Throughout the years from time to time I've Googled such things as, oh, "Rex Chapman, Apollo High," or "greatest scorers in high school basketball history", etc etc. And on the periphery there always seemed to be a named that popped up that I never really paid attention to: Danny Heater.
First of all, is that name made up? Lil TOO cool, no? Well, turns out one night in West Virginia in 1960 Danny Heater lit up the gym for 135, therein passing himself into a legend come to be known as
The Ballad of Danny Heater.
He did it 31 seasons ago. He was 17 then and built like a boneyard and had a father who was out of work in the mines and a mama named Beulah who sang beautifully in the Methodist church, and on one improbable howling-cold January night, in a little band-box country gym that was so small it didn't even have seats, he vaulted up out of his West Virginia destinies to set -- in 32 minutes and four quarters of high school basketball -- a single-game national scoring record that no one has ever been able to touch.
"We're going to feed it to Danny every time we get the ball," the coach had told Luther Clayton and Harold Conrad and Charlie Smith and Donnie Brooks and all the others in the locker room. And why? Because they wanted to try and get the poorest kid on the team a ride to college.
Typical almost too-good-to-be-true Bobby Plump stuff; but I'm a sucker for anything that happens decades ago in some bumfuck mountain gym, myth-making nights with a full moon. And what do I hafta do to go down in history as
The Ballad of ____________? I mean camon.
Apparently there's been talk of making a movie about him. Meanwhile I wonder if he's still a ticket agent at Dulles? How awesome would that be, you can just walk up and talk to the Ballad of Danny Heater. Awesome.
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