TERRE HAUTE — Mike Lunsford writes like Pete Maravich shot jumpers.
Sometimes, he makes the literary craft seem so simple, effortless, such as a short bankshot, flowing fluidly off the Pistol’s right fingertips. Take this sentence, for example, from one of Mike’s “Sidelines” columns published in the Tribune-Star in the winter of 2002:
“I felt like a winner, but I knew I had lost something, too.”
Moments after his eighth-grade basketball team won a big county tournament, Mike realized an era in his life was ending. His son, a member of the squad, soon would move on to high school. It was time for Mike to pass the torch; he’d coached his last game.
Mike’s longer sentences rivet your attention, just like watching one of Maravich’s long-distance jumpshots spin through the air and into its destination — the bottom of the net. This paragraph from a 2004 “Sidelines” is a journalistic 3-pointer:
“When I think of Larry Bird, I still see his scabbed, knobby knees, his mane of blond hair and that crooked little finger that forced him to shoot a basketball like a dainty old lady drinking properly from a teacup. I see him hitch his already-short shorts up by sliding his thumbs inside his waistband, and I can still see him step back from the free-throw line after a make, wipe the sweat from his face with the back of a forearm and then go back and make another.”
Swish.
Even for folks just mildly fond of Indiana basketball, Mike’s new book, “Sidelines: The Best of the Basketball Stories,” will be a winning read. For those fascinated by the Hoosier pastime, it will be a perfect diversion between games during the hoops season. It will roll off the presses today, containing more than 60 of his best “Sidelines” basketball columns from the pages of the Tribune-Star from 1995 to 2009. Soon, it will be available for purchase.
It’s Mike’s second book. His first Shade Tree Press book, “The Off Season: The Newspaper Stories of Mike Lunsford,” was released last fall and became a popular regional seller.
Those pieces were culled from the writer’s slice-of-life columns, which appear every other Monday in the Trib-Star. He began writing those five years ago. By contrast, his roundball-based “Sidelines” columns began running in 1995. I worked as sports editor back then, and I was looking for a columnist to see beyond the game-night fallout. Mike and I worked together as part-time sports writers years earlier, and even though he was plenty busy now as a high school English and history teacher, I knew he was the perfect candidate.
Swish.
Fourteen years later, his stories — whether on basketball or old boots — have developed a growing, loyal legion of fans.
The new book, by a 53-year-old guy who had a “brief and inglorious career” as a player at Terre Haute North, validates their interest. It includes lots of gems, such as the bittersweet tale of the 1950-51 season, when the Glenn High School Pirates climbed to the state’s No. 2 ranking. Mike’s story details the friendship between Coach Jack Williams and two of his finest players, Oscar Session and Cliff Phillips, that lasted into their adulthood. That team endured controversy and prejudice, because Williams made the then-rare decision to start three black players.
“Those guys turned out to be super guys who never let bitterness from all that happened to them overcome them,” Lunsford said in an interview Tuesday.
Elsewhere in the pages of “Sidelines” is the story of Bernard Gideon, the longtime coach at now-defunct Montezuma High School. Gideon was still at Montezuma when Mike began his teaching career there. The old coach became a trusted source of advice to the young teacher.
Mike also tells the story of his son’s growing feet, speculating that Evan’s shoe boxes could be used to help build a room addition onto their home.
Readers will find out how Mike and his eighth-grade girls basketball team tried, without success, to allow their struggling opponents to score in a lopsided game. Even though his girls vowed to “make them score,” their foes couldn’t drop numerous free throw attempts and lost 40-0. There’s also Mike’s reminiscences about driving through a crisp, clear winter evening, just around sunset, to watch Evan’s high school team play.
“While I was driving, it just struck me — how it was an almost perfect day,” Lunsford said.
It takes a good writer to detect such perfection. Mike proves that knack in “Sidelines.”
Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.
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