Re: Cousy

[j.hironaka@unesco.org]

Dorine wrote:

> Cousy to this day is still besieged by autograph seekers and he has to tell them he'll do it after the game.  That speaks eloquently of the esteem in which he's held.

    I don't think there is anyone out there who doesn't agree with Dorine regarding Bob Cousy or his intelligence. I just think Couz sounds like he'd be much happier moving on to do something else, and we shouldn't stop him because it seems fairly obvious he's gotten a little tired of it all. Regarding autographs, I sat behind Couz and his wife once at an event. I was a 10-year-old and strangely enough I think it was a Nichiren Buddhist event organized to celebrate the US bicentennial (Nichiren is a Japanese religious sect whose members include Tina Turner and Italian soccer star Roberto Baggio). Anyway, he looked back at me and smiled a few times, but I couldn't open my mouth to speak and felt stupid afterwards. I was
also once at a sit down dinner with KC Jones and the same thing happened...I couldn't utter a single word beyond "good evening" and "good bye". Another time I was  in an empty Radcliffe gym (which has a soft rubberized surface) and Bill Walton limped in and started shooting free throws (this was in the late Spring of 1997, a difficult season for him facing retirement and an uncertain future). It was literally just the two of us in there shooting for all of an hour or so. Finally I walked up and asked to shake his hand and wish him well. He actually blushed and mumbled some incoherent nonsense like "good luck to you also, yeah well take care...".

    I never thought Walton would grow up to be a television announcer. He really gave me a sense of how awkward and self-conscious these "pituitary gland cases" (IMO, he was at least 3 inches taller than Parish) are whenever they are not out on the basketball court doing what they love. It's "a fish out of water" type thing. Maybe most  jocks are very shallow and egotistical, but that's not necessarily a given with basketball players in particular. An analogy would be how opera sopranos may sometimes feel between great performances, where they may literally pour their entire hearts into a tragic role and risk all kinds of potential humilations on dozens of ridiculously difficult notes (just try holding your breath as long
as some of them can hold a note). My point is that, unlike stars in other professions, the vast majority of these opera divas could stroll up and down Fifth Avenue all day long and the only looks they'll ever get will be from people who pity them or show outright disgust over their puffy, over-fed, middle-aged bodies. Anyway, whatever. I hope the season starts soon!

Joe

p.s. Could somome who hasn't yet cleaned up their disk drives will volunteer to save all of the negative articles out there since the 1st of August, and maybe re-post them at the end of this season. It's just like Peter May to play "pile on" after he's seen which way opinion is shaping. I was really hoping TSN had fired him and replaced him with Mike Fine (or anybody). We get enough of him in the Boston Globe.

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