The problem with Irish American racism

A sixties portrait of William Melvin Kelley

His name was Kelley and he was from the Bronx.  But the Irish kids still did not like him.

The current issue of Harper’s magazine features a memoir written by novelist William Melvin Kelley.
Kelley explores the complex ways skin color, language and bigotry have influenced his own life, as well as recent American history.

“I grew up in the Northeast Bronx with the children of Italian immigrants who mostly embraced me,” Kelley writes at one point. 

Later, he adds, “My Italo friends much preferred me to most Irish kids.”

Then, Kelley recounts a particularly ugly incident.

“One day one of a group of Irish kids passing through our block called me a n****r.  My Creole mother had armed me against this, without going into it very deeply -- anybody who called me a n****r had simultaneously demonstrated his ignorance and his inferiority. 

“I should dismiss the comment as I would dismiss the utterance of a parrot.  So, when the Irish kid called me n****r, I assumed an attitude of superiority and condescension.”

Kelley’s friends were not so kind.  They doled out a beating to “the Irish kid, whom they’d caught while his companions ran away.”

Even when Kelley’s education took him to elite schools and prestigious museums, it seems there was always an Irish American around to remind him of the persistence of racism.

“In 1944 I started attending Fieldston, a Euro and predominately Jewish progressive private school,” Kelley writes.  “Over the next 12 years I went wherever my class went, to the Met and MoMA, to Carnegie Hall, to see Scribner make pulp paper for special editions.

“I went through the front entrance when I went to visit my friends on Fifth or Park Avenues.  Their parents had warned the Irish doormen not to turn me away.”

There is no reason to doubt Kelley’s recollections because, sadly, they are utterly plausible.

His memoir does, however, force us to confront a nasty little question -- have Irish Americans really been disproportionately racist?

Kelley’s own memoir alone proves nothing.  It is the massive accumulation of memoirs, books, novels, movies and TV shows with narrow-minded Irish American characters that is more alarming. 

As with redneck whites (usually Scots-Irish, incidentally), Irish Catholic Americans are often the immoral center of a given story, a stubborn obstacle to be overcome whether we are talking about real life or fiction. 

From the New York City Draft Riots to the Boston bussing mess of the 1970s, some Irish Americans acted deplorably during tense racial times.

As for fiction, there’s Studs Lonigan and his band of brutes from the 1930s novels by (Irish Catholic) James T. Farrell. There’s the psychotic thug Artie West from the classic film Blackboard Jungle, who is finally conquered by his heroic teacher, who had earlier pointed out that West is “Irish American.”

There’s the “ferocious Irishmen” who assault Saul Bellow’s hero in the classic novel The Adventures of Augie March. There is the oppressive Dunn family from the book (and film) Looking for Mr. Goodbar. 

And there is Amy Waldman’s recent novel The Submission, about a Muslim-American architect who is selected to design a memorial at ground zero.  This is opposed by Sean Gallagher, whose brother, Patrick, was a firefighter killed that awful day. We see a not-so-subtle Islamophobia in Sean’s Irish American family.

Again, are Irish Americans truly worse in this area than other ethnic groups?  Or are they simply convenient mouthpieces for ugly thoughts?

The most honest effort to answer this question was a book released last March entitled The Irish Way: Becoming American in the Multi-Ethnic City.

Author James R. Barret argues that “nativist hostility toward the Irish created a defensiveness in their relations” with other groups.

Barrett makes a compelling case but it is far from definitive or satisfying. 

And so, we rightly feel for the victims of bigotry, such as William Melvin Kelley.

And we are left to wonder if Irish Americans need to more forcefully confront a dark chapter of their past? 

Or, instead, if writers and movie makers need to get a little more creative when it comes to creating their villains?

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or visit tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Movies, photos, posters, and literature - What objects define Irish America?

Billy the Kid

For celebrated writer Pete Hamill, you have to include a photo of Billy the Kid, “an Irish American from the Five Points who took Horace Greeley's advice and  went west.” 

For New York Times columnist Dan Barry, you must include movie posters from the  many 1930s films which focused on Irish American life, such as Angles with Dirty  Faces, The Roaring Twenties and The Fighting 69th.  

