SSS Hall of Fame Inductee #2: The Reign Man

Words: Peter Nussbaum Illustration: Rafael Calonzo Jr.

The Reign Man

Once upon a midnight dreary, while we fretted weak and weary
Waiting for a redeeming hero like someone from long before
While we waited, nearly sleeping, suddenly there came a creeping
As of someone gently peeping, peeping at our polished floor
“‘Tis only a teenager,” we muttered, “peeping at our floor
Only this, and nothing more.”

Ah, yes, now we see him, the days are shorter, it’s mid-December
And the teenager, he is now much older than he was before
Flies from floor to ceiling, with a power that was quite appealing
With a graceful majesty that bespoke of the greats of lore
A greatness we’d see again so often, but never had before
Nameless here for evermore.

Presently our souls grew stronger, hesitating then no longer,
“Oh, great one, do never leave us, it is of this our hearts implore”
And for a time it seemed he would never dream of leaving
Adultation he was receiving, greatness stretching on ever more
With a touch and power few had equal and none had more
Greatness there, and nothing more.

Onto the heights of warmer June his skills would one day take us,
On the magic carpet he’s riding, no matter what the score
“Thank you, thank you great one,” the crowds stand chanting
While his opponents were left panting, panting on the floor
Smiling, he’d leap even higher, even higher than before
Then, exhausted, sit, and nothing more.

The years began a-counting, the first-round losses mounting
Muttered rumblings of discord come flooding through the door.
Coaches more and more demanding, and a waistline e'er-expanding
Less running now and much more standing, no matter what the score,
All are wond’ring what has become of the man-child from before
Quoth the Reign Man, “Nevermore.”

Writers questions are repeated, a face begins to look defeated
Fans full of memories of their favorite highlights of yore.
He floats through the league, first with drugs, then with drinking
All are wondering what he’s thinking, thinking of nothing more?
They cling to dreamings, pleading return to where he’d left before
Quoth the Reign Man, “Nevermore.”

So an owner so beguiling, always talking, never smiling
Snatches team, leaving only memories of gold jerseys they had wore.
All the while the fans remember, oftentimes in November
Of the great one who they had worshipped on that floor.
In their heads they see him flying, giving anything to once more adore
Quoth the Reign Man, “Nevermore.”

With apologies to Edgar Allen Poe.

Trading Cards

Growing up a baseball fan, I collected baseball cards, naturally.

Well, perhaps “collected” isn’t the correct verb. A more apt description of my activities would be “obsessively acquired,” although even that falls short of the level of activity. Reading the backs of those flimsy pieces of mass-produced pieces of cardboard – oh, it was a joy, maybe even more so than the eerie visages peering out from the front.

Born in the early 70s, I didn’t begin collecting until the late 70s, and my knowledge of baseball history at that age was limited. So I was puzzled as to why a whole group of men played for Cincinnati – Rose, Perez, Griffey, et al – and then left so suddenly. Or why Sal Bando, Bert Campaneris, Reggie Jackson, and Joe Rudi all quit playing for the A’s in the mid 1970s.

But the best was finding players with a “Senators” or “Washington” marker on their career statistics. To a young boy in the early 1980s, the Washington Senators were as mysterious as the Whig Party, an unknown entity only revealed through reading Toby Harrah’s curriculum vitae. What happened to the Washington Senators?, I wondered. Were they a latter-day incarnation of Jamestown, wiped from the face of baseball by some unexplained calamity?

I experienced this same phenomenon when the Vancouver Grizzlies left my adopted home a decade ago, and the scattered Sons of Vancouver began to disappear from the face of the NBA. A Michael Dickerson here, a George Lynch there ... before long, the majority of them had vanished into the land of memory. (Barring a Felipe Lopez sighting, there are six former Vancouverites still on NBA rosters: Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Mike Bibby, Aaron Williams, Othella Harrington, Damon Jones, and Stro Swift).

The astute reader can ascertain where this conversation is headed. For heaven’s sake, I hope so. We are now entering a post-Sonic world, a world in which children born in the last five years will grow up completely unfamiliar with the exploits of Gus and DJ and Gary and Shawn, who will think of Kevin Durant the way I did of Jeff Burroughs – a remnant of a long-ago era. Children who will wonder what it was like to see the word “Sonics” emblazoned on a uniform, and why it was that the team stopped playing in Seattle after the summer of 2008.

And that’s when you realize that being ignorant of the real story – as I was about the Washington Senators or Charlie Finley’s A’s – is best after all.

Harlequin Bureau

As you know doubt have heard by now, typing in oklahomacitythunder.com redirected the reader to a site devoted to two very nice ladies involved in some sort of decorating business. Deadspin spread the word about the humorous bit of misdirection and we all had a nice laugh.

So, imagine my surprise today when I typed in oklahomacitythunder.com, and this turned up. It's a video of the song Just Dreamin' from the group Harlequin Bureau.

The group's MySpace page notes that the band's influences include The Cure and New Order, which, ccoincidentally, are the same bands Clay Bennett took his wife to on their first date (and, yes, that's a joke).

Not sure what any of this discombobulation of websites means, but perhaps someone in the band's management company is just a frustrated Seattle Sonics fan like the rest of us.