topic in Nicole Anslover’s Diplomatic History class was the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and she asked what my reaction to the threat of a nuclear confrontation had been at the time.  A junior at Bucknell, I wasn’t as alarmed as I probably should have been; but watching John Kennedy’s “Quarantine” speech on TV was pretty unnerving, especially when he warned that a Soviet attack would be met with an overwhelming nuclear response.  When a Soviet missile downed a U-2 spy plane over Cuba piloted by Major Rudolf Anderson, JFK’s military advisers recommended retaliatory airstrikes.  Kennedy, suspecting correctly that Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev had not given authorization for its employment, sent brother Bobby to meet secretly with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and offer a deal (pledges to remove American missiles in Turkey within six months and not invade Cuba) that ended the crisis.

Dee Van Bebber and I earned 1.75 master points finishing second to Terry Bauer and Dottie Hart in an 11-couple duplicate bridge game.  As usual, what I most vividly recall is a bid I should have made.  Facing a 5-0 trump break in Hearts, I failed to draw out the final trump.  Great chocolate chip cookies were on hand.  Most everyone assumed Dottie Hart had baked them, but they came from Sally Will.  When I mentioned attending Nicole Anslover’s class, Sally said she was reading “The Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War” (2010) by Karl Marlantes, about a company of marines forced to deal not only with the army of North Vietnam and monsoon weather conditions, leeches, fungus, disease, and malnutrition but also racial tensions and duplicitous superior officers.