ON BASKETBALL

	March 27, 2000
	And, Robert Pinsky, a basketball fan by night and poet laureate of the United States by day, explores the poetry of basketball.

Watching the athletes in the NCAA tournament --passionate, disciplined, gifted, sometimes with the faces of children, often amazingly strong or big--it's possible to wonder what if feels like to have their powers, to be one of those prodigies. About a very tall player, we might wonder what it feels like to be that unavoidably prominent, that vulnerable to notice. The late William Matthews tried to imagine what it was like to be such a player, in particular the spectacular center Moses Malone. Here is a passage from William Matthews' poem "In Memory of the Utah Stars": Each of them must have terrified his parents by being so big, obsessive and exact so young, already gone and leaving, like a big tipper, that huge changeling's body in his place. The prince of bone spurs and bad knees. The year I first saw them play Malone was a high school freshman, already too big for any bed, 14 a natural resource. You have to learn not to apologize, a form of vanity. You flare up in the lane, exotic anywhere else. You roll the ball off fingers twice as long as your girlfriend's. Great touch for a big man, says some jerk. Good luck to the athletes, and good viewing to us who like to watch them. May they play well and may we not be jerks.