Kevin Duckworth, R.I.P.

Billy got us tickets to the Blazer game somehow, some way. I still to this day cannot figure out how he did it. We both grew up in homes where getting a quarter to buy a pack of baseball cards was a huge expenditure, so going to a game was never part of the equation. We saw the Blazers a few times a year when they were on free television. But for this game we had tickets. So we climbed to the top of the old Memorial Coliseum. We sat right in front of the organ player. We didn't care...we were in the building! And we got to see our favorite players. For me it was the hard-charging semi-maniac Jerome Kersey. For Billy, and for thousands of other fans, it was Kevin "Duck" Duckworth. Every time Duck touched the ball the place went nuts with duck chants and duck calls...calls using the whistles hunters use to sound like a real duck with ruptured lungs. When he shot that one-handed mid-range jumper we knew it was going in. Sure, Duck had no inside game to speak of. He was a little bit slow-footed, ... (link)