A 'Losing Season' With Pat Conroy

Pat Conroy, who normally writes fiction inspired by fact, now takes the bold step of writing a non-fiction memoir based on a not-so-glorious run with his college basketball team.

The author visits The Early Show to discuss his book, "My Losing Season."

In the prologue of "My Losing Season," Conroy explains that it grew out of an encounter with an old teammate while he was on tour to promote his book, "Beach Music." He ran into the former teammate in Ohio and they began to reminisce about the disappointing basketball season of 1966-67 that inspired the book's title.

Their conversation stuck with Conroy and, as he saw more former teammates while on tour, he began to write about the team and their coming of age. His seventh book grew out of this chance encounter.

Conroy told Newsweek, "This is the story of a mediocre basketball team that is remembered by few, a team that spent a year perfecting the art of falling to pieces. I thought I would be a senior on one of the greatest basketball teams in Citadel history. I could not have been more wrong."

So why write about it?

"It's a theory of mine that I learn more by losing than I ever did by winning," said Conroy. "I think you learn more because you don't always get the job. You lose the job. I learned more from being fired from teaching than anything that ever happened to me. When my mother died, winning taught me nothing. But loss, the deep solace that you must find in yourself when you lose something, I found very valuable."

Conroy describes "My Losing Season," as a "Rosetta stone in how men act and think.

"If you don't understand why men adore sports, and are attracted to sports, and I think men do this because it's like art for some people. It's like opera for some people. It's like theater. You go to games to get out of yourself, to get away from yourself. To get away from the normal life you're living. It raises you. It puts you in a place where you can see splendor and glory," he said.

The son of a career military officer, Conroy regularly moved and changed schools. Basketball helped him instantly connect with other students.

When he landed at the Citadel Military Academy in Charleston, S.C., he had big dreams for his team. It was at this time he also tapped another talent. He wrote and published his first book, "The Boo," while he was still a student.

After graduation, Conroy taught English in Beaufort, S.C., and his experience there provided material for many of his novels including, "The Prince of Tides" which was later made into a movie starring Barbra Streisand and Nick Nolte. Four of his six novels have been adapted into films.

Now that Conroy has tackled non-fiction, his next effort is a cookbook, just sent to the bindery and due out next year.

He currently lives in Fripp Island, S.C., with his second wife, novelist Cassandra King.

Read an excerpt from Chapter One:

Before First Practice

It was on the morning of October 15, 1966, that the final season officially began. For a month and a half, my teammates and I had gathered in the field house to lift weights, do isometric exercises, and scrimmage with each other. Right off, I could tell our sophomores were special and were going to make our team faster, scrappier, and better than the year before. In the heat of September, there was a swiftness and feistiness to the flow of these pickup games that was missing in last year's club. My optimism about the coming season lifted perceptibly as I observed my team beat up on each other in the vagrancy of our uncoached and unmonitored scrimmages.

I could feel the adrenaline rush of excitement begin as I donned my cadet uniform in the dark, and it stayed with me as I marched to mess with R Company. I could barely concentrate on the professors' voices in my classes in Coward Hall as I faced the reality of the new season and stared at the clock with impatience. It was my fourth year at The Citadel and the fourth time October 15 had marked the beginning of basketball practice. Mel Thompson was famous for working his team hard on the first day and traditionally ran us so much that the first practice was topped off by one of us vomiting on the hardwood floor.

I made my way to the locker room early that afternoon because I wanted some time to myself to shoot around and think about what I wanted to accomplish this season. Four of my teammates were already dressed when I entered the dressing room door. The room carried the acrid fragrance of the past three seasons for me, an elixir of pure maleness with the stale smell of sweat predominant yet blended with the sharp, stinging unguents we spread on sore knees and shoulders, Right Guard deodorant spray, vats of foot powder to ward off athlete's foot, and deodorant cakes in the urinals. It was the powerful eau de cologne of the locker room. I realized that my life as a college athlete was coming to its inevitable end, but I did not know that you had to leave the fabulous odors of youth behind when you hurried out into open fields to begin life as an adult.