And to novelist Peter Quinn, an ironworker’s gloves and Eugene O’Neill’s desk are too important to ignore. 

Two weeks ago I wrote a column noting that there is worldwide interest these  days in trying to tell the story of a culture through a handful of physical objects.  

From Ireland to the U.K. to America, books have been written, museum  exhibits established and debates held over how certain objects can define a  culture. 

So I asked the question -- what objects define Irish America?  Boy, did I get a  lot of answers. 

Aside from Billy the Kid, Hamill, whose parents came from Belfast, suggested copies of sheet music written for the Irish in America, highlighting  tunes such as "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen."  

Hamill also suggested Jimmy  Cagney movie posters, tickets stubs from a John McCormack concert, Thomas Nast’s  infamous anti-Irish cartoons and Mike Quill’s Transit Workers Union I.D. card.   

Campaign buttons from Al Smith and JFK, the covers of James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan books, a Pogo comic strip by Walt Kelly, a photo of gangster Owney  Madden and (of course) press credentials from great Irish American journalists  were other items Hamill (quite a journalist himself) suggested. 

Gene Kelly

Quinn, author of Banished Children of Eve and Looking for Jimmy, suggested the following -- a grand marshal's sash from the Fifth Avenue St. Patrick's Day Parade, "Wild Bill" Donovan's Congressional Medal of Honor (housed in the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue), the banner of the Irish Brigade, a bucket and scrub brush, O'Neill's desk, a nun's habit, sheet music from Harrigan and Hart, ironworker's gloves, a union pin (“or the sash my grandfather wore to lead the 1904 New York City Labor Day parade”), Gene Kelly's dancing shoes, the cap James Cagney wore in Yankee Doodle Dandy, a First Communion boy's arm band/girl's dress, a shovel or spade, Grace Kelly's riding outfit from Philadelphia Story, a fireman's helmet, Bing Crosby's bow tie, a bottle shard from the Five Points, a cop's billy club and (finally) Legs Diamond's pistol. 

It wasn’t just ink-stained wretches like Hamill and Quinn who responded. Reader Damian McShane of the Bronx, responding through Facebook, suggested a fight poster of famous boxer John L. Sullivan as well as Congressman Tip O’Neill's gavel. 

Maureen Duffy, of Salt Lake City, added, “You would of course need to find one of the signs that my great-grandfather and great-uncles saw again and again when looking for work in New York and Connecticut in the 1860's -- the signs that said Help Wanted: No Irish Need Apply. 

“And then, of course, there's the police van  which became termed (and still is) the ‘Paddywagon’ from its use in, supposedly,  picking up drunk and fighting Irishmen from the streets of New York and  depositing them in the ‘clink’ or ‘pokey’ (which are both slang phrases used by  the Irish designating gaol).” 

New York Times columnist Barry also wanted Irish American pop culture represented.  

“I would suggest something from George M. Cohan -- some sheet  music, perhaps. I know there's a statue of Cohan in the Fox Point section of  Providence, at the top of Wickenden Street. 

'Yankee Doodle Dandy' ad which starred James Cagney

“You might also consider a Warner  Brothers movie from the 1930s, one that captures that New York Irish  sensibility. There are plenty, whether gangster or military, starring Jimmy  Cagney, Pat O'Brien, and Frank McHugh. The Fighting 69th, Angels With Dirty  Faces, The Roaring Twenties.” 

Tom Murphy, who heads up the retirees chapter of the United Federation of Teachers (and also happens to be my cousin), suggested a host of more domestic  items, such as front door holy water fonts, lace curtains, St. Patrick’s Day  cards, women's tam-o-shanters and scarves, rosary beads/scapulars/crucifix, a  racing form or OTB ticket or the Irish Sweepstake receipt and prayer cards from  wakes.  

Murphy also suggested a voting booth, a photo of JFK, a Cead Mile Failte  plaque and (finally) last year’s palms, to be burned to ashes. 

Historian and author Thomas Fleming appreciated a suggestion I made two weeks  ago -- a copy of a famous book by Cotton Mather, which mentions the execution of Irish Catholic immigrant and accused witch Goody Glover, whose religion and  ethnicity made her a target. 

