A Tale of a Blind Ref, part 1
Monday night I played basketball for the first time since I sprained my thumb more than a week ago. Also, my team achieved their first win after a lot of close games. We won big. It was nice.
Toward the end of the game, I drove down the court and basically walked in the middle of four guys who thought I was going to pass to the outside. I decided to take the layup and headed for the basket. With relative ease I went into the air, until a player from the other team attempted to block my shot. The result was he grabbed my arm and the rest of his body slammed my body immediately onto the hardwood floor. With no defenses, my elbow and knee hit the floor. Thankfully I was not hurt, but I was madder than a hatter in Wonderland because no foul was called on the play. So were my teammates as they quickly came to my defense with screams at the referees, who apparently were oblivious to…well, anything at all. My emotions were getting the best of me so immediately I asked someone to come into the game for me, and I walked out to the hallway of the school to calm down.
It was great that I had friends to stand for me at that point, but I learned a far greater lesson tonight. There are some situations in life that have no resolution. You can get mad. You can yell. You can lose your cool or cry or blame everybody. But the result will be the same. After the game as we had handily won by 40 points, I calmly walked to the ref who missed the call and asked, “What was up with the missed call? Did you see me fall to the floor when the guy crashed into me.” His response was, “I was looking at the ball, and didn’t see the foul. I asked the other ref and he told me he didn’t think you were fouled.” And he didn’t have to say, End of story, see you later crybaby.
And that is it. No resolution. No playback. Just me getting hit, no foul being called, and life goes on. I imagine if the stakes were higher it might me more difficult. If someone I loved piledrove me into the floor, (figuratively speaking of course) I would probably want resolution or some sort of vengeance, but sometimes it just doesn’t come, and we’re left wanting something more, feeling like God and friends have left us in some way. If the backstabbing hurts or the gossip cuts and there was nothing anybody could do, how do we feel?.
This happens. And it makes me sad for all parties.
Related posts:
my family likes to watch “Biggest Loser”. (No, i’m not going to take the obvious cheap shot) There was a woman on there who just got voted off last night much to my displeasure.
2 1/2 years ago a drunk driver killed her husband and two children. It was a very powerful testimony of what you wrote. She doesn’t even have the man responsible to kick around or to blame or to be mad at because he died in the crash too.
i was struck by how her grief sucked the will to live right out of her as she started slowily killing herself by overeating. Anger, frustration and bitterness do the same thing.
Your example of taking a walk was classic. It takes tremendous discipline to inject peace into chaos and then embrace it. The options you had in the immediate aftermath of the “foul” were numerous and few were of the peaceful variety. i’m very thankful that you didn’t create a more memorable event.
[...] Martyholman.com Inspired by a true story HomeAbout Marty Holman « A Tale of a Blind Ref, part 1 [...]
[...] A few Mondays ago, I drove with my friend Jay to the basketball game we play every Monday night. Our team, Barnes Building, had been undefeated, and would be playing a very tough team indeed. We loosened up as we always do, and I started the game strong, scoring 2 three pointers and a layup in the first 3 minutes. The problem was, the other team scored about 20 points as we were significantly over matched. Our team was frustrated and I was among the frustrated. During one foul called on me, I turned around and mentioned to the referee that he was “clearly wrong about calling that foul.” He ignored me. This was not our first altercation. [...]