What March Madness means to me: Remembering a friend

(This post was originally published on March 31st, 2011)

One year ago today.

March 31st, 2010.

I woke up at 6:00 am to my phone ringing. By the time I got to it, the ringing had stopped. Three missed calls. All from my mom, the first coming at 4:15 am. She had left a voice mail saying to call her immediately, it was an emergency.

That's never good.

So I called.

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I've always loved sports. Basketball wasn't my first true love.

When I was little, I used to clear off the floor of my family's living room to stage games with the football figurines I collected. I would grab a handful of quarters from my parents change bucket to design plays on our kitchen table. The walls of my old bedroom in my parents house in Connecticut are still covered with pictures that I cut out of SLAM and SI and ESPN the Magazine. Hell, I played strat-o-matic baseball. A lot.

Football was my first true love. A Connecticut native, I've been a lifelong San Francisco 49ers fan because my mom got me a Joe Montana costume for Halloween one year when I was about five. But my dad "wanted me to have my knees" when I was older, so I never donned shoulder pads and a helmet.

I tried my hand at baseball. I wasn't bad, either. When I was nine, I was moved up to the "minors" in the Max Sinoway Little League in my hometown. That's the first level where they allowed the kids to pitch. I still remember my first game. Ed Prokop, who was three years older than me and would eventually sprout to 6'5", was pitching. He was a hard-throwing lefty. In each of my first two trips to the plate, I got hit with a pitch. That was the end of my baseball career.

So basketball it was.

By the time I reached high school, my entire life revolved around hoops. My family scheduled vacations to avoid missing practices. I was on the varsity team in high school for three years. I played AAU ball with a pretty good team. We sent players to two A-10 schools and one Conference USA school. Tim Abromaitis of Notre Dame came from the same program, four years later.

Personally, I was slightly above average. I was never much of an athlete (I couldn't actually dunk until my senior year in college), but I had a quick release on my jumper and had range for days. And while I shot a higher percentage from three than I did on layups, it was enough that I got a lot of interest from D-III schools in the Northeast.

I ended up going to Vassar College, a small Liberal Arts school in Poughkeepsie, NY, a city now better known as Snooki's hometown. I made the decision to play college basketball -- or at least attempt too, I only managed two and a half years on the team and a whopping two starts -- because of my love for the game. I wanted to say that I had played college basketball. No one could ever take that away.

Growing up in Connecticut, we didn't have a pro sports team (we had the Whalers, but they ditched us for the Carolinas). Sure, you had your constant struggle between the Boston teams and the New York teams, but those teams weren't ours.

The UConn Huskies, however, were.

Nothing brought me more happiness than watching college basketball, which is why I ended up starting this blog four long years ago. I grew up loving Ricky Moore and Ray Allen. I still remember bargaining with my father about whether I could stay up to watch the end of the Big East Final between UConn and Georgetown in 1996. He said I had to go to sleep if UConn got down by ten points. They got down by 11. I negotiated for another couple of possessions. UConn made their run. I got to see Ray Allen's miracle floater live.

The NCAA Tournament? That was the best. The first weekend was the highlight of my year. Still is. The Thursday and the Friday is a holiday for me. I haven't gone to school or work since my junior year in high school -- a decade ago -- just so I would able to soak in every second of the Madness.

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Building true friendships is not an easy thing to do. Finding that similarity of interest, mutual respect, and level of trustworthiness in another person is like chasing an inside straight. The smart play is to fold. The odds are stacked in the wrong direction, and risking more by chasing the longshot is a fool's errand.

But when that longshot hits, the winnings are huge. Having a friend, a confidante, that will always be an ear to listen or a shoulder to lean on is a terrific feeling.

Its not an easy thing to cultivate, however, especially when the distance that needs to be covered is 4,500 miles.

I come from a big family. My mom is one of five kids and her mom was one of five kids. Ever since I was little, we would gather the family together for massive reunions every year. It was great. I have a relationship with relatives that live far enough away -- places like London and Texas -- that I probably never would have known them if it weren't for the insistence that we put family first. I'll forever be thankful for that.

My mother's older brother moved to Alaska. He happened to have a son, Lew Allen IV, that was just a year older than me. Naturally, every time the family got together, we were locked at the hip. As we got older, we only got closer. He was starting a career as an MMA fighter at the same time that I was playing college basketball, so the summer rendezvous's became week long training sessions. Hill sprints in the Rockies, four mile runs on the Delaware beaches, endless push-ups and sit-ups and pull-ups.

Lew became my confidante. When I had girl problems, I'd call him. When I had issues with a coach or with my workload, I'd call him. Hell, if I couldn't figure out which pair of shoes to wear, I'd call him. Sometimes we'd talk every day. Other times there would be a month in between.

Didn't matter.

It doesn't when you have a friend like that.

