There was no dramatic scene in which the officer had his medals and epaulets ripped from his uniform before his troops. There was no palace coup or breaking news alert from the networks.
You’d think for all the volume and bluster that goes with this unofficial title that the transition would be loud and boisterous. Nope. It was quieter, like the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.
Our Head Yardbarker, our Court Jester, the Town Crier of the Eastside YMCA morning basketball game, our Wizard of Wisecracks had been succeeded. A tough-minded city kid turned referee, Randy Lockhart, abandoned us for a retirement community in Florida with its culture wars, warm weather and pickleball mania. Fear not. He was replaced by a quick gun from the East, the white Steve Urkel of Utica, a Gilbert Gottfried in gym shorts – Jimmy Nunn.
Lockhart had served us well. He was the master needler among the devoted 30- and 40-somethings, even guys my age, who play basketball two mornings a week at 6 a.m. Dunks are non-existent and fast breaks are rare, but they talk junk on every possession. A sampling of Lockhart’s work:
- “Your shot resembles a scud missile.’’
- “For guys your age, they don’t have laces, they have Velcro.”
- And the best cut of all, aimed at a turnover-prone point guard named Randy Johnson. “You should change your name to Rany Ohnson. You got no ‘D’ and no ‘J.’ ”
But there’s a new sheriff in town. At 6-foot, 160 pounds, Nunn’s mouth seemingly writes checks his body can’t cash, but he chirps anyway. He narrated his best calls:
- “The only thing uglier than your shot is your wife.’’ (I said that to a good friend, whose wife is both a sweetheart, and a stunner. You gotta really know your audience on that one.)
- “You wanna hold me like that, you gotta buy me dinner first.’’
- “When an opponent yells ‘I’m open!,’ I respond: ‘That’s our strategy.’ ‘’
- “Maybe my favorite, when someone is really playing terribly, ‘How did you get in this game? Is this a Make a Wish deal?’ ”
The barbs aren’t intended to be cruel; they add humor to the pickup game. My wife told me we talk like teen-age boys. I agreed. But here’s the difference. If a teen-age boy gets in another player’s face or talks junk, it’s an automatic technical foul. In the pros, trash talk spares no topic, no momma or nobody. Among us, it’s a game within our game.
Nunn said he felt honored by the title.
“I wisecrack,’’ Nunn explained. “That means saying something designed to get laughs from the individual or the group. Sometimes, it may be to send a message. If someone is grabbing, hacking, etc., I may say ‘I thought the coach pulls you before you pick up your fourth foul.’ That is a nice way to send a message to quit hacking me!”
“I’m a fairly newbie at this Y, only been here four years. So to go into a run where guys had been together for years, and slowly test the room, and eventually become King Wiseass, is one of my proudest accomplishments.’’
“There’s an unwritten code for the new guy in the run, especially if you want to be accepted as a regular,’’ Nunn said. “Never argue the score, never argue a call, don’t call a foul unless it’s blatant, pass way more than shoot, hustle, and shut up.’’
At 66, he has been playing since grade school. When 40 guys tried out for the freshman team at powerhouse Utica Notre Dame, Nunn felt fortunate to make the cut.
“My dad, a wonderful, funloving man, made a rare intervention,’’ Nunn recalled. “He reminded me that if I wanted to get into a good college, I needed to make money to help with tuition and have a good resume.’’
“Since I would have been 15th man on the squad, I quit the team right after making it, got a part time job, and joined the debate team.’’
“There was a pic in our yearbook. It was the school finals for the intramural title. I actually made that shot, and our team did win the intramural title.’’
Debate team? Hmm? He hasn’t stopped talking since.
He parlayed his intellect into a Bachelor of Arts from Georgetown and an MBA from Cornell. He holds a position as a business manager for a plastics firm. All along, he continued to play hoops.
He honed his wisecracks at a different YMCA as game organizer and dispenser of nicknames:
- The guy with the horrible hairpiece became “Hair Club for Men.’’
- The guy who resembled character Mel Cooley (actor Richard Deacon) from The Dick Van Dyke Show was shortened to “Mel.’’
- The three guys named Dan were distinguished as “Irish Dan’’ (shamrock tattoo), “Fireman Dan’’ (his occupation) and “Cadillac Dan’’ (worked at a car dealership).
- A 65-year-old shooter from Morristown became the “Geriatric Chucker.’’
Jimmy dishes it out, but he can take it too. I once dismissed his chatter as Nunn-sense. That didn’t affect his pointed recap of splitting a recent morning doubleheader.
“We lost the second game. Hey, they had the youngest, quickest player in the gym. And our big man was hobbled by a sore calf. We won game one because (Steph Curry wannabe) was firing up ill-advised, long-range jumpers like his life depended on it. He went 0-for-8. Or as I call it, ‘The Full Holleran. ’ ”
Nunn-sense.
Morristown native Jim Holleran is a retired teacher and sports editor from Rochester. Reach him at jimholleran29@gmail.com or view past columns under “Reflections of River Rat’’ at https://hollerangetsitwrite.com/blog/
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