Travel Team Read Free Page A

getting stuffed.
    Danny dribbled back to the outside now, desperate to make one in front of him, like this was some test he needed to pass right away, barely looked at the basket before he turned and swished one.
    â€œThat better?”
    â€œNot better form,” Richie said. “Better on account of, it went in.”
    His dad moved out of the shadows from the back door then. Danny thought his dad could still pass for an older kid himself, with his white T-shirt hanging out of his jeans, low-cut white Iverson sneakers, untied. And, Danny could see he still had those sad, sad eyes going for him, as if he weren’t watching the world with them, just some sad old movie.
    Same old, same old, Danny thought.
    Richie was limping slightly, just because he’d limped slightly for Danny’s whole life. Moving like an old man, not just because of his knees, but because of the plate in his shoulder, and his rebuilt hip, the one he used to tell Danny the doctors made for him out of Legos, and all the rest of it.
    â€œAnything new with you?” his dad said.
    And just by the way he said it, trying to make it sound casual, like he was making an effort to start a conversation, Danny knew his mom must have told him about travel.
    Danny stood there, twirling the ball, wanting to hug the non-hugger, and then he couldn’t help himself.
    He started crying all over again.

    The tears seemed to throw his dad off, like Danny had thrown a pass he wasn’t expecting.
    Even then, Richie Walker wanted to talk about basketball.
    They sat in two of the folding chairs.
    His dad said, “You still do the one I showed you?”
    â€œThe one where I tape the bottom of my sunglasses and try to dribble through everything without looking down?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œI raised the bar a little,” Danny said. “Sometimes I put a do-rag over my eyes and try to do it completely blindfolded.”
    He actually saw his dad smiling then. Though Richie Walker could manage to do that without anything different happening with his eyes.
    â€œSo did I,” Richie said. “Except we didn’t call them do-rags, we called them bandanas.”
    He picked up the ball in his big hands. Danny was always fascinated by his father’s hands, just because they didn’t seem to go with the rest of him. Like somebody with a tiny head and Dumbo’s ears.
    Big hands. Huge hands. And those long arms that the writers used to say Richie Walker had borrowed from somebody 6-6 or 6-7; in one of the old stories he’d read, Danny couldn’t remember where, one of his dad’s old teammates with the Warriors had said, “Richie Walker is the only little 5-10 white man had to reach up to zipper his pants.”
    He had been listed at 5-10 in his playing days, anyway.
    But his dad had said that was only if you counted the lifts in his sneakers.
    Danny watched as his dad—without even trying, almost not aware he was doing it, like somebody not knowing they were cracking their knuckles—dribbled the ball on the right side of his chair, took the ball behind him, keeping the low dribble, picking it up with his left hand on the other side, finishing the routine by spinning the ball on his left index finger before putting it back in his lap.
    â€œYour mom already told me what happened,” he said.
    Danny said, “I figured.”
    â€œThey still do the tryouts the way they did in the old days—two nights?”
    Danny nodded. “The dads running the twelves can’t have one of their own sons trying out. There were, like, six of them doing the evaluation. Mr. Ross didn’t get to do any evaluating because of Ty, but he was in the gym the whole time.”
    â€œJust in case they needed somebody to explain basketball,” Richie said.
    Jeffrey Ross was the president of the Middletown Savings Bank. President of the Middletown Chamber of Commerce. President of Middletown Basketball. Danny had