The entire DW Team – Editorial, Research and Development, HR, Accounts Receivable/Accounts Payable, Creative, Custodial – has had to take a mental knee twice this dreary month, first at the passing of Wes Unseld, 74, from pneumonia, then at the loss last week of Jim Kiick, 73, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s.

Quite a blow, as both men were influential in the youth of the DW co-founders.

Wes Unseld was Rookie of the Year for the Washington Bullets in 1968-69, the beginning of a 12-straight-years playoff run and the organization’s only NBA championship, over the Seattle SuperSonics in 1978.

He was 6-foot-7 and 245 pounds, but what he lacked in height and athletic ability at center he made up with remarkable willpower and physical toughness and want-to. He landed in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1988 after duking it out with more gifted centers like Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone, Tree Rollins, Bob Lanier, and Darryl Dawkins. He’s the greatest player in the history of the franchise, which changed its name to the Wizards in 1997.

His career averages for 13 seasons are 10.8 points and 14 rebounds a game. When the Bullets won it all in 1978, he was the team’s seventh-leading scorer. Like Bill Russell and in many ways like Dennis Rodman, he could dominate without scoring.

I have only one in-person Wes Unseld story. He was coaching the Bullets in the late 1980s when they played a preseason or exhibition game against the Jazz in the Superdome. After the game, as a sportswriter for The Times-Picayune, I opened the door to the office that led to the visitor’s locker room.

Wes Unseld, a broad man and demanding presence, had his jacket off, was sitting on the side of the desk talking to an assistant and smoking a menthol cigarette as long as the foul line. He had to have had someone else light it for him because no way he could have reached the tip. He heard the door, looked me in the eyes, smiled very kindly, and said, “I’ve got 10 minutes cooling off period. The League gives us that.” “See you then,” I said.

He might have said 15 minutes: I can’t remember for sure. Ten or 15. If he’d have said an hour, I’d have come back in two. If he’d have said he had a cooling off period until next Tuesday, I’d have reached out the next Wednesday. Probably by phone.

Big man. But that night, a nice man. Kind to a young sportswriter. I thank him for that good memory.

Jim Kiick had been living in an assisted living center, but in the 1970s, he was living it up. He was part of a famous backfield — Larry Csonka, Kiick, and Mercury Morris — that were the flash of the Miami Dolphins back-to-back Super Bowl champs in 1972-73. Csonka and Kiick were called Butch and Sundance after the 1969 movie starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

No personal Kiick memory to call on here. I just remember being pumped when I got their book in 1974, Always on the Run, by Csonka and Kiick as told to New York sportswriter/columnist Dave Anderson. When Csonka talked, the print was straight, like this. Then when Kiick talked, it was in italics, like this. I think that’s how they started the book.

“I’m Larry Csonka. This is me, in regular type.”

“And this is me, Jim Kiick, in italics.”

In real life, they were bold.

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Ran first in The Times and The News-Star, June 21, 2020

For no reason, I grabbed a scrapbook off a shelf. Just like that, it was Springtime ’99 again.

I say “for no reason” but there was a reason. Many of you have been on Quarantine Time Zoom calls; if not, imagine looking at your laptop and seeing the old Hollywood Squares television show, except you and people you work with are in the boxes, talking to each other remotely.

Now and then the discussion will wander or you’re not needed and you will become something of a Zoom Call Nomad or get a case of the Zoom Call Blues. The ashen, disinterested face in the box is a true-blue characteristic of your basic Zoom Call Nomad, who will sometimes just walk away and leave the rest of the team looking at an empty chair.

I was in this state of Zoom Call Wandering when I reached for the closest book, which by great luck was a scrapbook my 10-year-old Little League team and parents put together for me, the “coach.” Gold.

Turned a page and there they were, 21 years or, for them, more than two lifetimes ago: Papa Joe. The Big Fig. Chuckie Cheese. Regis. Lukie. The Real McCoy. The BrynMan of First Base. Obes.

These were my guys. This was the official roster:

David Allbritton 21

Casey Allen 5

Lewis Billingsley 14

Jonathan Bryn 1

Aubry Carmody 17

Connor Carpenter 14

Holden Martin 2

Trence McCoy 6

Matthew Newton 10

Charles Pettitt 3

Luke Wagnon 25

Evan Wilburn 7

We were the Cubs, blue jerseys and caps and gray pants because I didn’t want somebody to wear white pants and me be able to see their Flintstones underwear. Besides, grays are easier for moms on the go to wash.

Whether or not there is big league baseball this summer, I don’t care. I have tried to care less, and failed. It hurts me mostly for minor leaguers trying to make a club and not having the opportunity. Hurt me a lot more that Little Boy Baseball was wiped out, which washed away the springtime opportunity like we had, thoughtfully captured in this priceless book by the players and parents back in ’99.

Besides the pictures and personal notes and two-page spreads, one dedicated to each player, something fell out I’d typed and printed and stuck in here in 2004, five years after that fun spring, a spring much different from the one we just limped through.

“Major League Baseball held its Home Run Derby tonight, and tomorrow will be the annual All Star Game. But much closer to home and to heart, at least to mine, is a special group I’m remembering…

“I knew they’d get bigger, but I’m not sure I was ready for them to get this big this quickly …

“These are the 1999 Shreveport Little League Cubs. They were all 10-years-old that spring. That means by now, 2004, they can no longer play Little League. Too old.

“It’s hard to believe you can be 15 and be too old to do anything. Life’s like that.

“Some are still baseball players. Some play lacrosse or football. Golf. Tennis. Some are in 4-H. But in the spring of 1999, they were Cubs, and they were baseball men.

“They/we — me and “Coach Scott” and “Coach Mike” — finished second in the league that year. Could not beat the Mighty Braves. Tied them once but finished second to them in the regular season and in the postseason tournament. Not long after that, we took the team and anyone else who wanted to go to Arlington to play a game in Dr Pepper Park, then walked across the parking lot in dirty uniforms to see the Rangers play. It is illegal how much fun we had.

“If you live with a Little Leaguer, love every second of it. Don’t miss a pitch. They’ll be Big League Boys before you know it…”

All these guys are just that now. But back then they were little baseball men. They gave me one of the most fun summers of my life. And I’ll always love them for that.

Didn’t start off that way though. First day of practice, there was a demand, followed by a dicey discussion, about how they had to wear protective cups or not play. Now, many of them are husbands, and some may be celebrating their first Father’s Day as the official honoree this Sunday.

You boys can thank me and Mr. Protective Cup for the tough love later. Meanwhile, keep smokin’ ’em high and tight.

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