Over the years I've had some good runs at Dolores Park.  The problem is that those runs are few and far between.  It's usually thug ball, and there can be some pretty bad dudes stirring up trouble.

I was running up there last Sunday.  I actually had a decent team.  We blew out the first team we played, in part because I was the biggest guy on the court and the other team couldn't handle me on the glass.  The next team had three hard core thugs on their squad.  They were older guys, probably mid thirties, shaved heads and tattoos all of them.  They were not ballers, but they were clearly pretty tough guys.  I heard them talking as they got on the court that they were going to knock me around a little bit, and that "we gotta slow big man down."

Whatever, basketball gets physical and most folks who play are used to that.  So we start running.  One of the thugs makes a series of awful calls - not against me - but against folks on my team, and it makes it clear that he's a punk who's prepared to cheat to win, and doesn't give a damn what people think.  I take two hard cheap shots from two of the three thugs.  I tell one "don't be a jackass" and he growls back at me.  A few plays later I'm coming down on the break, and taking it to the basket.  The same guy fouls me pretty hard across the arms.  I call a foul.  He starts screaming, really personal shit.  "Big man, you're a p*ssy.  You're a b*tch."  All of that kind of stuff.  As he's screaming at me, he starts to rile himself up, talking himself into a confrontation.  I talk back telling him to learn how to play basketball or something.

Out of nowhere, he comes at me and jacks me with two hands in the chest.  He's not all that big, but he's solidly built - probably 5'10, 185.  His two larger, thuggish buddies start glaring at me.

So I weigh my options.  I consider myself too old to be getting in fights, and at the moment, my employer isn't giving me health insurance.  But playground basketball is a lot about standing up for yourself. Plus, I have about 25 pounds on the guy and could probably take him if it stayed as a one on one confrontation.  However, I didn't necessarily trust it to stay a fair fight.

So I walk away.  I took off my shirt (i have no idea why), threw it against the fence, and said "I'm done."  I walked off the court to the crowing of the thug.  I went to the side of the court and sat down - refusing to leave the court, but also clearly backing down from this guy.  A few of my teammates came over and told me not to sweat it, that it was a foul, that the guy was an ass, etc.

It really sucked, and was sort of a confidence shaker for me.  At the end of the day, it was a business decision for me.  I was probably going to get nicked up, and I didn't want to pay the doctor's bills out of pocket.  But at the same time, at an early age you're taught to stand up to the bully - especially when you're bigger than the guy.

I probably will run into this guy again, and I'm not sure how I'm going to handle it.  He basically booted me out of a game on my neighborhood court - a court I've been playing at (very sporadically) for about 6 years.  I'm thought a lot about it this week, and am not happy about it.  First step I guess, is to get my health insurance turned back on.