Music and sports are the two legs that true happiness walks on. In many ways, the classic version of each is best. Sinatra sings a song, “Last Night When We Were Young” about the passage of time and how it can at once feel like ages ago or just last night. Sports can be like that.

When we were boys we played basketball at the First Presbyterian Church. It seemed pretty modern for it to be the first, be we acted respectful anyway because as Catholics we knew that mischief-making in church would put us on the express train to hell. Religious confusion aside, the place was a crackerbox. The out-of-bounds line couldn’t have been more than a foot away from the wall all the way around, so collisions with the brick walls were knocking guys silly left and right. At one end of the court, the rim was screwed directly into the wall—the brick wall! A backboard line was painted on the wall, and attempting a bank shot was comical. As if the ball was made of Flubber, the simplest banked layup would end up with the ball rolling to midcourt. Frickin’ Presbyterians! … That was ages ago.

Lots of people are still into basketball. They’re cooler than me, more hippety-hoppety. I’m okay with that, but I think the sport has been slipping ever since the ABA folded. Today’s NBA pirated a lot from the ABA, like the three-point shot, tons of its players, four franchises, everything except what was most important: the red, white and blue ball. The chapter of American sports written by the ABA, the tricolor swatch on America’s basketball quilt, was packed with anecdotes and lore and goofy shit characteristic of a league that wasn’t afraid to fly by the seat of its pants … It was ages ago when traveling was still illegal.

The ABA’s first season was in 1967 and from the start they acted like there were no rules, and the result was nine seasons that featured great players, anemic attendance and constant chaos. ABA legend has it that the Houston Mavericks had the all-time smallest crowd: a princely total of 89 people. The ABA roster of teams was an odd and ever-changing list that included the Oakland Oaks, Anaheim Amigos, Pittsburgh Pipers, Miami Floridians, San Diego Conquistadors, San Diego Sails, New Orleans Buccaneers, Baltimore Claws, Baltimore Hustlers, Memphis Tams, Minnesota Muskies, Denver Larks.

Teams folded, teams moved, teams changed their names midstream, yet despite the shuffling deck, the players were impossible to forget. Doctor J got his moniker while playing in the ABA. Erving was called “Doctor J” after a commentator said, “There’s the doctor digging into his bag again.” Typically he would be digging to come up with a new dunk. One obscure ABA player, however, may have had the Doctor beat in the nickname department. The Oakland Oaks had a player named Wes Bialosuknia. His vowel-laden tongue twister earned him the nickname “The Typographical Terror.”

The only people getting more creative and having more fun were the Harlem Globetrotters. The original Globetrotters were based in Chicago, the “Harlem” part was just a gimmick so that they would be associated with being all black. The Trotters were a traveling hoops minstrel show that drew fans to arenas like rock stars, attracted viewers to TVs like the Super Bowl and broke down social and racial barriers the way only sports can. Their act had laughs, drama and real athletic and basketball skills. A red, white and blue ball, a behind-the-back pass, a swishing hook shot from half court … It was ages ago, before instant replay, before baseball started monitoring visits to the pitcher’s mound.

When I was a kid, sports on TV was an anomaly. There was no need for an app. If it was baseball season, you got a Game of the Week. One game. The big weekly bonus for a little sports fan was Wide World of Sports. Saturdays about noon on ABC. It lasted 90 minutes and you never knew what you’d get. A big fight could happen; Ali vs. Liston was on Wide World of Sports (and almost every other big fight, usually shown the week after the fight, but it felt live to us), but you were just as likely to get cliff-diving from Acapulco or the International Toboggan Championships or the World Wristwrestling Championships from Petaluma, California. Evel Knievel was a WWOS staple, he jumped thirteen buses at Wembley, eleven Mack trucks in Texas. He tried jumping Snake River Canyon in Idaho on something called a skycycle. 

It all happened ages ago, when we were young, last night.