After looking at the title of the poem “Ex-Basketball Player,” I assume it is about a former basketball player and his life now. After I read the poem, I find out that John Updike, the author, starts the first paragraph by describing a town. He tells about the trolley tracks and some of the stores, including a plaza and a garage. Then, the author goes on to introduce a character in the poem, Flick Webb, who helps in the garage in town. In the second paragraph, the author explains that Webb used to play for the town’s high school team, the Wizards. The author says, while scoring three hundred and ninety points, Webb was the best on the team. In the third paragraph, it tells how Webb now works in the garage shop. Sometimes he dribbles an inner tube around, but everyone remembers his past glory days on the court. As the poem comes to an end, bringing up the last paragraph, the author tells how Flicker Webb now spends his days. He hangs out at a luncheonette, plays pinball, and smokes thin cigars. Throughout this poem, there are connotations being used, an attitude portrayed, and a shift that occurs in the story being told.…
James Naismith was the creator of basketball. He created it in 1891 to condition young athletes in the winter. The “hoop” was a peach basket and the ball was a soccer styled ball. There were many rules for the new game. He created it in a YMCA gym in Springfield, Massachusetts. His team of eighteen was divided into two teams of nine and then the peach baskets were nailed above their heads. Every time one would score a basket, the game was stopped for the janitor to get up on a ladder and retrieve the ball. Later on, the bottoms of the “hoops” were taken out and they became a (sort of) real basket.…
As the book aims to decode the everyday practices of South Asian American masculinity, each chapter details one segment and experience of sport and leisure. The commitment young South Asian American men have to it demonstrates key elements of social formation and co-ethnic intimacy in a large multi-racial city of Atlanta. Pick-up basketball presents one way to provide different and differential claims to the city. Through intentionally organizing pick-up basketball games, South Asian American basketball players create opportunities to enjoy co-ethnic socializing while putting into place this alternate time and space outside of their busy work and family lives. We see in this chapter the formation of the team Atlanta Outcasts, their early basketball…
Die with fame, not without. A.E. Housman can concur. The poems, “Ex-Basketball Player” by John Updike and “To an Athlete Dying Young” by A.E. Housman both concentrate on what occurs after an athlete’s days of glory. Most of them seek fame, but only a few will achieve it. Their goal is not to die within their days of glory, it is to live on and have their fame live for an eternity. Unfortunately, in today’s society athletes mainly want the monetary success that comes along fame. They quickly become judged by their actions and can be forgotten if they do not reach stardom or fulfill their fame set by the standards of society. Sharing similar themes of adversity and death, the two poems still differ from one another. This causes the authors to…
The movie Hoop Dreams traced a poor young talented African American named Arthur Agee from grade eight to college. Arthur hoped to play professional basketball in the future to help his family to escape poverty. Despite the fact that his family background and the neighborhood he lived in, disadvantaged him to pursue his goal in many ways. Firstly, Arthur is determined to play professional basketball, in order to help out his family. Secondly, his ability to adapt difficult circumstances played a significant role toward his success in basketball. Thirdly, his education value hoping that playing basketball could lead him to a college education. For Author playing basketball, it is not only a fun activity for him, but it also acted as a tool to…
I have always love to play basketball. The swish when you make it just right,and the boom of the basketball hitting the floor “are sounds I love”. When I first started playing basketball, my mom and my couch Richard knew that I was expectational. I played with Richard for a few years, then one day he told us about this newspaper ad he saw for a team named “Eugene Fire”. My mom decided to check it out, so she called the coach, Jim. He said I probably won't make the team, but I believed I could. So I would try anyways.…
For as long as I remember, I have been raised with a basketball hoop. This hoop stood firmly, looking down at the trees secured by patches of cement in my backyard, in my neighborhood, Dorchester. This hoop was my center of faith and tranquility surrounded by gunfires, shattering windows, car alarms. As a girl, I learned not to adventure any place else other than this hoop because going beyond its faded lines on the concrete is an unknown world full of hazards and danger. And when I did cross these seraphic lines, I could sense the bittersweet emotions running throughout the neighborhood, my home.…
During one game of basketball I was making a lot shots. When I was running super fast and one of the players on the green team tripped me and then I slid on my back and on the back of our jerseys the numbers are like the grippy kind so then I go the biggest skin mark on my back and my spine was bleeding but i didn't know it until I got home. But during that whole game my back was hurting so I timed out. I Told coach to check my back because it was hurting the whole game.…
The first game similar to basketball may have been played by the early people of ancient Mexico as early as 500’s. The Mayan people used the decapitated skulls of their enemies as the ball. They also made sacrifices if you did not win the game.…
The first men to ever play basketball were a bit skeptical of the game to begin with, and basketball was seen as just “[a]nother new game” (Fox 15). However, author Larry Fox says, “The game was an immediate success … Word of the game began to spread around the campus. Before long the secretaries found themselves playing in front of an audience of fellow students”…
On the 20th of October, 1998, the world was blessed with a talented basketball player. (That would be me.) Growing up, I didn’t really have reasons to like basketball. My family did not play or have interest in any kind of sport, besides for my father turning on the Lakers game once in a while. So my influence had to come about from a mishap. A mishap I am very thankful for. The television was playing the Lakers game in my living room one night when my attention was caught by an astonishing performance by a player wearing the number 8. Shot after shot he would score with emphasis, scowling after each basket. This player was arguably one of the greatest professional basketball players still to this day, Kobe Bryant. It was at this moment that…
Since I was 7 years old, basketball has played an integral part of my life. I have devoted countless hours to not just a sport, but a passion, an outlet; to the game that I love. When I arrived at Bow Middle School as a fifth grader, my classmates and I would always look up to the 7th and 8th grade middle school basketball teams. Every year during winter carnival, the boys and girls teams would play a game in front of the entire school. Playing in that game became a dream and a goal of mine, but first I would need to make the team. For three years I developed my basketball skills, using my passion for the sport and desire to play in that game as motivation. When tryouts for basketball in 8th grade drew near, I knew I was ready. However a new coach would be at the helm this year. Our new basketball coach was also a coach for the youth football program. This resulted in numerous football…
James Naismith always felt his mission was to improve the way people lived their lives, both athletically and socially (Encyclopedia, Britannica 2012). He was a remarkably versatile and humble man who in 1891 invented a game that is now played by more people than any game in the world (Encyclopedia, Britannica 2012). James Naismith is best known for the invention of the game we call “basketball.” While Naismith did not benefit financially from his invention, he was afforded a glimpse of the game’s potential appeal in 1936 when he attended the Berlin Olympics, where basketball was played as a medal sport for the first time (McPhee, John 2009). He created a sport that is one of my top personal priorities in my life today, without this sport who knows what the world would be like.…
Michael Jordan once said “I’ve failed over and over and over again and that’s why I succeeded.” If you don’t even try in life you will never be successful. When you want to be successful as bad as you want to breathe then you be successful. Success is about developing personal wisdom and competence or what could be called personal mastery in the field you want to succeed in. Nothing is ever impossible to accomplish in life. You have to be determined that you can do the impossible. If you have determination you can overcome the adversities in life.…
Basketball is a game I started very recently. In fact, I was hardly interested in it. The complexity of the game always made me feel like I’d never enjoy being a part of it. However, the game took me by surprise. A lot of my close friends were part of the team and they were so passionate about it. Very recently, in the beginning of 12th grade, my friends coerced me to attend practice. Waking up early morning and running to the gym was literally the worst part of my day.…