Memories

So the other day I was digging through some of my memoirs and I happened to come across this piping-hot gem. It’s an excerpt from a story I wrote years ago about my time on the road with television’s favorite son, Patrick Duffy (of “Dallas” and “Step-by-Step” fame). Yes, that’s right -- Patrick Duffy. We used to pal around together.

The story picks up when Duffy and I are driving through New York and we decide to play basketball with a few of his friends in the entertainment industry. Things get pretty interesting.

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Later in the day, Patrick Duffy and I drove to some playground right in the middle of Spanish Harlem and played a friendly pick-up game of basketball with a few of his friends. John Stamos and Bob Saget were already there warming up.

Duffy leans in and tells me as we stretch, “Listen, kid. Things can get kind of rough out here, so watch your ass.” I nodded and tightened my shoe laces, assuming he meant because we were in Harlem.

Boy was I in for a surprise.

Stretch-limos pulled up with the likes of Rick Schroeder and the guy who played Carl Winslow. “Hot Carl,” as they called him, walked up to me, introduced himself as Reginald, and said, “Heads up, nigga. Bob Saget can dunk like a muhfucka.” I just laughed, shook my head, and walked away.

So we line up and pick teams. Kurt Russell and Bob Saget were captains. Saget decides to shoot “die” for ball. “Alright, Bobby. Gimme yer best shot … I can take it.” said Russell, in his John Wayne-esque voice. I recalled it as being one of his exact lines from his smash-hit Big Trouble in Little China. His psyche-out worked, and Saget missed. Russell chuckled.

But Saget took it personal.

Game on.

So we’re at 4-2, and Russel’s team is ahead. Always competitive, Saget keeps trying to shoot off the post. After missing a few easy hook shots, Simon Le Bon, the lead singer of Duran Duran, gets right in Saget’s face. He starts calling him Danny Tanner.

Clang, he misses another.

"Nice shot, Tannah.”

Clang.

“Why don’t you go home and get your fucking mop, Tannah,” Simon Le Bon says through his thick English accent.

Well, Saget gets really pissed and starts calling for the ball. He posts up, says, “I got your Danny Tanner right here, motherfucker!!” He gets the lob, catches Simon in the nose with a vicious ‘bow, and two-hand jams over the top of him, leaving his balls right in Simon Le Bon’s face, screaming, “You hungry like a wolf now, bitch?!”

Le Bon had to be carted off to the hospital to be treated for a broken nose and the worst case of tea-bagging I’ve ever witnessed. Nobody, and I mean nobody fucked with Bob Saget. Ever. I learned that real quick.

It didn’t end there, though. Mark-Paul Gosselaar -- you know, “Zack Morris” -- well, he was being a real show-off, and Duffy let him know he wasn’t having it.

Score is 6-5.

He checks the ball to Duffy, goes into his “Bayside High Killer-Crossover” move, and Duffy swipes at the ball so hard that he breaks Zack’s arm.

The Puerto Rican’s that were watching the game helped get him to a hospital, but not before they asked him, at gunpoint, if he could really do that “timeout”-thing from the show. And if he really ever piped Kelly Kapowski.

“What about Lisa, ese?” they asked.

“Hey, Victor, you remember when Zack was doin’ the homeless chick?”

“Si, the Christmas episode, hermano! That was a good one, holmes. She lived in the car wit’ her dad. So, lemme ask you, Preppie -- if you banged that punta in her room, would that have been the backseat or the frontseat, ese?”

Meanwhile, A.C. Slater (a.k.a. Mario Lopez), who was sitting in a chair he’d turned backwards (his signature move at “The Max”) subbed in and ran the point.

“Now we got a game,” exclaimed Kurt Russell.

Kurt, dressed in his skin-tight Boston Celtic’s shorts and green knee-pads, was being covered by Kirk Cameron.

Man, did he embarrass the shit out of the kid.

Now Kirk had been saying that his knee was not %100, claiming he’d blown it out on the set of Growing Pains in a one-on-one game with Alan Thicke, but Duff told me he was full of shit.

Anyway, Kurt Russell went 12 of 18 from the field and lit us up for 27 points and 14 boards.

Weeks later, they found Cameron’s body in a Wendy’s dumpster outside of Philly.

After the game, we all went and got ice cream.