“In the tradition of Goody Glover,” Fleming wrote, “I'd suggest a picture of  Lyman Beecher, father of Harriet B. Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. He crusaded  for decades against the Catholic (mostly Irish) menace. 

“He's got a face that emanates prejudice, a sort of permanent scowl.” 

Former Irish Voice reporter Georgina Brennan, replying from Ireland, wanted to  highlight Irish music. 

"A copy of McNally's Row of Flats by Mick Maloney, which contains some of the  best Irish children’s songs long, long ago forgotten." Readers Dick and Kit Wheatley also had music on their minds, reserving a special  place for the pipes played at funerals and any songs which long for “home.” 

Author and historian Kevin Baker went back to the 19th century, saying any story  of the Irish in the U.S. could not be told without a Union army field cap from  the Civil War or a banner representing the San Patricios, who fought on the side of Mexico in the Mexican-American war. 

Baker also suggested, “A growler, with which to talk about the constant, disastrous attempts by the codfish aristocracy to ‘tame’ the Irish through  temperance. A pair of tap shoes, Dagger John Hughes’ clerical robes, the  rusty-colored old priest’s frock Francis Cardinal Spellman liked to wear when he was pretending to be a simple country prelate around The Powerhouse and, finally, the spikes of Mike “King” Kelly, the first real Irish, team-sport  superstar.” 

Matt Patterson, a dentist working on the Duffy’s Cut archaeological project in  Pennsylvania, said we should “include a piece of railroad track and an item from a canal boat or mule harness that pulled canal boats.  

“The Irish built the  Eastern railroads and canals, and the Duffy’s Cut Project historians say that  for every mile of railroad and canal in this country, there's a dead Irishman.”

Reader Michael Brennan also had Pennsylvania on his mind. He suggested “company ‘money’ paid to the Irish in the Pennsylvania coal fields, good at the company store or bar but not the train station.”

Irish Brigade Civil War banners (from the North and South), a nun with a ruler  in her hand and a film clip showing George M. Cohan, played by Cagney, in  Yankee Doodle Dandy were also important to Brennan. 

What’s clear from all of this is that the story of the Irish in America is a  rich and diverse one.  

Gathering all of these artifacts would be quite a task.  Then again, compared to surviving in the U.S., it doesn’t seem so daunting.  

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan) 

Irish grinches need not apply - Irish in America don’t need to be told how to celebrate their heritage

Maureen O'Hara and John Wayne in 'The Quiet Man'

There are two types of people you hate to come across every St. Patrick’s Day season.

First, of course, is the once-a-year Irishman.  You know, the type of guy that doesn’t know the Gate Theatre from Guinness, yet hums a tune about the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder and tells anyone unlucky enough to be near him all about his Irish roots.  And it may be he’s even telling the truth about some of this stuff.

The once-a-year Irishman is up there with a host of other annoying holiday types.  Ash Wednesday just passed, so some of you surely came across the folks you rarely see in Mass on any given Sunday, yet are front and center when it’s time to dole out the ashes. 

Same thing come Palm Sunday.  Ashes and Palms. Which makes them “A & P Catholics.”

We can take some comfort in the fact that the once-a-year Irishman has been thoroughly criticized already.  In fact, he is often criticized by another holiday annoyance, a figure who has been the subject of less attention, but is possibly even more obnoxious.

Let’s call them Irish Grinches.  You know they type.  The kind of person so steeped in authentic Irishness that he has nothing but contempt for St. Patrick’s Day and all of its attendant “Oirish” traditions and customs.

They will sneer at the very mention of The Quiet Man or corned beef.  They will probably lecture you on “true” Irish culture, and offer some preachy words about Beckett or Bobby Sands or At Swim-Two-Birds.

Or they may simply wash the green off of their hands entirely.

“I am of Irish descent,” Catherine Poe wrote in a blog entry on The Washington Times web site on March 17.  “But I do not mist up on St. Paddy’s Day. ‘Danny Boy’ is maudlin treacle, even on a bagpipe. Corned beef and cabbage is only eatable with lots of mustard.”
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She later adds, “Spare me that hyphenated Irish American stuff. I am an American. We all came here to become Americans and we should have left the hyphens on the boat.”

