Sidelines
A Classic so quiet
you can hear the swishSATURDAY evening at the Rainbow Classic:
I am surrounded by a sea of green.
Rainbow fans?
No, empty seats.
Entire sections, empty. Or with two, three, four, five people. Even the lower bowls offer lots of wide open spaces.
And yet there's something about it that's so ... nice.
Lots of elbow room.
It's so quiet you can hear the rain on the roof.
You can hear the radio play-by-play. Without a radio.
The sound that dominates the Stan Sheriff Center landscape is sneaker squeaks, and during the action you can overhear several coaching points and the intimate advice players receive from the guys in stripes.
The loudest cheers often come from the team benches, teammates delighted, energized, enraged by the play of their peers.
Two teams playing, and most of the handful of people here don't know either one.
But then come the big plays and a sparse crowd can surprise you. Butler's Joel Cornette slams home a putback dunk and out of the small Bulldog cheering section comes a mighty roar.
Well, a pretty good roar.
A decent roar.
OK, about 20 people and a homemade "Gooo ... Butler!" sign.
Halftime announcer Billy V asks for a nice round of applause for the two teams, and that's exactly what he gets. It sounds like the polite ripple after a par putt on the third green.
It's pleasant.
Almost soothing.
Then they throw free T-shirts into the stands and there are enough for everybody.
(OK, I was kidding about that last part.)
But a small crowd is a polite crowd. There was one heckler. One. The guy yelling, "You're smoking crack!"
(There are few phrases in the English language wittier than "You're smoking crack!")
And you can pick out a man in the stands who looks remarkably like Abe Vigoda.
Then there is the guy from Chicago State, who came running all alone out to center court, before the second game, yelling at everyone, and no one in particular, having a great time, going nuts. If someone had taught him the haka, he would have done it. It was done in that kind of spirit.
(Later, after pregame introductions and just before tip-off, the whole team did the Chicago State version.)
Unfortunately, this was one of the few times where you couldn't hear, to fully appreciate the moment, because they turned the sound system up. But the guy was yelling something like "Our world! This is our world!"
His team was 2-6.
By now it is a great time. The fans fill in a little bit, the crowd swells to 1,383 people.
Two young ladies descend the stairs to their seats, one in blinding sparkles, the other wearing a Christina Aguilera outfit (yes, that one, really).
The heckler now has a friend, who joins him in a rousing rendition of "Aiiiiiiirrr-ballll!"
The crowd is small, just a few faces to break up all those empty seats. But everyone here wants to be here, on a Saturday night, watching two teams play basketball.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com