Remembering Red Klotz of the Washington Generals, and the havoc he wreaked in our alley

When I read that Red Klotz of the Washington Generals had died the other day, the first thing I thought about was playing H-O-R-S-E with my old man in the alley behind our house where we had a basket atop the garage, like every other house in Indiana.

The old man would put four letters on me and/or my brother, and then when he felt the need to put the “E” on us, too, he’d go down into the stickers by the railroad tracks and launch this crazy two-handed set shot. And he’d hit like 60 percent of them, and then my brother and I would ask the old man where he got that crazy shot.

A week or two later, invariably, the Globetrotters would be playing the Washington Generals on “Wide World of Sports” and then we’d find out.

His obituary in the New York Times said Red Klotz was 93 years old, that he named the Generals for Dwight Eisenhower, and that they beat the Globetrotters only once, in 1971 in Tennessee, on his last-second basket.

The newspaper described it as a two-handed set shot.