Credit: Nick Romanenko

Bill Glovin, left, runs the court during his weekly lunchtime pick-up game. Whether you mow grass or cure cancer is irrelevant, says Glovin, senior editor of Rutgers Magazine. Game and character trump everything else. (Jeremy Schafer behind)

If I had a dollar for every time I was told that someone my age shouldn’t be playing basketball anymore, I’d probably have enough scratch to buy a courtside seat to a New Jersey Nets game. At age 53, I’m the first one to admit that I’m not what I used to be on the court (not that I was all that much to begin with). Still, for a balding, chicken-legged, sports underachiever like myself, knowing that my twice-a-week lunchtime hoops game is ahead of me puts a little bounce in my step on the days that I play.

Where else can a Baby Boomer turn an hour of serious exercise into fun and – on that rare occasion – still bask in the glory of a game-winning shot?

David Tyler, a 57-year-old professor of statistics, recalls playing in the game as far back as 1983. For the 15 or so regulars who participate, the full-court game at either the Sonny Werblin or Livingston Recreation Center is a convenient and much-needed counterbalance to our sedentary jobs. Once play begins, all the day-to-day stuff that often consumes us disappears. Like Rutgers’ student body, a wide variety of cultures and professions are represented. Whether you mow grass or cure cancer is irrelevant – game and character trump everything else.

Last names are rarely used and nicknames are common, especially if you’re a Michael or a John. Players have included bald John, old John, and regular John; Mike’s are even more common: young Mike, old Mike, (Mike) Hailey, and Speedy (aka Michael Dunn, the director of UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School’s Orthopaedic Research Laboratories). Confusion ensues when Mark from Rutgers Environmental Health and Safety  plays on the same team as Mark the geology professor.

Players are always drifting in and out of the game. New opportunities, sabbaticals, and dare I say it – injuries – are most often the cause. Almost everyone invariably suffers some kind of malady: jammed fingers, sprained ankles, shoulder separations, you name it. In the last six months, Mark the geology professor had his nose broken by an overzealous elbow; young Mike cut his forearm diving into the curtain; and even super Sam, an associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, limped off with what appeared to be a strained calf. Still, hope springs eternal for the aging hoopster. A morale boost was seeing (Mike) Hailey recently return after tearing his Achilles tendon and missing more than a year. 

The game certainly has its share of characters, and no one has a bigger personality than Larry from admissions. Larry learned the game on the playgrounds of Newark and, in high school, started for St. Benedict’s Preparatory School (one of the top hoops programs in the country). Larry always brings his own brand of cockiness and trash talk to the party, an attitude that a soft, suburban player such as myself rarely experiences. Strong as an ox and far more athletic than the rest of us, Larry still struggles with a bad back and usually has to call it quits after a game or two.

The player I admire most is old Mike, a rail thin, 71-year-old psychologist. His “Basketball is Life” T-shirt says it all. Leave Mike unguarded from the two point line and he’ll burn you; his smooth, left-handed hook shot has won many a game. He’s also the last person you want to shoot against if your team loses and you have to make a foul shot to earn your way into the next game. I tease him that he hasn’t missed a foul shot since the 1960s.

One problem that occasionally creeps in is the disparity in age. When Wally, a 57-year-old Equal Opportunity Fund program dean with gimpy knees, recently collided with Jeremy, a 32-year-old from the Office of Information Technology, everyone held their breath. Poor Wally looked like a New York taxi hit him and then missed several weeks. The next time we played, Jeremy covered me. With the score tied, I hit the game-winning shot when he left me to help his teammate on defense. I mistakenly believed our rapport had evolved to where I could tease Jeremy about it. The next time we played, however, he covered me with such rabid intensity that I probably should have gotten a rabies shot.

Rushing through the game during lunch hour leaves little time for conversation; rarely do you to get to know someone beyond the pleasantries and locker-room banter. I realized last fall, however, that sometimes anonymity falls away when, after playing alongside old John on a Thursday, I opened the newspaper on Saturday and came across an obituary that said John Kalafat, a 63-year-old psychologist at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, had died suddenly of a heart attack on Friday. I only knew John as a gentle soul with a clunky knee brace and a fierce determination to play for as long as he could. There was no photograph with the obituary, but I knew it was him when his wife was quoted as saying that one of his favorite things in the world was his lunchtime hoops game.

Just two days before, John had been grumbling like the rest of us about missing shots and careless turnovers. In the blink of an eye, he died, leaving behind a loving family and a lifetime of professional accomplishments – a part of him I barely knew and which he had little time to share. Stunned as we were, the game went on as usual, as it always has. I suspect John would have wanted it that way.