Mike was blessed with many special gifts, both mentally and physically. He was an excellent athlete and his med school class enjoyed any opportunity to get outside and play a pick-up game of football or ultimate or softball in City Park. He also spent a lot of time at the gym playing basketball with classmates and whoever else was hanging around. Basketball and football were the sports he enjoyed most but he seemed to be good at just about anything he tried.
Unfortunately, his athletic gifts ended at his wrists. I am speaking of his tragically short fingers. How many times would I find him sitting around the apartment pretending that he could palm a basketball!! I think he secretly hated my hands as he made a special effort to mock my “long, floppy fingers......always flapping in the breeze”. I could easily palm a basketball but without any skill, interest, or vertical jump, dunking a basketball will forever be out of my reach. If Mike had my fingers, I don’t think he would ever have left the gym!!! He likely would never have met a girl and he probably would never have graduated......so perhaps his fingers weren’t such a bad thing.
Another fond memory involving the ‘slam dunk’ was during a trip to Montreal. A group from our class had decided to make a trip to Montreal to watch a Canadiens game and we happened to find ourselves in a bar on the night of the NBA All-Star Slam-Dunk contest. You can imagine the excitement. It was the night that Vince Carter (then playing for Mike’s Raptors) performed one of the best dunks ever seen in the contest (it’s still famous) and Mike almost lost his mind. The next year I gave Mike a poster of the event for his birthday and it stayed on the back of the door to his room for quite a while. I imagine he often had dreams about it.
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