Calling Vince King

I'll never forget a guy named Vince King. We were buds as kids in the late 1970s when I lived in a nice suburb of Cleveland called Beachwood. It was the only time in my life, prior to New York, where I lived somewhere where the folks weren't all Christian whitebreads like me.

Beachwood is largely Jewish and black. Lots of money there. Vince was black. I imagine he still is.

Anyway, my family moved to a nearby town called Richmond Heights in 1979, and I never saw Vince again until about six years later.

That's when my high school basketball team played his. Some of the other kids from the neighborhood stuck with the sport, as Vince and me did. So when my Richmond Heights Spartans played his Beachwood Bison (singular, please), there was a cordial recognition and a friendly hello between me and a few of those guys, but not much else. We'd grown into macho athletes, conference rivals. Forgotten was the time where I pranked Steve Orkin on the phone, disguising my voice as if I was someone else, telling him to meet me at the bus stop or wherever. Vince and me rode our bikes to that spot and watched ole Steve sit on his ass and wait for the friend who never showed. We laughed at that for a week.

But now we'd grown up a little. Richmond Heights was never good in basketball until my senior year. We'd taken beatings from Beachwood in my sophomore and junior years. The last game I ever played in the home gym, however, had a different feel to it. We actually had a good team. But the visitors had a great team. Still, late in a tight ballgame, the Richmond Heights Spartans found themselves in an odd situation -- tied with Beachwood in the fourth quarter of a game that, if Vince's team had won, it would have claimed the East Suburban Conference outright.

And when a tired Vince, about 6-foot-4 with all-state skills and very dark skin, lay tired on the court right after the whistle blew, there I was, barely 150 pounds with the ball in my hand, all bony and pale, offering a hand to help him up, right in front of my team's bench. Hey there, old friend.

I was lucky enough that Amy the cheerleader snapped a picture of that moment to put in my senior scrapbook. Of course Vince and me were in the paper the next day, the familiar but unlikely pair. Take a guess who was getting beaten baseline in that picture?

Another cheerleader told me years later that she'd never forget seeing me help Vince up off the floor. Not because of our school loyalties or obvious difference in pigmentation, but because it fit so perfectly with the rest of that night. Our school was never good at basketball, yet here we were, going after our 14th win that night, in the gym's first sellout ever, all in front of the local cable station. Jim and Bob Isabella had the call, and I believe that game was brought to you by Migelito's.

It was a crazy finish, for sure, and even though my team won, what sticks with me is the contrast. Big and athletic vs. skinny and slow. The kid from the family with money vs. the kid from the family who ate turkey sandwiches from the deli for Thanksgiving the year before. Star of a great basketball team vs. average dude on a decent team. Black vs. white. Sure we had our "Bat 21" moment, my Gene Hackman to his Danny Glover.

If you know me, you know I like talking about race. I like talking about differences and analyzing them. And I like seeing people overcome them in the name of being respectful. I'm a sucker for the Hackman-Glover moments. If someone from the Lakers was a gentleman toward a Celtic, something like that would strike me. That's why I really liked John McCain's concession speech Tuesday night. All of it. And more of that sentiment came from President Bush today. The more, the merrier.

So here we are. 20 years and 8 months later, our friends have finally elected a black president. I'm pleased about it, no doubt, though I can't help but wonder what Vince King is up to these days.