Session 7: Whisper To A Scream
The moment weekend warriors became NBA superstars.
Suggested Listening: Whisper to a Scream by Icicle Works
It was 2006 and the website looked like ESPN.com.
That was the line I kept hearing back. Players sent the link to their friends and family and the friends and family wrote back the same way every time. “Is this real?” Box scores. Stats. A leaderboard. Photos. A profile page with their name on it. A small adult basketball league in Minneapolis with a website built to look like the only thing I knew how to copy.
Behind it nothing was finished. The database was not finished. The code was not finished. The first season I built every box score by hand. I had a Photoshop file in the shape of a box score and every Tuesday night after the last game I drove home and opened the file and typed in every name and every stat from the paper score sheets and saved it as a new image and uploaded it to the website. I did this until the sun came up. I did it forty-eight times that season. The box scores people could not believe were real were not real. They were Photoshop.
I spent the month of June with the developer. Seven days a week. A week before the Summer Season tipped off the real site went live and every name and every number from the paper score sheets had been moved into the database. The men who came back for a second season had a record. They had a history. I told myself their stats would live as long as the etchings on their headstones. I believed it.
Mary and I walked into the gym for opening night of Season 2 and the noise was wrong. There was too much of it. The portable bleachers that had stood empty all of the first season were not empty.
“Oh my god, Alan.” Mary laughed. “I think there are fans in the stands.”