Basket Case

I was not by any means the jock of our family (that would have been my sister), but the one sport I was remotely decent at and/or drawn to was basketball. I had two native advantages: I was fairly tall at a young age, and my dad had been a college player in Indiana. And though I don't watch sports now (my last "team" was the Westphal-era "Sunderellas," who I followed avidly until the infamous Celtics standoff of 1976), I've yearned to get back on the court somehow. But, as I find New York's public pickup games intimidating and am vaguely allergic to gym membership, I've sighingly deferred this dream...

Until now. My local bookstore, Word, just started a new basketball league, and though I'm still recovering from a couple of bruising pre-season games last week--turns out this is not by and large a league of bookish, wispy nerds--I am inordinately excited to be back in play. The only thing that's really geekily literary about this league is the team names (mine is the Virginia Wolves).