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LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 3.16 103 THE ARTS Biography of a Ball Game By Dylon Jones Clockwise from top: Algonquin Park (once home to the Dirt Bowl), 1969 (courtesy of David Cosby); David McConico scoring, early '80s (courtesy of David McConico); 2015 Dirt Bowl champions (courtesy of Mont Hassell); Tanisha Hickerson, 2015 (Rodney Pitts Photography); Elaine Smith, early '90s (courtesy of Bud Dorsey); emcee Cornell Bradley and Hall of Fame pro Walt Frazier, mid-'80s (courtesy of Cornell Bradley). Ravon Churchill didn't know he'd get his chance at writing history that day in February 2015. He was at the City League Ballers Basketball game at the Darrell Grifth Athletic Cen- ter when this curly-haired white guy with glasses and a notebook walked up. "Ravon?" the man said. "Yes?" Churchill said, wondering how the stranger knew his name. "My name is Darcy Tompson." He extended his hand. "I've seen you at the Dirt Bowl." Mention of the decades-old, sum- mer-long street basketball tournament usually held in Shawnee Park put a voice in Churchill's head, the same voice every- one associates with the Dirt Bowl: that of Cornell Bradley, the announcer since the start, 1969. Cornell the Comedian. A man falls, Bradley says, "He's hurt!" A man gets back up, Bradley says, "No he ain't! He's hard!" Churchill wanted that big a voice as a kid, but he kept quiet about it. When people asked what he wanted to do when The Louisville Story Program retraces the long history of west Louisville's Dirt Bowl. he grew up, he said, "Play in the NBA." A true response. Also an acceptable one. Not nerdy, like actually enjoying his En- glish papers. Only when pressed would he say he'd like to talk sports on TV. In his 20s, Churchill watched his friends play sports games on Sega Genesis and PlayStation. One night, he muted the game's programmed announcers and started calling the plays himself. Te guys frowned at frst – "Man, what are you doing?" – but Churchill kept talking, like he was sure of himself, until, whoa, laughter, real laughter. "Where'd you learn to do that?" his buddies asked. "Here, just now," Churchill said. Te next time, somebody else jumped up to turn the volume down. When his friends left, he set the computer to play itself, and watched the blue-bright screen for hours, breaking down the game's game aloud, alone. Churchill had to beg Bradley three times before the older man handed over the mic. "One game," he said. Churchill knew most of the players, their habits and histories fashing before his eyes like video game scores. His voice boomed around him, the crowd laughing, but also nodding at his astute analyses. He sounded like a man sitting in a home he built himself. Now Churchill calls a few games, the tradition to Bradley's horizon, the LeBron to his Jordan. "I really enjoy your take on basketball," Tompson said that day in February. He told Churchill about an organization he started called the Louisville Story Pro- gram, which coaches underrepresented voices in writing a book. Te frst project resulted in Our Shawnee, a collection of true stories by students of the Academy @ Shawnee. "Our next project is about the Dirt Bowl," Tompson said. "Would you like—" "Yes," Churchill said. Tompson didn't know about Chur- chill's interest in writing, the poem he wrote for his grandmother's funeral as a child. He didn't know about the Dirt Bowl in '78, Churchill at three years old, staring at that 19-year-old boy on the court, a younger version of Eddie Levert from the O'Jays, his afro bouncing above the ball. Churchill's mother pointed. "Tat's your daddy," she said. Churchill hardly looked away from him. He doesn't remember the score. He doesn't remem- ber who won. Now Tompson knows. He's seen it in print. Tompson, Churchill and Ebony O'Rea, who worked with the students from Our Shawnee at the now-de- funct Network Center for Community Change, have spent a year and a half and hundreds of hours tracking down everyone who's anyone in the Dirt Bowl, uncovering such stories. O'Rea stalked basketball courts, called and called back until people agreed to talk. And when they talked, they talked for hours. "I felt like a Dirt Bowl groupie for a long time," she says. Tey transcribed the interviews, made edits with the interviewees and organized the conversations into a new book: I Said Bang!, the title taken from Bradley's catchphrase for three-pointers. Tompson, who edited most of the book himself, describes it as an im- pressionistic portrait of the Dirt Bowl, comprised of ethnographies. "When people open this book, they are going to see names they recognize, pictures that will take them back," Churchill says. He pauses a moment, taken back himself, and lets out a sigh, like he's just seen something incredibly large or small. Like nearly six decades of basketballs, stacked. Or perhaps one little orange globe, sus- pended in air and memory, just above his father's open hands.