hannah and caroline and me
(part thirty-one)
((when unfair doesn't seem to cover it))


more than likely, you don't know marvin smith. shoot, i don't really know marvin smith. marvin was best friends with a young man on my staff.

after the 2008 softball season ended, we kicked off pick-up basketball just like we always do. i sent e-mails out. tried to get commitments from guys to play 6 out of the scheduled 8 games we always play in the birmingham baptist association's men - 19 and over basketball league. some guys waivered or said they would play and then e-mailed me or sent word with someone else that they were too busy to make the commitment. that's fair i guess. it's never not frustrating. i have a hard time reconciling why everyone in the world wouldn't want to play church league basketball and softball as badly as i do. but they don't. and i get burned by thinking they should at the beginning of every sports season we embark on. i'd like to think that it's unfair to me. there is a small and selfish part of me that thinks, "well, i've been rocking and rolling with these teams for close to ten years now. sometimes you show up. sometimes you don't. sometimes you pay. sometimes you don't. it's never really any skin off your back, right? the least you could do is make the team a priority or give me just a little notice that i need to look elsewhere to fill your spot." like i say, it's small and selfish, and i don't dwell on it any longer than i feel like we're short or short on money, but it bothers me anyway.

well, after enough commitments and decommits that would make even your most seasoned recruiter belabored with the process, i asked my employee, jacob, if he'd be interested in playing with us. he jumped at the chance. he had heard me talking about the team for a couple months and was dropping hints left and right that he could play and he could bring one of his buddies with him if we needed him to. finally, tired and ready to take the stance of "i'd rather have too many than too few like we had last year", i told jacob to come on out and bring his buddy with him.

that buddy ended up being marvin smith. the night i met marvin he was at the gym before anyone else. he was soft-spoken. slender. nice as he could be. we shot around and warmed up just like we always do. i jotted down a brief scouting report in my head concerning what i thought marvin could add to the team. "he's a slasher. jumps really high. can get his own shot. rebounds hard." he would fit right in. that first night, he and i went back and forth (along with a couple other guys) lighting the opposing team(s) up. marvin and i were on opposite sides most games and found ourselves guarding each other for a lot of the night. not knowing each other's tendencies, inevitably he gave me too many open looks from 18 feet that i nailed and i gave myself way too much defensive credit thinking that he couldn't take me off the dribble (he could...any time he wanted.) basketball-wise and personally, he had my respect immediately and i felt like i had his. late in what was probably our fourth game of the night, i drove to the basket. marvin was playing centerfield, middle of the lane. as i approached him, i leaped and threw up and over him the most perfect teardrop shot i've ever made. his hand was stretched well above the rim and from my vantage point, i had no idea how i got the ball past his fingers. the ball fell softly through the net. i smiled at him. he smiled at me and said, "you're a player".

i am not, but he was sweet to say it and i was lucky that i was having a good night. that night was the most fun i had all season. marvin and jacob, both, ended up playing in all eight games with us. for the most part, we were terrible. never had a consistent group show up. never developed any real chemistry. never really understood our roles. it was tough. we played good teams close in a few games, but we still lost. a lot. it was miserable. i had never been so happy to finish up a season. but as we put our sweats on and headed out after our last game in early february to head our separate ways, we were able to joke about how bad we were. i thanked marvin and jacob for filling out our roster and told marvin i'd be seeing him around (he still owed me money) or i'd come find him.

marvin died in a car accident early, this past saturday morning. i'll never see him again.

i didn't really know marvin, but when jacob told me about his accident, it struck me to my core. i was at the store saturday night and i had to walk in the office and close the door a couple of times to compose myself. "fuck me.", i thought. he was only twenty years old. just getting started. just finding his way. just working and trying to to pay a few bills and trying to act like a grown up.

and now he's gone.

i think of marvin all the time. just like i think of every guy over the last ten years that i've shared a green jersey with. since my initial small group experience with chris and andy, nothing has come close to recreating that most personal and honest experience that i shared with those guys for the short time that we did it. nothing except my humc sports. so many guys, so many stories. so little significance to be found in whether we won or lost. it's always...always been about the experience. and that experience, including every frustration that has come along with it, has made me ten times the man today than i was when we started it so long ago.

marvin smith was everything good about that experience. the guy was a perfect stranger to us in late november. a perfect stranger that could feel that first night, i hope, that the game wasn't as important as us being there, together. it was never articulated, but an atmosphere like that, that we've cultured for close to a decade doesn't have to be noticed aloud. you can just feel it. marvin, the good young man that he was, was a perfect complement to that atmosphere. he didn't have to tell me he was a good guy. there on the court that first night i met him, i could feel it.

marvin will be missed. by a lot of family and friends and others that knew him. i didn't really know marvin, but you can count me in that number.

twenty years old.

fuck me.

rest in peace, brother. rest in peace.