Don't Give Up. Don't EVER give up. V Foundation auction today on ESPN

Today is ESPN’s auction day for the V foundation for cancer research.  I’m sure if you’ve listened at all to ESPN Radio you’ve heard the neat stuff you can bid on, and how all the dollars you donate will go directly to fund research projects into beating this bastard. The foundation was started by ESPN in conjunction with the late Jim Valvano, former men’s basketball coach at North Carolina State and ESPN analyst who died in 1994.  Valvano announced the formation of the foundation at the 1993 ESPY awards when he accepted the Arthur Ashe Courage Award.  The speech has become legend for a number of reasons, and to suggest that you are tired of hearing it is to suggest you’re tired of watching It’s a Wonderful Life at Christmas.

I was thinking how different in personality Ashe and Valvano were.  Ashe called his book Days of Grace for a reason; that’s the way he carried himself on the court and in his battle with AIDS.  He was a many of great dignity and character.  Valvano was a character all right, a paisan from New York who coulda been the next Pat Cooper if he’d tried.  He was manic, energetic, talking with his hands like we who came from the neighbuh-hood do. And always willing to laugh at himself.  (The most famous image of Valvano as coach comes from the seconds after his team pulled off the great upset of the University of Houston in the 1983 National Championship: amid the craziness of celebration after Lorenzo Charles put back Derek Wittenberg’s desperate heave into the basket for the win, the CBS cameras caught Valvano running on the court looking for someone to hug.) It seems like you could not have chosen a more different person from Ashe to win the first ever award in his name.

But both men were competitors.  Both men fighters to the end.  Valvano used the ceremony to urge for more funding of cancer research, which amazingly had been stagnant for years, even as the many foundations created to fight AIDS had achieved so much success in funding research.  He was determined to change that, and he did.  He almost didn’t get to attend the ceremony, let alone deliver the speech. He was in such pain from the bastard, that it was really touch and go.  But he managed to get to the stage, and with the help of his friends in the coaching fraternity, especially Dick Vitale and  Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, got down from the dais after draining himself with the passion to share his love of life.

The speech is memorable for many reasons, especially the moment where he tells everyone that there is a guy on a screen telling him he’s got 30 seconds.  I got tumors all over my body, you think I’m gonna care about a guy telling me “30 seconds! 30 seconds!”  He follows it with a classic Italian curse that makes the guyz from Brooklyn laugh and cry. He went on for another three minutes, insisting that we all enjoy every second we have to live, quoting Emerson, and announcing the foundation he was creating in his name, with its logo: don’t give up…don’t ever give up.

On this day, for my friend Jane, who like Jimmy V. lived a full joyous life in half the amount of years most of us get, I made my donation, and I hope others will too, if not to this foundation, than to whatever charity moves them.  Let’s beat this bastard.