All I Want For Christmas

Ray Marcano puts the holiday season in perspective.

Good Morning, Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah! The Knicks play their NBA record 57th Christmas Day game today, tipping off at noon on ABC and ESPN. Both the Spurs and Knicks have clean injury reports, so this should be an entertaining matchup. As a reminder, the next KFS newsletter will hit your inbox on Friday morning with a full recap of today’s action, but in the meantime, look out for a message from me in the Substack app sometime tomorrow morning regarding a post-Christmas Ask Macri.

On that note, here’s today’s special holiday missive from the great Ray Marcano.

All I Want For Christmas

by Ray Marcano

When I was nine years old, I remember, rather vividly, that I wanted a small transistor radio for Christmas.

It cost about $5 for some cheap plastic thing I saw in a window of a store on Fordham Road. While I knew that was a lot of money, at least for my family, I figured I might get it if that was all I asked for.

Just that one thing.

I wanted it so I could listen to the Knicks, first and foremost, as well as the Yankees and Rangers. We had one 9-inch, black and white TV. With five people in the apartment, I couldn’t always watch games. That didn’t bother me. I spent most Saturdays with my grandparents and when my grandmother ventured into the old Alexander’s department store hunting for bargains, I sat in the car with my grandfather and listened to a ballgame. (He was a Mets fan, and I’m surprised I wasn’t brainwashed).

I dreamt about that little radio as if I might dream about a genie that would grant me a wish. In some ways, I guess that fits. The radio was my wish.

Then, that year went to hell.

My mother and father split up, and that wreaked havoc on a family already struggling financially. I was never close to my father, so I didn’t feel any anguish at the news. He mentally abused my mother and was a drunken womanizer who was dead by 46. Years later, I found my parents’ divorce papers, which listed my father as suffering from mental illness. That explains, but doesn’t condone, his horrid behavior.

In the midst of this upheaval, and with my family attempting to adjust to a new life, I looked forward to Christmas, as did my two younger brothers and sister. The holidays provided a respite from the sound of my mother sobbing often, residual damage from my father’s actions. We listened to Silent Night, O Come all Ye Faithful and White Christmas on the large, cabinet radio in the living room¹. We watched Christmas variety specials with Andy Williams, Bob Hope and Dean Martin. When It’s a Wonderful Life came on, we changed the channel, because we knew it wasn’t.

Right after Thanksgiving, the first in which my paternal relatives weren’t present, my mother told us there would be no Christmas presents.

I didn’t understand what my parents breaking up had to do with me not getting my transistor radio. I had grown tired of sitting in front of the radio cabinet with the sound turned low so I wouldn’t wake anyone. (I wasn’t supposed to be up at 9 p.m. at night. School and all).

And all of this was happening when the Knicks were good. Even at that young age, I read newspapers every day. They were often a day old because I would pick them out a trash can or get one from neighbors. I would look at the box scores and review every number. If I couldn’t listen to the game, I would concoct play-by-play in my head and play it multiple times so different players could each hit the winning shot. (There’s five seconds on the clock, Frazier hurries up the court, passes to DeBusschere who sends a bounce pass to Bradley in the corner. He shoots and SCORES, he scores, no time on the clock. Knicks win! Oh what amazing team basketball!)

I was as pissed as a petulant child could be. I didn’t focus on my mother’s pain of not being able to provide joy for her children. I didn’t care about the disappointment etched in my siblings’ faces.

I wanted that radio to listen to the Knicks deep into the evening. I had visions of it nestled against my ear, the covers over my head to deaden the sound, and falling asleep to Marv Albert creating poetry as he described a Willis Reed 12-footer.

Willis Reed, via Twitter

My mother sensed my irritability, because that’s what mothers do. She didn’t mince words. Things were changing. My father wasn’t coming back. Ever. Money would be even tighter. And me, being the oldest, had to watch out for my brothers and sisters.

And I became even more indignant toward my father when my mother later told me that we weren’t getting gifts because my father refused to help support his children. I guess I was her confidant, one hell of a burden for a child growing up way too fast.

At the age of 9, my childhood died.

But that year, and those horrible experiences, instilled relentless aggression in me. I learned, young, that I couldn’t --- and shouldn’t --- rely on anyone. Sure, my grandparents, who I was much closer to than my parents, would do what they could for me. But my grandfather, the most important male figure of my life, got by on an eighth-grade education and a meat cutter’s salary. Extra money came along as often as finding a four-leaf clover.

Fast forward four years, to 1972, and I got my first job. I helped deliver milk before school and got a small stipend for putting away instruments and later playing conga drums for dance classes at the Dance Theater of Harlem.

During those four years, I never asked for that radio again. I determined that one day, I would get it myself.

So with one of my first checks in the fall of 1972, I purchased my own transistor radio. I even upgraded because this one had a headphone jack.

I wore that thing out. I listened to every Knicks game I could --- and that was most of them. I listened through the static on the train when I travelled from Manhattan to the Bronx. My grandfather was a more casual basketball fan, so if he didn’t feel like taking in a game, I would have my radio. My aunt, who had some money (at least more than we did) took us to see family in South Carolina. I took my radio.

That simple device put me on the road to Knicks fanaticism. They won the championship in 1973, the first one meaningful to me because I listened to every game I could without crouching silently before that large cabinet radio. I remembered hearing the famous Reed game of 1970 when he limped onto the floor and the Garden crowd roared with the ferocity of the A train's express at rush hour. It sent chills up my spine…

… but not as much as those 1973 games --- regular season, playoffs, and especially a championship. I wish I had a camera to catch my smile when the Knicks won game five against the Lakers and took that trophy. I hung on to every, last word and squeezed that little radio until my hands ached.

I eventually lost track of that radio. Through my teens I often looked for it, hoping I had tucked it in the corner after buying a better model.

It never resurfaced but I still think of it. That difficult year at such a young age forged a steely determination that led me to a radio that’s more than some long-lost trinket. It taught me life lessons while showing me the path to a lifelong sports love.

I also learned that bad Christmases aren’t necessarily so.

Go Knicks!

Ray Marcano writes and publishes Rational Reason and the Bourbon Resource, and he’s president of the 32 Staves Society. He’s a bourbon lover and long-time journalist who freelances for some of the country’s largest media brands. He’s the former national president of the Society of Professional Journalists, a two-time Pulitzer juror, and a Fulbright fellow.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

1. Those cabinet radios looked like this: