Ultimate Sports Page 7

  That doesn’t keep Uncle Joe from talking about his job, though. He talks about it every chance he gets. “My philosophy is simple,” he says, his face set in a fake scowl. “I look out for number one.” He pokes himself on his chest for effect. “But I also look out for number two.” Then he laughs, a big deep-chested laugh. “Get it? Number one and number two! You know, tinkle and poop! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

  I’ve heard this joke at least one hundred times in my life.

  “Number one and number two! Get it? Ha! Ha! Ha!”

  Don’t misunderstand. I like Uncle Joe. My dad runs a dairy farm for Carnation milk. By the end of the day he’s too tired to do anything but lie on the sofa and read the newspaper. So if I want to go fishing or hiking, or if I want to shoot hoops or play football, it’s Uncle Joe I ask. Uncle Joe is never too tired, never too busy. He always has a smile on his face. I just wish he’d come up with some new jokes and that Cindy didn’t smell so bad.

  • • •

  I’d finished my final class one rainy afternoon last November. I was heading for home with my two best friends, Dinky Barnes and J. P. Jones, when I spotted Uncle Joe’s big brown work van pulling up in front of school. I hustled over. “What’s up, Uncle Joe?”

  “Can’t talk about it, Joey,” he snapped as he strode up the pathway and into the school’s main office. “Wish I could, but I can’t.” It was the first time in my life Uncle Joe hadn’t had time to talk to me.

  “What was that about?” Dinky asked me.

  I shrugged. “He wouldn’t say. It seems like an emergency, though.”

  J.P.’s eyes widened. “You don’t think there’s anything wrong with the school’s water, do you?”

  Dinky thought for a second. “I thought the water was sort of brown today, didn’t you?”

  “Brown?” J.P. and I said at the same time.

  “Not pure brown. Sort of a yellow brown. I figured it was rust in the pipes, but now I wonder.”

  I almost threw up.

  Uncle Joe, as usual, came breezing into our house at dinnertime that same day. “Joey, my boy! Mary, my sister!” he shouted, really excited.

  My mom and I rushed out to the front room to meet him. My dad, sprawled out on our sofa, hid his head behind the newspaper.

  It’s hard to say how my father feels about Uncle Joe. He doesn’t dislike him, but he doesn’t like him either. Tolerates is probably the word, though ignores would work too.

  “I got the job!” Uncle Joe shouted, and he grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me hard.

  “Great!” I hollered. “What job?”

  “I’m going to be your wrestling coach! That’s why I was at the high school today! What I couldn’t talk about!”

  I smiled, not so much because Uncle Joe was my coach, but more out of relief to learn that I hadn’t spent the day sipping sewer water.

  From behind his newspaper, my father grumbled. “What do you know about coaching wrestling?”

  Uncle Joe looked hurt. “What do I know about wrestling? Harry, how can you ask? Once I told Mr. Popup—”

  “Mr. Poppel,” I interrupted.

  “That’s what I said, Joey. Mr. Popup, your principal. Anyway, once I told him about my experience in San Francisco, he sent the other applicants packing.”

  My father lowered his newspaper and actually looked at Uncle Joe. “You don’t mean that crazy job you had as timekeeper for Big-Time Wrestling, do you? You can’t possibly think that’s experience.”

  “And why not?” Uncle Joe answered. “For three years I was like this”—he clasped his hands together—“with the finest wrestlers in the world. Ray Stevens, Pat Patterson, Pepper Gomez, Bobo Brazil, the Sheik, Haystack Calhoun.”

  My father looked from me to my mother. “Somebody tell him,” he spluttered. “Mary? Joey? Tell him.”

  “Tell me what?” Uncle Joe demanded.

  “Uncle Joe,” I said softly. “High-school wrestling is different from professional wrestling.”

  He waved that off. “I know that, Joey. You’re kids. So I won’t expect the same level of professionalism. I’m not stupid. Still”—now he turned to my father—“those men taught me tricks that I can pass on to the boys.” He smiled. “With me coaching, we might take the state title this year.”

  My father ducked his head behind the newspaper again, but I heard him chortle.

  Late that night I sneaked down into the living room and turned the television to Big-Time Wrestling. The Masked Marauder was doing battle with Pretty Boy Lloyd. They pounded, punched, flipped, tripped, kicked, leg-whipped, and bit one another for ten minutes. Finally the Masked Marauder whacked Pretty Boy over the head with a folding chair, ran his head into a steel pole, body-slammed him, then flopped on top of him. “One! Two! Three!” the ref counted. The Marauder popped to his feet, gave Pretty Boy a final kick in the head, then punched the air with both fists as the crowd roared its approval.

  I flicked the television off and sat in the dark trying to think of one thing I’d seen that was legal in high-school wrestling. I came up empty.

  • • •

  Wrestling tryouts were Monday. Uncle Joe showed up decked out in a purple Adidas warm-up outfit with a white stripe that went down the sleeve and then matched up with another stripe coming up the leg. He had on a purple headband and purple wristbands. The lettermen exchanged glances.

  Uncle Joe motioned the fifty or so of us who were turning out to come close. “My name is Joe Milligan. You probably know I’m Joey’s uncle. My philosophy is simple: I look out for number one.” He paused, and in that second I wanted to run away and never come back. But before I could, he went on. “I also look out for number two. See, I work at the sewage plant. Get it?” he said. “Tinkle and poop! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

  Amazingly, most of the guys laughed. So I laughed too. Ha! Ha! Ha! Maybe it was funny—for the first time.

  Uncle Joe waved his hands. “Now, let’s get to work,” he said, and then he looked to me. “Joey, where’s the ring?” He saw the blank look on my face. “You know, three ropes that go around four poles. You wrestle inside it.” He snapped his fingers. “Come on, Joey, get with the picture!”

  I didn’t know what to say. “Uncle Joe, we wrestle on a mat.”

  “Of course you wrestle on a mat. I didn’t think you wrestled on cement. But you still need a ring around the mat, don’t you? How can you learn Bombs Away without ropes?”

  I could feel my teammates’ eyes on me—even J.P. and Dinky were staring at me. They were hoping Uncle Joe was joking, but they were afraid he was just plain nuts.

  “You—You don’t understand, Uncle Joe,” I stammered. “There are no ropes in high-school wrestling. We just wrestle on a mat.”

  He was incredulous. “No ropes? No ring?”

  I shook my head. “Just a mat.” I pointed to the mat we were standing on. “This mat.”

  Uncle Joe looked down. “This mat?”

  I thought for a second that he might quit on the spot, but I should have known better. Nothing keeps Uncle Joe down for long. “Well, if the school can’t afford a decent ring, it can’t afford a decent ring. We’ll just have to get along the best we can.”

  He paced back and forth a few times, then cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, before we go any farther, I want to be clear about my feelings on sportsmanship.” He stopped and looked us over. “I’m for it! One hundred percent! If the ref says ’Break clean!’ I want to see a clean break. No punching in the throat, no poking in the eyes.

  “But I’m no fool. No sirree Bob. I’m no fool. If they mess with us, we mess with them. So here is my first lesson. Come up here, Joey.”

  Knees wobbling, I stood and faced him.

  Uncle Joe looked to the other wrestlers. “Let’s say on the first break Joey here whacked you a good one in the throat. Here’s what you do. On the next break, you hold your hands up all innocent until, quick as a wink”—here he grabbed my hair—“you pull straight down and pop the jerk in the forehead with your knee
. Pow!”

  Ty Horton, district champion at 132 pounds, jumped to his feet. “Nobody does stuff like that! The ref would disqualify you for the season!”

  Uncle Joe gave him a look full of pity. “Oh, but they do, young man. They do. And refs let it go. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.”

  Horton stared at Uncle Joe. “I won’t be wrestling this year,” he finally muttered, and then he walked off the mat.

  Tuesday, only twenty-seven guys showed up for practice. Uncle Joe noticed. “Got some more quitters, I see. Well, good riddance to bad rubbish. Besides, with fewer guys I’ll be able to teach you more—and quicker. Joey, come up here again. The rest of you, gather round.

  “The great Kenji Shibuya taught me this move. First you get your opponent in a headlock.” Uncle Joe squeezed my head between his ribs and his elbows. “Then—and this is the tricky part—you find the nerve below the ear that connects to the heart or the brain or somewhere. If you massage it just right…poof…your opponent falls asleep. Out like a baby. Then you flop on him for the easy pin!”

