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By
Dick Cerasuolo
Patriot League basketball has been literarily
turned upside down. John Feinstein, who focused on Bobby
Knight in A Season on the Brink, portrays the NCAA's
meekest league
in the soft glow of a halo in The Last Amateurs.
Feinstein
doesn't belittle the triple A affiliates of the NBA. He just snubs the Big
East, Big 10 and ACC, the royal families of the hardwood, and crowns the student-athletes
of the Patriot League the true kings of hearts. "I enjoyed the competitive
nature of the league and enjoyed knowing that I was watching kids who would
be in class
the next day,'' says Feinstein,
a former Washington Post staffer who has become the successful author
of 12 books. When I did a book on the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) a few
years ago (A March to Madness)," he adds, "I was watching pros
in training-that's what they were there for, playing basketball. If they could
work in a little school on the side, they did. That's not the case in the Patriot
League.''
Yet, the Patriot League, he found, still has its share of memorable players.
The court jester and true prince of it all is Holy Cross' Chris Spitler '00.
Feinstein was so captivated by Spitler and his hilarious analysis of his role
in the college game, that he makes him the most endearing catalyst in the book.
Spitler is one of the 17 seniors on the Patriot League rosters of the 1999-2000
season lovingly chronicled in The Last Amateurs.
Feinstein notes that this assignment had only one minus: reaching Hamilton, N.Y.,
home of Colgate University, in the winter. "I can honestly say, except for a
few moments driving through the snow to get in and out of Hamilton, that I enjoyed
every minute of it. I enjoyed everyone I met, not just the players, but the coaches,
the SIDs (sports information directors)-even
Mastrandrea,'' jokes Feinstein; Frank Mastrandrea '88 is the assistant athletic
director at Holy Cross. "I made a lot of friends in the course of researching
this book.''
And, in Spitler, Feinstein may very well have created a Cousy-like hero. Spitler
set no records, won no NCAA titles and never apprenticed in the NBA (he is, however,
in the big bucks league interning at Goldman Sachs); he just put a shine on the
term "student-athlete."
That
is what Feinstein's book does: it elevates the true college athlete in much the
same way as his deservedly acclaimed A Civil War treatise on
the Army-Navy rivalry showcased college football and those who play
it at the unknown outposts. A Civil War made this book possible.
The
Last Amateurs is about the kids who aren't auditioning for the NBA, kids
who aren't using the TV cameras to primp for the draft. They are players, though,
and in Feinstein's portrayal, they are the true knights of this crusade. He said
he thought of doing his book on the Ivy League but as
Alan Childs, Lafayette's faculty representative said to him, the Ivy League
is "reputationally endowed.''
Feinstein conceived the idea for this book after attending a summer camp where
college
coaches gathered like buyers at a meat auction. He called it a book "that would
allow me to be around college basketball without feeling as if I needed a three-hour
shower every time I walked out of an arena.''
The
Last Amateurs is a stroll in a summer rain. It's that refreshing. Yet, selling
it to Little Brown took his previous successes and some filibustering, as well
as Feinstein's gift for capturing the soul of a game. The Last
Amateurs definitely will make every Crusader feel good about
a 10-win season. Holy Cross gets more than its due in The Last Amateurs.
Feinstein's
success with A Civil War was the likeability of the
players he portrayed. This likeability runs through The Last Amateurs.
Readers will like Bucknell's Valter Karavanic, Colgate's Pat Campolieta, Lafayette's Stevan
Ciosici and Brian Ehlers, Lehigh's Steve Aylsworth and Jared Hess,
Navy's Sitapha Savane and Chris Williams, Army's Chris Spatola and Holy
Cross' Spitler, Josh Sankes '01, and James Stowers '00.
"They're the real heroes,'' says Feinstein. "Who should
I care about, a Spitler, a Ciosici, a Savane or kids in the
ACC who think they're the greatest things on God's green
earth?''
Spitler was on a bus trip (there is no other way to
travel in the Patriot League) reading a magazine article ranking the 31 Division
1 conferences in America.
The Patriot League was placed 31st.