That’s pretty much what Woodrow Wilson and other staunch patriots said back in the 1910s, decrying the supposed foreign influences caused by the heavy immigration of the late 19th and early 20th century, from Ireland and elsewhere.

It makes you realize that some people put way too much thought into what are and are not appropriate ways to express your Irish heritage. 

Yes, there are some things we can all agree on.  I should hope that most people find those green hats and T-shirts with references to drink and vomiting quite tasteless. 

It’s not that an Irish joke about drinking can’t be funny.  But when that is the only thing you link to Irish culture, well, it’s not so much offensive as it is boring and lame.

On the other hand, standing up as a defender of all that is precious and authentic about the Irish can be nearly as obnoxious.

It gets to the point where, though you may consider yourself quite versed and sophisticated when it comes to matters of Irish culture, you are also hesitant to admit a few inconvenient facts.

Such as: I loooooove Irish soda bread.  Almost as much as I love a fatty, greasy slab of corn beef!
With or without mustard, thanks very much. 

I don’t like them because they are Irish.  God knows if they even are.  I like these things because they are tasty and, yes, because they are part of a larger tradition. 

A fake, false, fabricated tradition?  Perhaps.  But a tradition nevertheless.

The Irish in America don’t need to be told what they should or shouldn’t be doing to celebrate their heritage. 

Yes, an unfortunate consequence of this is the annoying once-a-year Irishman.  But the grumpy Irish Grinches who moan about all that is inauthentic about St. Patrick’s Day really aren’t much better. They simply want to seem smarter and more sophisticated than most other Irish people. 

And if that makes them happy, more power to them.

Me?  Sure, I’ll take a copy of Finnegan’s Wake or At Swim-Two-Birds.  But I want some corned beef and soda bread on the side.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at facebook.com/tomdeignan.  Visit youtube.com to see Tom Deignan discuss the history of “The Irish on Mott Street.”)

The Irish boys of summer - “The Emerald Diamond” and how the Irish transformed baseball

Charley Rosen

It's that time of year again when baseball fans can all feel equally hopeful that this is finally the year for their team.

And that this is finally not the year that all the rich teams (like the Yankees) will ultimately dominate the season and make it to the World Series in October.

This year will be a different one in baseball. League officials have added yet another playoff team to the mix, so when all is said and done 10 teams will have a crack at the World Series.

There is a tendency to gripe about changes like this, but for all the talk of tradition in the so-called national pastime, change has always been an integral part of baseball.

In fact, it was 141 years ago this St. Patrick’s Day that plans were set in motion which would ultimately make Co. Cavan native Andy Leonard one of the first great Irish-born stars of American baseball.

It was on March 17, 1871 that representatives from the National Association of Base Ball Players met to form what is considered by most to be the first organization dedicated to American baseball.

At the time, the Irish were a central part of the game. This is what author Charley Rosen explores in his new book The Emerald Diamond: How the Irish Transformed America’s Greatest Pastime (Harper).

In the book, Rosen explores how the Irish shaped and influenced the game of baseball in its earliest days, when the boys of summer on the diamond often had parents back in tenements who had to come from Ireland during the Famine.

The Irish in the earliest days of baseball are a story full of future Hall of Famers and forgotten heroes.

Inevitably, the sports also reflects broader themes in Irish American history.

Consider the career of 1870s star Jim O’Rourke. Known as “The Orator,” O’Rourke was a standout outfielder for the Middletown Mansfields of Connecticut, one of 10 teams which made up the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP).

O’Rourke was then wooed by the rival Boston Red Stockings, who were willing to pay handsomely for his services.

There was just one catch.

O’Rourke “would have to conceal the obvious Irishness of his name by dropping the 'O' and playing as Rourke,” Rosen writes.

O’Rourke would later claim that “a million dollars would not tempt me.”

O’Rourke was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in 1945.

Of course, by and large, things weren’t always so tense. This allowed Irish American players to change the game in many ways.

During the NABBP’s first season, the Philadelphia Athletics were crowned the league champions, and they were led by Tyrone native Fergy Malone, a catcher who hit a whopping .343 for the year.

William Arthur “Candy” Cummings, meanwhile, is generally “credited with being the first pitcher to throw a curveball,” Rosen notes.

