Profile #2: 7/5/05: Little Scotty F.

Little Scotty F., from Spring Green, Wisconsin, is one of the best cats you'd ever want to know.  It's that simple.

Were it not for him, I might have starved to death around 1990.

In college, I liked to drink. And I liked to eat fast food. And I liked to have a reasonably new pair of Nike basketball sneakers on my feet at all times. Because of all this, I rarely had any change in my pocket going jingalingaling. Scott, on the other hand, was more responsible than I was. He drank in moderation and he liked to cook. And every time he cooked, he would make an extra big batch and keep it in the fridge for a few days. Scott knew I was hurting for cash, so he'd tap me on the shoulder when nobody was around so as not to humiliate me, and then he'd say, "Hans, I made some extra pasta salad (Hans' favorite). It's in the fridge. Help yourself." And I would. I'd pull out that big bowl of pasta salad and a fork and I'd go to town right there on the couch while watching the Bob Newhart show. And he never asked for a cent in return. He was just being nice.  As he always was. As he always is.

Here's some more on Little Scotty:

-He's a smart bastard. In college, he was one of those guys who appeared to be screwing off as much as the rest of us (OK, as much as me), but then somehow he'd end up with a 3.6 GPA and he eventually wound up in Medical School.

-He's a Doctor in Appleton, Wisconsin now, and I'd send my kids to him without a moment of hesitation.

-He is one of the few people to trust me with the keys to his motor vehicles. I am a terrible driver, but he never doubted me for a second. He had a beautiful Honda Elite scooter that he probably lent me 100 times. I borrowed it so often there is a picture of him handing me the keys. I loved that scooter so much that I eventually got my own. He also lent me his Grandparents' (Mamo and Babo) Buick a bunch of times, never worrying about the fact that I was fully capable of smashing it all up.

-When I moved back to New York from Wisconsin in August of 1993, I left my scooter behind. I had been meaning to sell it, but it had a flat tire and I was just too lazy to get around to it. It was a 1989 Honda Elite E, and I had bought it in 1990 for $699. When I moved, I asked Scott, who was in med school at the time, if he could put up a few flyers and see if he could sell it for me. Note: I was too lazy to even make my own flyers! Within about two weeks, he sent me a check for $450. He sold my goddamn four year-old scooter with the flat tire, and he got me an excellent price as well. And again, he asked for nothing.

-Scott's a fine athlete, and he loves sports. He played quarterback on his high school football team at 130 pounds. He's tough like that. Brian C., whose school played against Scott's, used to say that Little Scotty took a lot of hits, and he always got up.

-He was on the 9th floor of our dorm, I was on the 10th. I got to know him through Brian C., and learned that Scotty was an even bigger basketball fan than I was. I asked him why I never saw him playing at the SERF, the rec center across the street from our dorm.

"I haven't played in awhile," he said.

I asked him why not, and he confessed that he had gone over to play during the first week of classes freshman year, and he had collided with another guy on the court. The other guy ended up breaking a leg. And it turned out the other guy was at the University on a track scholarship. Oops. Sorry about that. After that incident, Scotty was terrified to step back on the court.

-We eventually got him out there, and Little Scotty turned out to be one of the most unselfish basketball players you'll ever meet. He actually has a pretty refined offensive arsenal, but he rarely shoots. He's one of those guys who gets his kicks playing suffocating D or throwing a beautiful, one-handed, 60 foot bounce pass to a teammate for a layup.

-He is America's foremost authority on drawing charging fouls. He was doing it before it was cool to do it. In intramurals, he averaged over one drawn charge per game. I have been outspoken in the past about my distaste for the way the offensive foul has screwed up basketball, with guys tossing their bodies in front of an offensive player at the last second in order to get the charge. That's not how Scotty did it. His were legitimate, move-your-feet-and-get-in-position, let-the-out-of-control-opposing-player-bowl-you-over offensive fouls.  And he would really go flying when he got hit; it was a thing of beauty.

-I think he's pretty much given up on playing hoops, which makes me sad. In an effort to get him back into the game, I went so far as to call his lovely wife Kimberly to get Scott's shoe size. I was going to secretly buy him a pair of Nike Air Raids, which were one of Scott's favorite sneakers in college. They were re-released a couple of years ago, and I was all set to buy him the ones he had back in 1992 or whenever it was. I thought he'd put on the kicks and he'd feel inspired to go take a few shots. But then I searched and searched and I never could find the right color (silver and black) in his size. So like most of my rare kind ideas, it went by the boards, Well, now you know I was thinking of you, Scotty.

-I think he once had an absolutely amazing blocked shot, maybe at the NYU Coles Center when he was visiting me in NYC one summer. I don't remember the details, but maybe he does.

-He's a two-footed jumper in the Dominique Wilkins mode. He used to throw down some nice tomahawks on the Ogg Hall dunk hoop.

-He always liked wearing warm-ups when walking around town. Any kind of a nylon windbreaker or an NBA shooting shirt and he was all set. He also liked wearing Nike Aqua Sox, but you don't need to remind him of that.

-He had a special gift that I can't discuss here but if you know him you respect him for it.

-He hates NCAA referee Ed Hightower. I think he may have inherited this from his dad, the same way I inherited by hatred for Dick Clark.

-He had a weird little chair-pillow thing that he kept on the floor (pictured, on the floor next to the chair). He loved sitting on that thing and eating in front of the TV with a nice newspaper (pictured).

-Two of his favorite NBA players were Chris Mullin and Mark Price. I routinely accused him of racism for those choices. Now I look back and marvel at how good those guys were.  He loved that Warriors team from the early 90's with RUN-TMC and Marciulionis off the bench. Marciulionis was a pretty cool player, wasn't he?

