Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Hoop Dreams

I'm sitting here watching CNN's exultant reports on the Pennsylvania primary (they say Hillary's winning) and I'm coming to grips with the harsh truth that winning this nomination probably won't be a slam dunk for Obama.

This isn't to say he can't score on some sort of allez-oop, fade-away jumper or left-handed layup or buzzer-beating tip-in. 

Pardon the sports analogies. But they apply here.

Barack himself has spoken publicly about how playing basketball helped him connect to his blackness as a juvenile growing up on the isolating Hawaiian islands. And I'm trying to grasp the significance of my 4-year-old's insistence on bringing one of his basketball's every time we visit the neighborhood playing, which is often over-run with black babies who are scarcely supervised in their play and often outnumber the mamas who brought them there by 4-to-1. 

Tonight after school, the only other "apparent" black father of one (some) of the lil rascals on our playground was outnumbered by at least 20-to-1. My son dribbled around intrepidly on the periphery until the black-to-white ratio thinnned out. He sensed the right time to engage the remaining crowd.

On top of that, he insisted on an extra 15 minutes of shootaround in the backyard before dinner. He's grown so good at running jumpers since Christmas that he's pleading for me to raise the rim, which he ably knuckles, higher.

Hillary's victory speech is winding down now. She says 100 mayors in Pa. endorsed her.
Well, now wonder she won. I wouldn't set foot outside of the Pittsburgh airport mall (except for a smoke) into the Quaker state sunshine if you paid me. What for?

She just said something. "Will we take back the White House?"

Draw your own conclusions.

(Man, does that "sister" who wears pink and that bleached backswept natural and spouts scripts from the conservative side irk me?)

Obama's up to bat next.

Ouch. Even worse: mixed sports analogies.

I'm biased. So whatever he has to say, in losing, will be persuasive and encouraging.

I'm just thinking long term... what do I tell my boy if the math-tested rightful candidate to face McCain doesn't win?

So far, they haven't kept score at his kiddie soccer or T-ball games?

How do I explain how to deal when you feel cheated?
 

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