  For the next minute Uncle Joe squeezed my head and rubbed my neck with the thumb on his left hand. “You feeling tired, Joey?” he asked.

  “A little,” I mumbled.

  He massaged for another minute. I thought I could smell sewage on his clothes.

  “How about now?” he asked.

  “I’m feeling a little queasy,” I mumbled.

  Uncle Joe released me. “See? It works! Just listen to your uncle Joe, boys, and we’ll do great.”

  Wednesday he showed us how to go into a trance like the Sheik. Thursday he used a cantaloupe to demonstrate Bobo Brazil’s dreaded Cocoa Butt. Friday he described the Bill Melby-Ray Stevens match.

  “Talk about profiles in courage! That match was one for the ages. It was a grudge match—bad blood on both sides. We put a barbed-wire fence around the ring. Early on, Bill snatched my timekeeper’s bell and banged Ray over the head with it. Bill paid for it later, though, because at the end of the match Ray raked his face over the barbed wire.

  “Once the match ended, I took my girlfriend Daisy backstage.” Uncle Joe stopped and pulled a white purse with dark spots on it from his equipment bag. “Bill was bleeding bad, but he still took time to autograph her purse. That’s the kind of class he had. ’Best wishes, Bill,’ it says right here. When we broke up, Daisy gave me this purse. She knew how much it would mean to me.” Uncle Joe stared long and hard at the spotted white purse with the scrawled signature. It was the closest to tears I’d ever seen him.

  By the end of that practice, we were down to ten wrestlers—all freshmen and sophomores. I think even Dinky and J.R might have quit if they hadn’t been my best friends. Uncle Joe, as usual, looked on the bright side. “With ten it will be easy to figure out tag team partners.”

  • • •

  Saturday morning I talked to my mom. “Let’s go to the library,” she said. “Maybe we could find a book to give Uncle Joe. He can be a little goofy sometimes, but he’s not stupid.”

  “He’s not?” I asked.

  “Not completely,” she replied.

  The book we found was entitled Better Wrestling for Boys. It explained the basic rules and had lots of pictures. When Uncle Joe stopped by for lunch that afternoon, my mother put the book on the kitchen table by his plate. He didn’t notice it. He was about to leave when I sucked up my courage. “Uncle Joe,” I said, holding the book out to him, “I think you should read this book.”

  He smiled. “A wrestling book? Joey, my boy, I don’t need to read about wrestling. I’ve lived it.”

  I looked to my mother. “Please, Joe,” she said. “Sit down on the sofa and read a few pages.”

  He shrugged. “Okay. Though I don’t see why.”

  As he read, his lips straightened and his forehead wrinkled. After ten minutes of concentrated study, he looked up. “You really wrestle this way, Joey?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, Uncle Joe, we really do.”

  “No sleeper holds? No Cocoa Butts? No tag teams?”

  “No, Uncle Joe. And no airplane rides, no body slams, no trances either.”

  He went to the front door and opened it. Only then did he turn back. “Well, I’m glad I know. I’d have to find out sooner or later. But this breaks my heart, Joey. I won’t deny it.”

  I know now how parents feel when their children discover there is no Santa Claus.

  • • •

  I’ve got to hand it to Uncle Joe: He did his homework. He started Monday’s practice by explaining the double-leg takedown from the neutral position. All week he kept with it—breakdowns, tie-ups, pinning combinations, escapes, reversals. He was coaching real wrestling, and he was doing okay too.

  The problem was that in Washington there are thirteen weight classifications. So with ten wrestlers we couldn’t even field a full team. At every meet we’d have to forfeit three matches. Each forfeit would hand our opponents six points. We’d start out down eighteen points. That’s a steep hole for any team to climb out of. And we weren’t just any team. We were a lousy team.

  I’d never actually wrestled in a meet. Neither had Dinky or J.P. We were the guys the good wrestlers pinned in practice. But we were all-league compared to our teammates. None of them had ever wrestled anywhere, except maybe with their moms when they were little. All the experienced wrestlers had quit.

  Uncle Joe wasn’t worried. The day of our first meet, he told us to think big. “Every single one of you is capable of winning!” We let out a throaty roar and charged into the wrestling room. Two hours later we silently slunk out. We hadn’t won a match, let alone the meet. Monroe had clobbered us 69-0.