-He is a gentle soul. Here is an example.

When I was in Wisconsin, I liked to regale my country bumpkin friends from the heartland with tales of growing up in the inner city. Brian and Scott were both in this bumpkin category; Scott would sometimes adopt a Foghorn Leghorn voice and menacingly refer me as "City Slickah." Anyway, one thing I told them about was how we used to play stickball with a tennis ball and a broom handle. And that wasn't a lie, I did play my share of stickball. I was absolutely terrible at it, but I definitely played a dozen or two times in high school. Brian and Scott were intrigued. So we went to the hardware store and bought a nice stick. It wasn't technically a broom handle, it was even better than that. It was like your perfect stickball bat. We taped up the handle to give it some nice gription, and we grabbed a couple of tennis balls and some masking tape and headed out to the basketball courts on Dayton and Lake (which have since been demolished and replaced by the Kohl Center, UW's home basketball arena) to give it a try. It was a summer evening around 6:30 when we got there, and miraculously there was a nice spot of open wall for us to put up our strike zone with tape. It was probably 73 degrees out, an impossibly gorgeous night, with the sun slowly starting to drop behind the wall.  We started messing around, pitching to each other and trying to get a feel for the whole thing. I think the three of us were rotating, with each guy batting for an inning and the other two guys pitching and playing outfield.

It was all quite fun and silly, with nobody really caring who won. Then all of a sudden an acquaintance of mine from NYC, Barry Baum, showed up. Barry was a bit of a schemer, one of those guys who was always looking for ways to get ahead. He was a teeny little fella but he was so nakedly aggressive that he turned a lot of people off, and apparently still does. He's also incredibly unsmooth in his attempts to be smooth, to the point where you're actually a little bit embarrassed for him when you meet him. If you spent even five minutes around the guy, you'd be like, Who's that clown?

He had been a Knicks ball boy in the 80's and had his own public access show, Courtside with Barry Baum.  It was pretty priceless. I had known him vaguely through a friend in high school, and then I had met him again at Wisconsin. He was always pretty nice to me there and I really had no beef with him. He eventually got in trouble when he was reporting for the student newspaper and started a campaign to oust UW's basketball coach Steve Yoder. Barry's role model was probably the loathsome and painfully unfunny Peter Vecsey. Barry ended up following Vecsey to the NY Post, where he continued his antagonistic reporting. He was always one of those guys who was trying to insert himself into the spotlight, maybe because he was just a wee thing, I dunno.

Aaaaaanyway...

So this beautiful evening we're playing 1 on 1 on 1 stickball and Barry shows up and asks if he can join us. Sure, we say. So we start playing, and it's me and Scotty against Barry and Brian. It's a tight battle, with both teams alternating pitchers every other inning to mix things up. Barry's pretty bad, he can't really hit the ball at all, but he manages to draw a few walks and keep some rallies going.  He also starts talking shit, immediately taking the game in a competitive direction that it didn't need to go. I'm throwing the tennis ball as hard as I possibly can, surely destroying my arm in the process, but that's the kind of guy I am. When Scott's pitching, he's kind of throwing it at around 60% capacity, wisely being cautious with his arm. He's also much more accurate with his pitches, because he's not rearing back and giving it everything he's got. They're getting some hits off him, but mostly singles and minimal damage. In stickball, a home run is any ball hit over the outfielder's head (at least that's how we were doing it). As the game winds down, nobody's managed to accomplish that for either team.

Finally, it's the bottom of the 9th, we're up by a couple of runs, and I'm on the hill. I'm throwing lasers, probably in excess of 45 mph. But I start to lose control. I walk one guy, then another. It's clear I need to be pulled. Scott's in the outfield, trying to be polite, but he starts tapping on his right shoulder, giving me the universal "They're calling for the righthander" signal, letting me know he's ready to come bail me out. But he's too nice a guy to insist on relieving me. Finally, with two out, I walk Brian to load the bases. So it's me vs. Little Barry for all the money. My first pitch is wild and outside. I don't want to walk him. I rear back and fire it with all my might.

And Barry swings wildly, almost certainly with both eyes closed. He sends a well-struck fly ball deep over Scotty's head in centerfield for a grand slam, winning the game. Then he actually starts rounding imaginary bases, singing the old 1970's Yankee theme song.

"Da-na, na na na na. (Da-na-na). Da-na, na na na na., etc."

That was the last time I ever spoke to Barry, I believe. He ended up going on a date with a friend of a friend years later, but we never actually crossed paths. It's probably a good thing, too. The wounds are still fresh to this day.

I know this sounds like it's a Barry Baum story, and maybe it is, but the point I wanted to make is that after the game, even though I had selfishly insisted on staying in there when my arm was done, Little Scotty never busted my chops about it.

Oh, wait, actually, he did. He rode me mercilessly about it for weeks. But I deserved it.

-Little Scotty and I used to stay up late on Sunday nights in our West Wilson street apartment, watching NFL Films Presents on ESPN. That was comforting and fun.

-Scott and I teamed up and won Super Mario Brothers World or whatever it was called on his SuperNintendo. What a great game.

-In the last ten years or so, he's gotten into all sorts of lame outdoorsy sports like kayaking. Actually, I don't know for sure that they're lame, I'm too scared to try them.

-Scott is the type of guy who calls you on your birthday. He's easy to talk to and full of well-thought-out opinions, but he's never pushy about them.

-He's now got a beautiful family including wife, kids, and dogs. He deserves happiness.

Profile #1: B. New

Profile #2: Little Scotty F.