"Let's see if I've got this straight,'' mused Spitler. "I'm the worst player
on the worst team in the worst conference in Division 1. Wow! I'm the worst Division
1 player in the whole country.''
Spitler, being Spitler, turned this to an advantage. At parties, Feinstein
writes, "he would often walk up to a woman and say, 'Hey, do you know who I
am?'''
Usually he got the same answer, "Yeah, you're a loser trying to hit on me.'' Spitler's
reply: "I'm not just any loser. I happen to be the worst Division 1 basketball
player in the country. Now what do you think of me?''
Feinstein thought a lot of Spitler, as did his new coach, Ralph Willard '67,
who was making the transition from Pitt and the boiling Big East to the Patriot
League. When the season ended, Willard said of the walk-on who became a senior
leader, it was a pleasure to have coached him.
Throughout The Last Amateurs, one reads of a
coach's respect for a player's
ability to keep the game in perspective, yet still come to play with
passion. It is a story of a Patriot League season, of the crusade for the NCAA
berth; and, like A Civil War, it is also a story of people.
Feinstein's
gift is in finding and presenting players in an endearing prose that makes
the reader root for these athletes.
"I don't think I made them likeable, they are
likeable,'' says Feinstein. "I
hoped, when I came up with the idea for the book, that the kids would turn out
to be as likeable as the kids I dealt with in A Civil War. . And I think
they did. There are a lot of very interesting kids in the book, kids with great
stories to tell. I always believed that you don't have to be rich and famous
to have a good story to tell-and that's the whole point of this book. Just because
you're not going to be a first-round pick, doesn't mean that you don't work at
the game, don't care about the game and don't have a story to tell.''
In Feinstein's hands, the players' stories are appealing because he lets them
express their individuality and personalities in their own words.
And, in doing so, he elevates the Patriot League. Although the games are history,
he brings them alive, especially in his recounting of the Lafayette-Lehigh
tournament semifinal which he called "one of the most compelling games I've
ever seen." His account captures the essence of the league: as lowly Lehigh
stretched the No. 1 team to the limit, Lehigh's Aylsworth, fighting for the
last but meaningless shot, hits the floor face first. Lafayette's Tim Bieg
was there to help him up, wrap his arms around him and tell him, "I just want
you to know how much I respect you. You're an unbelievable competitor.''
The best of donnybrooks is often between the strugglers, like an Army-Holy
Cross contest that drew one of the better lines in the book from Willard. Coming
off a great but losing effort against Navy, Holy Cross simply floundered against
the Cadets. Willard was livid. "I don't want to hear a single word on the bus
ride home,'' he said in his postgame wrap-up.
"Coach,'' Ryan Serravale quietly said, "we didn't pray.''
"After that performance,'' Willard shot back, "you don't deserve to talk to God.''
Holy Cross, which gets the lion's share of attention in Chapter 12, has a well-balanced
representation throughout The Last Amateurs. Feinstein
admitted being kind to the Crusaders. "There was no reason not to be. Obviously, it didn't
have the greatest season, but the focus was the kids. I liked the school, and
the people and," he confesses, "I might have a little bias. My brother-in-law,
Brendan Gibbons, (class of '89) is a graduate."
Feinstein admits that he was intrigued by Willard: "Ralph
was great to me. He can be gruff at times. He has a good
sense of humor, he can laugh at himself.
It was interesting to see him adapt to the league.''
Feinstein also acknowledged that Spitler "captivated'' him and provided one
of his treasured anecdotes: "Walking into Yale, he went out on the floor and
sat in the last seat on the bench, saying, 'I'm just testing it because I'm
going to be here all night.'"
Spitler, moving from the last seat to team leader, is
what the Patriot League was about to Feinstein.
"Realistically, if this book were to do as well as A Civil War I
would be thrilled," Feinstein says. "Of all the books I've written, this one and A
Civil War are closest to me emotionally because
of the people I worked with. I hope people see it as
a different
kind of book,
about
a different
kind of athlete
and respond positively to it.''
"That is why,'' he concludes, "the last line (in the epilogue) is so important
to me: 'They were all college graduates.'"
There should be no more worthy tribute for any college
league.
Dick Cerasuolo is a long-time sports writer from Worcester.
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