See Me Squeegee

April 4, 2013.  The day of the return.

On this day, 1993, I watched from a hospital bed, gauze coating my ears and nose.  Fabs vs. Tar Heels, and it wasn’t Chris’s TO that did us in.  It was Donald Williams going straight up insane from three, it was Carolina grabbing rebounds, it was us rimming out jumpers…but it was C-Webb’s TO when my dad patted me on the shoulder and said “I have to work tomorrow”.  And then it was SportsCenter for the next 10 hours.  My nurses thought they were doing me – a huge sports fan at age 13 – a favor by leaving it on.  But my breathing tube crimped when I rolled, so I didn’t sleep more than a few minutes at a time that night.  So while I saw Webber’s timeout 100+ times that night, I also saw Williams dropping threes, Montross grabbing boards, George Lynch with putbacks all night.

And my saving grace?  The Fab Five were sophomores.  I was a kid.  We’d be back.  But we haven’t been…until tonight.

Now?  I’m a grown-ass-man.  The team I loved…it took some hard times.  I got to college and we had some talent, but it didn’t click.  We won the NIT, but… I mean.  We won the inaugural Big Ten Tournament, but then dropped out in the second round to Baron Davis and UCLA.  And that was it…  It was almost ten years before we got back in the tournament.  And a goddamn lifetime until tonight, back in the finals.   And we were soclose.

This isn’t a game recap.  This isn’t sour grapes.  This isn’t a plea for some tiny place in history.  This is just my story as a Michigan basketball fan who loved the hell out of the last season and wants to put it in perspective for posterity.  This is for Jalen, Juwan, Chris, Jimmy and Ray.  The same it’s for Glen, Loy, Terry, Mike, and Rumeal.  And it’s for Trey, Nik, Spike, Glenn, Tim, Mitch, Jordan, Caris, Jon and the gang.  And it’s for Jason McMann, Ryan Stayton, Adam Lilling, Heather Discher, Joe Johnson, Jeff Yuille, Jeff Williams…the people who never gave up on this team and who hurt tonight in the aftermath of being right there.

My story as a Michigan fan:

I remember losing to Villanova in 1985.  Not that vividly, but I knew Michigan was a one seed, and that was the state I lived in in a sport I cared about.  I was six.  We lost, it was a huge deal, I got over it.

I remember Gary Grant, Antoine Joubert, Roy Tarpley…   On certain Saturdays my dad would take me and my brother to Ann Arbor and he’d get a haircut and let us play on the high jump mats at the Track & Tennis Building while he ran laps – he’s my marathon/triathlon inspiration – and we’d get a sip of Gatorade at the end.  And on those Saturdays when Michigan was playing a tomato can opponent his barber – Bill from State Street Barbershop at State & Packard – would have free upper level tickets to those games.  I loved those games.

I remember picking Michigan in my first bracket and keeping up that tradition.  I loved that team  – the giant M to start the word “Michigan” on their jerseys, the big games with Indiana and Michigan State, the fact that the name on the jersey was the same as the state I lived in… So I picked them against seeding, against reason, against logic.

But then the coach quit.  Days before the 1989 tournament.  Bill Frieder got more money somewhere else, and the football coach who was now the Athletic Director said those famous words that spoke like crazy to a ten year old: “A Michigan Man will coach Michigan”.  And Michigan went on a run, but not before a standoff at the Galvin household.  My father had grown up in Jersey and gotten a masters degree at Seton Hall – he’s now going balance 30 years later with a masters at Michigan – and so he and I butted heads over the ’89 final, but Michigan won its only title to date, 80-79 on some Rumeal Robinson free throws.  As it turns out…the foul was questionable and Rumeal’s character was more than that (he’s in prison for stealing from his own grandmother).  But I was hooked.

And then…

After a couple tough years getting knocked out by JR Reid’s Carolina teams and the team-of-destiny from Loyola Marymount after Hank Gathers’ death, the Fab Five arrived.

Jalen, Juwan, Jimmy, Chris Ray.

The team that I thought only defined my small generation of kids from Michigan but who defined so much more.  The baggy shorts, the black shoes and socks, the bald heads.  MIA might get credit for “no one on the corner got swagger like us” but she’s ripping off the Fab Five.  No one in history had swagger like them.  And I lived a half-hour away as a middle-schooler.  My dad had season tickets – I went to a couple games a year…he split them with a neighbor and the two of them went to all the big games together – and every kid I knew had the gear.  That team was transcendent.  I watched the coming out party against Duke over a TV dinner and a babysitter.  I watched the “Shock the World” Final Four game as a babysitter down the street, and if those kids had set the house on fire I wouldn’t have known or cared.  I was hooked.