During the 1874 campaign, Rosen adds, a group of NABBP players got together to bring the game across the Atlantic. Jim O’Rourke, Andy Leonard and a host of other players participated in a three-week tour of England, which included a two-day stop in Dublin.

Antrim native John McMullin and Cork-born Tim Murname were also on the squad, which was led by manager and Donegal native Dick McBride.

The large numbers of Irish on baseball’s earliest teams made sense in many ways.

Though it is often considered a pastoral, rural game, the fact is baseball has been exclusively a big-city sport until recent years.

Having Irish players on the field made it more likely that Irish immigrants and their children in Philly, New York, Boston and Chicago would pay money to see games.

As the 19th century wore on, the Irish shined even brighter on the diamond.

Mike “King” Kelly was one of the most exciting players in the 1880s. Pitcher and Cork native Tony “the Count” Mullane won 30 games numerous times in a season, while St. Louis native James “Pud” Galvin won over 300 total games and was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame.

Of course, Galvin also ingested Brown-Sequard Elixir, a 19th century performance enhancement derived from monkey testosterone.

So, maybe the Irish are also to blame for baseball’s steroids scandal.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at facebook.com/tomdeignan)

An unlikely Irish rebel - Barney Rosset utterly transformed American culture

Barney Rosset

Barney Rosset may not strike you as a particularly Hibernian name. In fact, it might not even strike you as a familiar name.

But make no mistake about it – Rosset, who died late last month at the age of 89, was an Irish rebel who utterly transformed American culture.

Thanks to Rosset, we can talk much more frankly about topics such as sex without fear of being arrested.

So, we should perhaps also blame Rosset for all the cheap, tacky sex talk we see in music and all over TV these days.

Along the way, Rosset helped expose American readers to daring Irish writers such as Samuel Beckett and John Kennedy Toole, and was at the center of one of the most explosive censorship trials since the battle over James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Either way, Rosset credited his Irish roots for his rebel streak.

"I'm half-Jewish and half-Irish, and my mother and grandfather spoke Gaelic," Rosset once said.

"From an early age my feelings made the IRA look pretty conservative. I grew up hating fascism, hating racism."

He also despised conformity, perhaps even rules in general.

No surprise then, that three years after buying Grove Press publishing house in 1951 for a mere $3,000, he introduced American readers to an Irish writer who, himself, had little use for rules -- Samuel Beckett.

Grove was the first U.S. publishing house to release an edition of Beckett’s classic play Waiting for Godot.

"Grove Press was three titles and maybe a hundred copies of each, enough to fit in a suitcase," Rosset told NPR in 2009. "No financial records, no nothing."

No other American publisher was interested in Beckett in the mid-1950s. Rosset admitted that Beckett’s wordplay and existential angst were not exactly what he got into the publishing game for.

"When I started publishing, I most definitely would have liked to have published Hemingway and Faulkner and Fitzgerald," he said, "but they were already published."
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Rosset is perhaps best known for publishing and distributing copies of D.H. Lawrence’s banned, erotically-charged novel Lady Chatterley’s lover. The book was originally published in 1928 but had a history of being censored and suppressed because of its ribald language and steamy scenes between working class men and upper class women.

In 1959, Rosset went to court to battle charges that he was peddling smut. The Lady Chatterley’s Lover case is considered by many one of the most important tests of American artistic boundaries since the famous 1933 decision to allow Joyce’s classic Ulysses to be published in America.

Even after winning the Chatterley case, Rosset faced an uphill battle publishing the book. American culture was still tame, with TV, radio and the movies playing things extremely safe.

Needless to say, just a few years after Americans finally got their hands on Lawrence’s novel, they would be left yawning by mere prose. By the late 1960s, it seemed as if bold sexuality was everywhere.

Rosset himself moved onto publishing another pioneer of erotic literature, Henry Miller.

Indeed, that is why Rosset’s impact on American culture is both a blessing and a curse.

Yes, it seems reasonable to read Lawrence’s novel, and perhaps even the musings of Henry Miller. But Rosset helped kick open the floodgates, so much so that it sometimes seems as if we should finally take a break from our culture’s obsession with sexuality.

Meanwhile, Rosset’s role in the Chatterley case obscures some of his other work with brilliant Irish writers.