  “Don’t get discouraged!” Uncle Joe boomed the next day at practice. “We’ll get better. You wait and see!”

  Before the Snohomish meet Uncle Joe told us our goal was to win three-fourths of our matches. We lost 68-0. Our goal for the Tolt meet was to win half of our matches. Tolt took us 69-0. Next our goal was to win two matches. 70-0. Then it was for someone, somehow, to manage a draw. 72-0. After that the losses piled up like homework: 70-0, 73-0, 71-0, 68-0. On and on and on. Uncle Joe never gave up, but for the rest of us the only goal left was to get through the season.

  And we were almost through it, too, when the article appeared in the Sultan News. The headline was “A Team for the Ages.” The story was supposed to be funny. The writer had discovered that no wrestling team had ever gone an entire season without scoring at least one point. With one match left in the season—and that match against the unbeaten Seattle High Roughriders—we were about to make history. My vote goes to Joe Milligan for Coach of the Year, the writer ended. Think what this man has accomplished in one year!

  My father chortled as he read the article.

  “It’s not funny, Dad,” I snapped.

  “Come on, Joey,” he replied. “Don’t take yourself so seriously. And when I think how your uncle Joe stood right here in this room and said that with him as coach, you guys might take the state.” He put the paper down and laughed so hard tears came to his eyes and he had to blow his nose.

  At practice the next day Uncle Joe, his face ashen, stood before us. There was no sparkle in his eyes. “It’s my fault,” he said, his voice dead. “I’ve made you the laughingstocks of the town. I thought I could help, but…” He stopped and bowed his head.

  It was Dinky who spoke up. “Don’t blame yourself, Coach. It’s not your fault we stink.”

  Immediately Uncle Joe’s spine straightened and color returned to his cheeks. “Don’t ever put yourselves down,” he snapped. “And don’t ever quit.” I could feel his spirit revive. “I’m not going to quit.” He made his right hand into a fist. “I’ll come up with something. We’ll show everyone. Trust Uncle Joe.”

  He hardly spoke that afternoon. As we practiced, we could see him thinking. His forehead was furrowed; he bit his thumbnail; his eyes stared off into space. Then, just before practice e
nded, he snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it!” he boomed out.

  “What?” we called out in one voice. “What? What? What?”

  Uncle Joe smiled mysteriously. “You’ll see tomorrow,” he answered. “I want to surprise you.”

  • • •

  The surprise was Cindy. When we emerged from the locker room, we saw her sitting in the center of the mat.

  The guys, disappointed, looked to me. I took a deep breath. “Uncle Joe,” I asked, “how is a mascot going to help us wrestle better?”

  He stared at me in disbelief. “A mascot? Cindy is not a mascot. Cindy is here to teach you to become better wrestlers.”

  I still didn’t get it. Nobody did. “How is she going to teach us, Uncle Joe?”

  “You’re going to wrestle against her, of course. How else could she teach you? Did you think she could talk or something?”

  My face fell. “Uncle Joe, we can’t wrestle a dog.”

  “Why not!” Uncle Joe bellowed. “Tuffy Truesdale wrestled an alligator. Willie Pappas wrestled a bear. They were better wrestlers for it. You’ll learn a lot wrestling Cindy, Joey. Trust me.”

  So for the next three days we took turns wrestling Cindy. She turned out to be a tough customer too. She squirmed like crazy, slobbered everywhere, and growled ferociously. Whenever she was close to being pinned, she passed gas, sometimes right in your face. It was like wrestling a skunk. By the end of practice on Friday, I think we were almost looking forward to taking on Seattle High.

  Saturday morning at ten the team met Uncle Joe in the Sultan High parking lot. We were going to pile into his van for the drive to Seattle. He brought Cindy, of course. “I couldn’t leave my assistant coach,” he joked.

  Uncle Joe had us take our uniforms out of our equipment bags and lay them out on the floor in the back of the van. “I know your moms have cleaned and ironed them. They’ll get wrinkled and end up smelling like your underpants if you keep them stuffed in your bags. I don’t want those Seattle kids to think we’re a bunch of hayseeds.”

  As soon as he pulled out of the parking lot, Uncle Joe started singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” at the top of his lungs. “Come on,” he yelled out, “let’s show some spirit!”