In a post-Olympic sentimental mood

It’s been 30 years since I visited Rome. It was November 1996. My mother invited me on a grand vacation through Central Italy to celebrate my 25th birthday for what would be the biggest trip we’d take together until our travels to Chicago that had me singing Sinatra last May.

Our first day in Rome was a beautiful late-Autumn weekday. We were traveling with a tour group as part of an itinerary organized through my mom’s church. There were over a hundred of us, mostly older adults. I was the youngest one in the group. So, when we bussed into the Italian capital to visit our first landmark, Papal Basilica of Saint Paul, I wasn’t exactly caught up in the hushed reverence shared by the rest of my fellow travelers.

I had a quick altitude adjustment upon entering the basilica, the largest in Rome (not counting Saint Peter’s Basilica, which is technically not in Rome, but in Vatican City) as I was immediately awestruck by that extraordinary atrium. How could it not be a formative experience in the life of a young American traveler?

After a formal walking tour, I was surprised when our travel group was summoned to attend mass. The summons didn’t exactly appeal to me. Let’s put it this way: I hadn’t even gone to church on Sunday. The thought of a weekday mass didn’t fill me with quite the sense of wonder as had stepping into the basilica.

So, as any of my drinking buddies will tell you I’m wont to do, I ducked out of the church unannounced.

Being it was my first day in Italy, my sense of adventure was dialed up to an 11 or 12. Eh, let’s call it 13. That’s what led me to it. It was within walking distance, right across the street, in fact. I suspect it was in the Parco Shuster adjunct to the basilica, though I have no way of confirming this, as I can find no current sign of its existence. But after walking along a short pathway past a one-story structure to my left and a few tennis courts to my right, I happened upon a the most fantastically ordinary outdoor basketball court.

I immediately knew I was where I was supposed to be. There was a spirited 3-on-3 pickup game being played, and one of the players was sporting a jersey that made me feel right at home — a Golden State Warriors gamer, complete with Chris Mullin’s name and No. 17 embroidered on the back.

This is the little slice of Heaven I’ve been thinking about since the start of the Milan Cortina Games. Sure, Mully had nothing to do with the Winter Olympics, or the 1996 Summer Games, for that matter. He was, however, a member of the Dream Team when pro players debuted in the 1992 Barcelona Games.

Here I was, 30 minutes removed from that awe-inspiring atrium — with all its ancient architecture, the forever rows of Roman pillars and black-and-gold inlaid marble floors, the alabaster windows among the century-old frescoes, and the punto focale cupola of Jesus of Nazareth with his disciples Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — alas the serendipity I found that day was stumbling upon a basketball jersey that made me feel at home halfway around the world.

Now, when I think of Italy, including every time I’d turn on a television over the past two weeks to see sweeping views of Milan and Cortina, it takes me back to that moment, and that feeling of being right at home. And I’ve been wondering more than ever in recent days just how much the Olympics had to do with divining that Mully jersey my first day in Rome.

Or, maybe, my piccola fetta di paradiso was but a dream.