A few years later I lived out my dream of going to Michigan and immediately bought season basketball tickets.  I had tickets with several friends – at least 7-10 of us – and we had to sit up in the upper bowl.  During the fall of our freshman year, Robert  Traylor broke a backboard with a dunk. The next day I flew to Florida to meet my family for Thanksgiving at Disney World.  They knew all about the dunk…it had been national news.  That team underachieved and went to the NIT…but then won it.  We were still relevant and building.  But then…

Trouble was brewing.  A car accident the year before had brought out some legal eyes: the car was too expensive for the driver, Maurice Taylor (my least favorite human being of my lifetime…good player, awful human) and the recruit inside, Mateen Cleaves, would come to haunt us.  The coach was fired, the team went to the NCAA tournament the next year…but that was the last time for a decade.

Now…we may well have deserved some punishment, but to date I’ve seen a lot of NCAA probation for less.  Ohio State football, USC football, Auburn and Cam Newton – it’s been wild.  But Michigan…I was naive but it was over for ten years as it turns out.  The coach was fired, the program went on a “fact finding” self-imposed probation, and the uncertainty and lack of coaching decimated the program.  My junior year was awful but my senior year we got a taste of glory.  With now LA-Clipper Jamal Crawford leading a new freshman class we went 13-1 and took #1 Duke to the limit…before Jamal was suspended for “suspicion of benefits” (which turned out to be a pretty common violation) for the rest of the season, right before the Michigan State game.  State blew us out and went on to win the championship.

During that time, I saw the temporarily-declining program and the ascending program up the road in Lansing and decided to do something.  I started writing a newsletter at basketball games, called “The Full Court Press” (a step up from the Half Court Press , the newsletter from the Izzone at Michigan State).  I kept it up two seasons and people caught on – I was the “voice” of the newly-founded student section, nomenclatured by the t-shirts distributed among us that said “Maize Rage”.  By that point, my crew of several friends in the student section had eroded to a few people in my graduating class – many times it was me and a handful of new friends, among them Jason McMann, Ryan Stayton, Heather Dichter, and maybe 2-3 others – representing the senior class.  It was certainly less than a dozen of us.

But we persevered.  The Athletic Department was reading my newsletter and I got hired along with the new coach, Tommy Amaker.  I was in charge of generating student spirit; for that, a few years later with the advent of the movie “Old School”, students started referring to me as “The Godfather”.  Someday here I’ll post my alternate lyrics to the Jay Z track “H to the Izzo” – “L (loss” to the Izzo (MSU’s coach)”.  We created a legit student organization, one that exists year-round outside of basketball tickets and games.  I’ve gotten teary-eyed when I’ve seen folks like Denard Robinson throw on a  Maize Rage shirt.  But for several years…that organization chased some terrible teams.

It’s late, it’s postgame (our national championship loss to Louisville) and I’m rambling, but what it comes down to is this: that was more than ten years ago.  Since then I’ve made good friends in grad school and started a local business with a guy, Joe, who around the same time I was an alum helping out the Maize Rage created a petition to get Rick Pitino, the coach who beat us tonight, to coach Michigan (Rick accepted, then reneged, but Joey got to talk to him on his cell phone which is pretty sweet).  I’ve sen Michigan finally beat Michigan State again, and do it a few times in a row…all  coming long after that day that Jason McMann and I painted our faces to watch us lose by 51 points at MSU.  I’ve lived a lifetime with this team.

I lived a full lifetime with this team this past week, from Trey Burke’s jumper to tie Kansas after we were down 10 with under 2 to go, to the dominance of Florida, to the win over Syracuse, to the first half dominance of Louisville to tonight’s loss.  I’ve lived multiple lifetimes with this team, many in the past couple weeks and many more over the last 25 years.

What does it all mean?  I’m trying to sort it out, but Michigan basketball has been a fixture in my life and it’s taught me that things may seem easy but they’re never easy; it’s taught me that the true believers – all the real MFers – are few and far between but worth holding onto and staying in touch with. And it’s given me a hell of a ride the last three weeks.

When the Fab Five went down by 19 to UCLA in 1993, my brother, sister, and I tried to rally the team by doing somersaults off the couch in my parents’ basement. Michigan came back to win that game and get to the national final, the aforementioned Webber TO game.  All tournament long, 20 years later, my siblings and I responded to dire situations by texting each other the word “somersaults”. And tonight I did somersaults on the corner of Wilshire and 11th in Santa Monica, CA, trying to rally the team.  Didn’t work this time, but it proves that Michigan basketball runs deep, and I appreciate the ride.

Thank you to Trey, Mitch, Tim, Spike, Nick, Glenn, Jordan, Caris and the  gang for giving us hope.  Thank you to those who have believed the last 20 years when believing was rough.  And thank you to sports fans everywhere for giving this stuff meaning.

We On.  We weren’t for a long time but we so on right now and one setback won’t change that.  Last time we got thisclose  I suffered the rest of the night in a hospital bed.  This time I suffer as an adult, blogging to avoid the nightmares that will come from closing my eyes and reliving.  But it’s been a heck of a ride.  Go Blue.  We On.