playing BB with the handicapped

[MikeWaters]

I remember one time I played pickup basketball, and a guy on the other team had only one arm. Prosthetic on the other. What I quickly realized is that the prosthetic arm was not dysfunctional. It was a weapon to be wielded. Going for the rebound, getting hit by that thing was not pleasant. It's like someone playing basketball holding a baseball bat.

Word of warning.

[SteelBlue]

This reminds me of the famous grapevine basketball post where he informed us that in High School he played against the Idaho school for the blind.

[Frank Ryan]

it
what is grapevine's background story anyhow?

[DirtyHippieUTE]

When I lived in Pocatello I played with a bunch of guys from work (most of whom were LDS).

One guy (Nate) had a prostethic leg. Nate usually played on the perimiter and didn't usually drive or go after rebounds in the paint. However, he had a great outside shot and was usually one of the people you would try to get on your team. Sometimes he wore warm up pants and (if you were a moron) it was possible to believe he was "normal" (bi-pedal) but just dealing with a sore knee.

One day a few new guys showed up. One of them was covering Nate and was getting sick of Nate dropping in 3s at will. He started playing Nate really tight and physical. Nate dealt with it but the rest of us were a little bothered.

After a while this guy starts to get a bit of an attitude with Nate (because he had started to shut Nate down). Finally I think Nate had endured all he could from this kid so he brings the ball down, fakes this kid out of his shorts, dribbles the ball between his legs and drives right thru the kid.

After the layup went in we all were laughing and somebody was saying something baout that being the best "between the leg" move he'd ever seen. The kid obviously didn't get it. Nate walked over to the side of the court, took off the pants over his shorts (revealing his one-legged condition) and said something about needing to get rid of the extra clothing if he was going to have to start actually trying.

I don't think that kid ever came back to play ball again.

[SteelBlue]

Originally Posted by Mastershake

Was that on this board? I have to read it.

http://cougarguard.com/forum/showthr...sketball+blind

[BarbaraGordon]

I like to joke (self-deprecatingly) that in the triathlons I always come in behind a one-legged man.

But truth is, he kicks a$$. He always places. And he has a different leg for each event!!


There's also a guy out here who runs while pushing his wheelchair-bound (adult) son through the OKC marathon every year.

You'd have to see it. It's truly impressive.

[non sequitur]

If you want a good story about prosthetics, I would reccomend Mark Twain's story of The Grandfather's Old Ram: http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/learnmo...ngs_story.html

Here's an excerpt:

...and old deacon Ferguson up and scooted him through the window and he lit on old Miss Jefferson’s head, poor old filly. She was a good soul–had a glass eye and used to lend it to old Miss Wagner, that hadn’t any, to receive company in; it warn’t big enough, and when Miss Wagner warn’t noticing, it would get twisted around in the socket, and look up, maybe, or out to one side, and every which way, while t’ other one was looking as straight ahead as a spy-glass. Grown people didn’t mind it, but it most always made the children cry, it was so sort of scary. She tried packing it in raw cotton, but it wouldn’t work, somehow–the cotton would get loose and stick out and look so kind of awful that the children couldn’t stand it no way. She was always dropping it out, and turning up her old dead-light on the company empty, and making them oncomfortable, becuz she never could tell when it hopped out, being blind on that side, you see. So somebody would have to hunch her and say, “Your game eye has fetched loose, Miss Wagner dear”–and then all of them would have to sit and wait till she jammed it in again–wrong side before, as a general thing, and green as a bird’s egg, being a bashful cretur and easy sot back before company. But being wrong side before warn’t much difference, anyway; becuz her own eye was sky-blue and the glass one was yaller on the front side, so whichever way she turned it it didn’t match nohow. Old Miss Wagner was considerable on the borrow, she was. When she had a quilting, or Dorcas S’iety at her house she gen’ally borrowed Miss Higgins’s wooden leg to stump around on; it was considerable shorter than her other pin, but much she minded that. She said she couldn’t abide crutches when she had company, becuz they were so slow; said when she had company and things had to be done, she wanted to get up and hump herself. She was as bald as a jug, and so she used to borrow Miss Jacops’s wig–Miss Jacops was the coffin-peddler’s wife–a ratty old buzzard, he was...