Yes, there is Beckett. And then there is the saga of John Kennedy Toole.

Famously, Toole – the author of the cult classic Confederacy of Dunces – committed suicide before his book was published. It was Toole’s mother who brought a messy copy of his manuscript to LSU press. 

The book went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.

Rosset and Grove Press would later publish a novel Toole had written at a much younger age called The Neon Bible.

In the end, Barney Rosset may have upset as many Irish Catholic readers as he enlightened. But America would not have been the same without him.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at facebook.com/tomdeignan)
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Touch of Southie in Brooklyn as Donnie Wahlberg and Michael Patrick MacDonald speak to students

Michael Patrick Macdonald

What do a former teen heartthrob and a son of Southie have to say to roomful of Brooklyn high school students?

Plenty it turns out.

Last week, an extraordinary meeting of minds took place in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

As regular readers of this column know, I have a day job as an English teacher at Automotive High School.

In my prior life as an Irish Voice reporter, I got to know author Thomas Kelly, best-selling author of books such as Empire Rising, Payback and The Rackets.

Kelly’s latest gig is a job as a writer and producer on the hit CBS TV show Blue Bloods.  The show is about an Irish American family of cops led by patriarch Frank Reagan, the New York City police commissioner, played by Tom Selleck.

One of the main characters in the show is Chief Reagan’s son Danny, played by Donnie Wahlberg, who has appeared in films such as The Sixth Sense, Zookeeper and Saw IV and V.

Of course, in Wahlberg’s past life, he was one-fifth of the chart-topping band New Kids on the Block.  The kids -- now known as NKOTB -- still get together and perform. But Wahlberg has also successfully made the transition from singing to acting.

One thing Kelly and Wahlberg share is a desire to remember where they come from.

Both currently make fine livings in show business, but their beginnings were humble, to say the least.  So they understand that kids in traditionally underserved communities sometimes need different kinds of motivation.

That’s where the Actors and Writers Book Club of the Writers Guild Of America East (WGAE) Foundation comes in.

The club sends actors and writers to high schools to read and discuss works of literature to get students excited about reading, writing and story telling.

So Kelly asked if my students would be interested in a program featuring Wahlberg, as well as the acclaimed memoirist Michael Patrick MacDonald, whose book All Souls: A Family Story of Southie, is perhaps the definitive look at that most Irish of cities, South Boston.

In the past I’d taught MacDonald’s book in my English classes.  Though it is about poor and working class Irish Catholics, the book’s themes have always resonated deeply with my students who are largely black and Hispanic.

MacDonald writes poignantly about the scourges of crime and drugs, fatherlessness, as well as the perseverance of large families living in poverty.

The Southie disdain for snitches and rats is also something my students are quite familiar with.

I decided to spend two weeks with my current 12th grade students (60 overall) reading excerpts from All Souls to prepare them for MacDonald and Wahlberg’s visit.

This was particularly timely since just a few months back, the most infamous South Bostonian of them all, Whitey Bulger, had been arrested.

This time around, my students were consumed by the question of how we -- how MacDonald, how we all -- are shaped by our environment.

Are you destined to follow in the footsteps of alluring criminals like Whitey Bulger, as one of MacDonald’s brothers did?  Or is it possible to not only break the cycle but return to help others do the same, as Michael Patrick MacDonald did?

“Destiny -- that’s a powerful word,” replied Wahlberg last Friday in the Automotive auditorium, when he was asked by a student if he believes “geography is destiny.”

Wahlberg went on to note that his own large family from Dorchester was “poor,” surviving on welfare and “government cheese.”

But Kelly, MacDonald and Wahlberg agreed that with passion and tenacity, you can become anything you want, wherever you come from.

“My own brother was in prison,” Wahlberg added, when the New Kids were getting big.

Wahlberg, of course, is referring to world famous actor and Oscar nominee Mark Wahlberg, most recently seen as Irish Micky Ward in The Fighter.

The Brooklyn teenagers peppered the writers and singer/movie star with questions about acting and singing, passion and show biz.

“That was great,” Wahlberg said afterwards.

And in case anyone thought he was merely acting, he vowed to return to the school for a basketball game when the season kicks off next month.