The Bell Curve -- Joseph N. Bell

I’m writing this on Tuesday evening. When you read it, I will likely

be sitting happily in the Anaheim Convention Center. The election will be

behind us, the opening of the baseball season will still be off in the

distance, and I will be moving into the real world of college basketball

tournaments. In this world, there are no charges or countercharges, no

character assassination, no empty promises, no sour grapes. Just

performance. You win or you lose. If you lose, you’re out -- and you

start preparing for next year when you get another shot. Nice and clean.

I’ll arrive at the Convention Center somewhere before noon to watch

the first round of the Big West Tournament. I have followed the UC Irvine

basketball fortunes for three decades, ever hopeful, inevitably

disappointed, but always lifted up by the tournament play even when UCI

loses. Today, UCI doesn’t play until the evening session, but my

involvement goes deeper than that, which is why I’ll be on hand at noon.

All of this, I’m sure, has some profound connection with my growing up

in northeastern Indiana. I can mark the public events that have shaped my

life -- the Depression, World War II, the McCarthy hearings, for example

-- and high on that list would be the Indiana high school basketball

tournament. My high school -- South Side of Ft. Wayne -- won the state

championship in my senior year, the first time this prize ever went to

one of Indiana’s larger cities. But I was hooked long before that, and I

would have remained hooked if that championship season had never

happened.

To stretch a symbol, the Indiana high school tournament offered up a

passel of life lessons. If you ever saw the movie “Hoosiers,” you might

have picked up on some of them. “Hoosiers” told the story of a group of

farm kids from a tiny high school who won the state championship by

knocking off a series of giants week after week. It happened to be a true

story, reasonably accurately presented in the movie.

So the first lesson: Size and wealth don’t guarantee success. When the

gates open, only performance counts. Indiana was one of the few states

where competition wasn’t broken down into classes. Every school was

thrown into the same pot, which gave the tiniest school a legitimate shot

at the largest one. Frequently enough to get the blood boiling, the tiny

school won.

This was the closest thing I ever knew to pure democracy, a lovely

myth in a society as socially unbalanced as ours. But on the basketball

court, social, racial and ethnic differences disappear in simple

performance. This is pretty heavy stuff to lay off on a high school

basketball tournament, but it really did have an impact on those of us

who grew up in prewar Indiana. I am told that the high schools there have

recently been broken down into classes, which is shameful retrogression

that I’m glad didn’t happen in my time.

But life lessons aside, high school and college basketball tournaments

are flat-out wonderful entertainment. And the carrot at the Anaheim

Convention Center this week will be a trip to the Big Show -- the NCAA

March Madness, a trip UCI has yet to make.

It’s going to be a tough ride this year, since UCI drew Long Beach

State -- a team that beat them by 16 points last week -- in the opening

round. There is even more at stake than a trip to the Big Show. This is

the last hurrah for Jerry Green, who has led UCI from the basketball

wilderness over the past four years and may have a shot at the pros. He

has a tendency to hang out in the wings until UCI gets down, then come

galloping to the rescue. He needs to get involved early and often against

Long Beach.

If UCI loses in the first round, there will be a lot of empty seats at

the Convention Center on Friday and Saturday. But I’ll be there, even

though my involvement will be more objective than passionate. But that

won’t stop me from eating too many hot dogs, shelling too many peanuts

and maybe getting too involved with teams I don’t really care about.

What I won’t do is spend much time -- as I’m doing here -- analyzing

all this as some sort of microcosm of life. When you’re in your seat and

the game is close and you don’t have to think beyond the next timeout,

even the hot dog you just ate that is hanging out a little heavily in

your stomach is a reminder that you are at peace with the world.

That’s where I’ll be this weekend: at peace with the world. If that

carries me back to the alleys of Indiana where every garage had a basket

mounted and the arenas where all that energy was finally

institutionalized, so be it. I was at peace then too.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.