Late-Season Report

I'd like to work off a few pounds. That's one of the reasons I'm out there, but at 175, heavier than I've ever been, I'm still bounced around like a beach ball. Almost all of the other noontime basketball players at the Thomas Jefferson Community Center in Arlington outweigh me by 20 or 30 pounds. They'd like to lose weight, too. Yesterday I guarded a guy who easily tipped 250.

Steve picks me in the low post, and I feel the gristle crunching in my spine. He's as big as Alabama. I grab his shoulder, try to push off, but Tony, whom I'm guarding, gets loose.

You never want Tony to score. Others -- Phil, Robby, Charlie -- are unstoppable, their baskets forgivable, not Tony's. He's determined but without skill, rhino-like. Once he was in a coma for a week after an electrical accident on a job site. The doctor wanted to amputate his hands; he had to split open Tony's forearms to relieve the swelling; you can definitely see the scars, but now's not the time to pity him. He'll either score or call a foul. That's the way it is with him. Still, it's better to let him call a foul, so I try to hack him. Then Frank shoulders me off course. Tony scores.

Frank, Vic and I are by far the oldest regulars on court (strangely, we're all 53) except for Clem, who occasionally fills in if we need one more to make 10. Clem played competitive basketball on the Philippines' armed services all-star team in 1951, the year I was born. Clem is 72 and can go -- for one full-court game, anyway -- with players sometimes 50 years younger.

Then there's Kalese, in his early twenties, black stocking cap on his close-shorn skull, a leaper.

Pete, in his late twenties, 6-4, with hands like a juggler, who can spin the ball off the backboard and through the rim while standing right under the net.

Rey, in his thirties, a ball thief who's flat-out fast on a breakaway layup.

A guy about 6-4 who once played for Bowie State. Don't know his name, but he's strong enough to stop me with a single outstretched arm, toll-gate style. Have never had that happen to me before.

Eddie, 41, who plays "so I can eat whatever the hell I want to eat."

The aforementioned Vic, who began playing basketball at "TJ" when he was 29 and now, 24 years later, has an over-the-head two-handed bank shot good for two baskets a game, rain or shine.