Sully

His surname was “Sullivan," which, of course, meant that he was called “Sully.” He made basketball look effortless.  He was always in the right place doing the right thing with graceful ease.  I wished he’d been playing for our Polytechnic High School.  When his team from Lowell High came to our gym to play our 135 pound squad, I was assigned to write up our game for our school paper, but I focused on “Sully” from the time his team got off the team bus.

High school students collect in fairly good numbers to watch football contests, but the rooting sections for nearly any other activity rarely reaches double digits. This game between Sully’s Lowell High "lightweight" squad and our very ordinary squad drew about a dozen spectators, probably all relatives of the players with a girlfriend or two.

Sullivan had come to play basketball just the same, and he was magnificent.  He made our players look as if they hadn't been coached much.  My “Poly” was embarrassed.

When I turned in my report to our faculty advisor, she said,  “You’ll be criticized for putting this in our paper.”  I shrugged.  “He's better than anybody in our whole school,” I said.  “He's the best in the league at any weight.”

              

“All right,” she said. “You’ll hear about it, though.”  I gave another elaborate shrug.  The flack wasn't as much as she’d predicted, and only my friends actually called me dumb. 

Lowell’s school paper reprinted my story.  Then the San Francisco Chronicle apparently took notice, giving Sully a half page following Lowell's reprint.

When Sullivan became the first “lightweight” basketball player in a San Francisco high school to be named “All City” on the unlimited team, I sort of felt that I’d contributed.  Anyway, I felt justified in writing up an "enemy" athlete.  Also, my faculty advisor suggested that I had earned a parenthesis alongside Sully's name. 

I never saw Sully after that game or heard what happened to him, except that a Sullivan from Lowell was listed as a WWII casualty.  I am glad I was assigned to cover that game.  It was like watching a leopard.  It also taught me that I wasn't one.