As I entered the room, I waved to Al Beiner, the equipment manager. He and his assistant Joe "Rat" Eubanks were making sure that the basketballs were all inflated properly. Carl Peterson, another assistant, had just returned with a cartful of freshly laundered towels, still warm to the touch.

"The Big Day," Al said. He was reserved and serious and considered the players juvenile and frivolous. Al's presence was priestlike, efficient.

"Senior year," Rat said. "It all comes together for the big guy this year, right, Pat?"

Joe Eubanks was the only man on campus who called me "the big guy." Five feet five inches tall, he was built with the frail bones of a tree sparrow. His size humiliated him but his solicitousness to the players made him beloved in the locker room. Joe hero-worshiped the players, a rarity at The Citadel. His wide-eyed appreciation of me reminded me of the looks my younger brothers gave me. My brothers thought I was the best basketball player in the world, and I did nothing to discourage this flagrant misconception.

When I began undressing, Carl brought over a clean practice uniform and a white box containing a pair of size 91Ú2 Converse All Star basketball shoes. Carl wore gold stars for his brilliant academic work and moved quietly among the players, silent as a periwinkle.

As I sat down to open the new box of shoes, Joe Eubanks slipped up behind me and began massaging my neck.

"Still hurt, Pat?" Joe asked. "It's been two years now." My neck had been sore since Dick Martini knocked me unconscious in a practice game.

Behind me Carl rumbled by with another load for the laundry room. Stepping out of the equipment office, Al warned us not to take our shoes out unless we signed for them. Joe brought a box of tape to Coach Billy Bostick, the mustachioed seventy-year-old trainer who taped Doug Bridges's ankles as Danny Mohr waited his turn.

Jim Halpin sat to my right, struggling to put on the grotesque knee brace, which supported his ruined leg.

"Still happy about your choice of colleges, Jim?" I asked.

"This fucking place sucks," Jimmy answered as I knew he would. For four years, all conversation between Jim and me began with this withering mantra.

"Tell me what you really think, Jimmy, don't hold back," I said.

"Conroy, Halpin says the same damn thing every day, year after year," Danny said, sitting at the last locker, both his ankles taped.

"Thanks for pointing that out, Root," Bob Cauthen said.

"Fuck you, Zipper," Danny said, not even looking at Bob. Danny we called "Root" because he was not much of a leaper for a big man and stayed "rooted" on the ground beneath the basket. Bob was called "Zipper" by Danny because he was long and skinny. He was given that name by a heckler from Georgia Southern, and it stuck.

"Don't you love the fellowship on this team?" I said. "Can't you feel the brotherhood? The coming together of a group of guys who can never be broken or defeated?"

"Conroy," said John DeBrosse, unbuttoning his uniform shirt as he approached his locker. "Speak so us poor peasants can understand you. I got to carry a dictionary around to understand what your sorry ass is saying."

"Thank you, Lord, for directing my path toward The Citadel," I said. "I love this place, Lord. I truly love this place. I've found myself a home."

"This fucking place sucks," Jimmy muttered to himself.

"You're onto something, Halpin," Dave "Barney" Bornhorst, a wide-bodied forward from Ohio, said. "Keep working on the details."

Danny said, "I had scholarships to Davidson, NC State, Wake Forest. Do I go to any of those great places? Oh, no. I come to El Cid so I can spend my life with Muleface."

I looked to the door, watching for the sudden appearance of our coach. "Be careful, Danny."

Joe Eubanks came through the locker room. "Twenty minutes to get dressed and on the floor."

"Eat me, Rat," Bob said.

"Don't irritate me, Cauthen," Joe said, putting his tiny fist against Bob's chin.

"Make me laugh, Rat," Bob said.

"Leave Rat alone, Zipper," Danny called down from his locker.

Bob stuck up a middle finger at Danny and said, "Eat a big hairy one, Root."

"What a team," Jimmy Halpin said, shaking his head sadly. "This fucking place sucks."

Copyright© 2002 by Pat Conroy