May 4, 2023. Random events sometimes cohere in a way that makes them seem natural, as if a narrator isn’t necessary to give them meaning—to redeem our suffering, in other words, to see the slaughterbench of history as a glimpse of grace on hold, waiting for us to live up to it by living through it. Here’s one of those moments, which strings together two early mornings on the uptown 2 Train, March 20th and May 4th, 2023. On March 20, I encountered a woman who can’t be any taller than 5’ 3” saying that her “slow legs” kept her climbing the stairs at my crippled but cane-enabled pace, and claiming that her disability was a result of playing professional basketball 40 years ago. I was dubious, but she mentioned Dean Meminger and the New York Stars.
This morning she greeted me again, but I didn’t recognize her—she still wore a mask. She had shed the oversize coat, and wore surgical blues and a hospital-looking ID badge. “You don’t recognize me, do you?” Uh, no, I said, I’m sorry. “Saw you on this train a while back, remember, I’m the basketball player.” Oh yeah, and I didn’t get your name! “Janice Thomas. Look me up in Slam Magazine, oh-eight.” You headed for the methadone clinic? “Yeah, I work there, ‘bout to retire.” Well, it’s a pleasure, Janice Thomas, I’ll look you up. I did. Here she is in Slam. Behind her are the projects that loom over Lenox/MX below 116th Street.
My post from Facebook, March 20: At 5:38 this morning, I was riding the 2 Train uptown from 96th Street, for once sitting down because we'd been held at the station for a few minutes. I noticed a diminutive figure across from me, also sitting, wearing a multi-colored mask, a drab green coat way too big for the body beneath it, probably Army surplus, fingerless gloves, earbuds in, bopping to a phone the size of a 60s paperback with gold gilt edges. The eyes caught me staring at the device and the eyebrows jumped, just about erasing the forehead left between them and the watch cap. There was a smile widening under that mask, I could tell, so I nodded.
We got off together at 125th. This person was about half my size and limping as badly, so we reached the stairs ready to race. "I got slow legs, too," she said, clumping up opposite me, "was all that basketball and runnin' the streets."
Yeah, where'd you play, I said, skeptically, meanwhile leveraging the cane with my left hand at two steps above my right foot. "The New York Stars, with Dean Meminger, the first women's basketball league, you old enough to remember them?" I nodded again, yeah, I remember. "I played all over Europe, too."
By now she was breathing hard: we were standing on the sidewalk above the station across from Whole Foods, turning away from the floodlights at Wells Fargo, where the Lenox Lounge once stood. She was headed for the rehab/methadone clinic on 124th, kitty corner from Harlem Shake. Take care, I said, and she smiled again, I think, and waved goodbye as she crossed Lenox.
There is no team picture of the New York Stars, who won the Women's Basketball League championship in 1979, coached by Dean Meminger.