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It didn't take me long to figure out that I was never going to be able to play professional basketball.

If the fact that, in high school, I didn't get a single letter from a D-I school didn't tip me off, the fact that my handle bordered terrible and I was 6'3" and could barely was a pretty clear sign.

But I loved the game. Everything about it. And I always knew that I wanted to be a part of it. Coaching high school ball didn't strike my fancy. I knew I didn't want to be a teacher. College coaching didn't appeal to me, either. I would have been a terrible recruiter.

My first job out of college was with a lobbying firm that represented the interest of foreignly owned companies operating in the United States. I sat at a desk. And answered phones. It was miserable. I would actually get excited when they would task me with stuffing 1,000 envelopes to send out to our members. In my down time I started this blog, and the more I wrote, the more I realized I loved it.

So I quit that job, started waiting tables and bartending to earn some cash, and set out to make it as a writer covering college hoops.

I haven't had a single regret since.

Sure, I question the decision when its 4:00 am in the middle of January, I still have 1,500 words to write before heading to work at 10:00 am for the lunch shift. But I can honestly say that trading sleep-deprivation in the pursuit of something you love is 10,000 times more rewarding than being miserable and cashing a steady paycheck.

Call me crazy, but that's the truth.

Its also true that the Madness of March isn't just the action on the court. I learned pretty quickly that covering conference tournaments and the NCAA Tournament is a grind. The basketball is played for over twelve hours a day. There are people that not only want constant updates on the action, but that want to read reactions to the outcome. Stories need to be written. Quotes need to be taken. And all this happens while the next game is tipping off.

And that's just in your location.

Sleep is a luxury. Praise and gratitude? Those are non-existent. You're more likely to be ripped by a fan base that is unhappy with the way you worded a sentence referring to a sophomore that plays eight minutes a game than you are to receive a "thank you" from a reader for giving them a brief respite from whatever menial task their boss has them doing that day.

Sportswriting is not a glamorous profession. It requires a lot of hard work and sleepless night and time spent away from loved ones. It doesn't pay all that well, especially if you are a blogger.

And I love every second of it.

And its what got me through this past month.

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"Your cousin Lew killed himself last night."

Fuck.

That was the unfortunate message my mom had to pass along to me.

He was 26 years old. He was married, the father of two kids and the step-dad to two more. He never ended up going to college. It wasn't because he lacked the intelligence. An education is secondary to a paycheck when you have mouths to feed, and Lew stepped up. He worked two and three jobs at a time just to pay the bills.

And despite that, despite the issues that he was going through and the pressure that he was dealing with, he never stopped being a loving and attentive father. He never stopped answering my phone calls. He managed all that even when his job as an electrician required him to spend weeks at a time on "The Slope", a petroleum-rich wilderness the size of Utah in the northernmost portion of Alaska.

That's what hurt the most.

His kids would never know what kind of man their father was. They wouldn't know how hard he worked or how caring he was or how much he loved them. They wouldn't know that he could perfectly replicate Jim Carrey's smile in The Mask, or that he was able to do Michael Jackson's Billie Jean dance in its entirety, moonwalk included.

When I got the call, it was the Wednesday of Final Four week. I was boarding a plane for Indianapolis in 50 hours. I made the decision to get on that flight. I knew that Lew would have been pissed at me had I not gone on his account.

It was the best decision I could have made. Preparing for that Final Four, experiencing that Final Four, and writing about that Final Four. A healing process, it was not. A pleasant distraction to keep my mind off of losing my best friend?

Absolutely.

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For the first time ever, I did not look forward to the month of March this year. I dreaded it. I knew what was waiting at the end of the month.

It didn't help matters that my birthday is now one day after the anniversary of Lew's death.

But like the Final Four in Indianapolis, what got me through the month -- hell, the year -- was college basketball. It was March Madness. It kept be busy. It kept me entertained. It kept me distracted.

Most of all, it kept me happy.

And therein lies the beauty of sports.

In the long run, they don't matter. Sports are a game. We play them for fun. We watch them for our enjoyment, and if the stars are aligned right, for some excitement. We watch sports because the young men and women that are competing are incredible at their craft. Because they have the kind of athleticism most of us only dream of. We pay absurd amounts of money to go to games because there is nothing more beautiful than a well run fast break, or a perfectly turned double play, or a well timed fade route. We cheer for our favorite teams because, for one reason or another, we have a special bond with that team. When they win, it makes us happy.

But sports won't solve the current conflicts in the Middle East. They won't fix the issues in our educational system. The Super Bowl isn't going to change anyone's position on Prop 8. The World Series won't bring the two sides together on the topic of abortion.

March Madness isn't going to solve the world's problems.

And it certainly didn't solve mine.

But it sure made them easier to deal with this past month.

RIP Lew Allen IV
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