Thoughts on “The Hustle: One Team and Ten Lives in Black and White”
Last fall I saw a note on Facebook from a high school friend mentioning that another classmate, Doug Merlino, had just completed a book titled, “The Hustle: One Team and Ten Lives in Black and White.” It was the true story of Merlino’s time playing on a youth basketball team. A brief description from the author’s website reads:
The experiment was dreamed up by two fathers, one white, one black. What would happen, they wondered, if they mixed white players from an elite Seattle private school – famous for alums such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates – and black kids from the inner city on a basketball team? Wouldn’t exposure to privilege give the black kids a chance at better opportunities? Wouldn’t it open the eyes of the white kids to a different side of life?
The 1986 season would be the laboratory. Out in the real world, hip-hop was going mainstream, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson ruled the NBA, and Ronald Reagan was president. In Seattle, the team’s season unfolded like a perfectly scripted sports movie: the ragtag group of boys became fast friends and gelled to win the league championship. The experiment was deemed a success.
But was it? How did crossing lines of class, race, and wealth affect the lives of these ten boys? Two decades later, Doug Merlino, who played on the team, returned to find his teammates. His search ranges from a prison cell to a hedge fund office, street corners to a shack in rural Oregon, a Pentecostal church to the records of a brutal murder. The result is a complex, gripping, and, at times, unsettling story.
The Hustle, in the vein of Michael Apted’s Up series, tells the stories of ten teammates set before a background of sweeping social and economic change, capturing the ways race, money, and opportunity shape our lives. A tale both personal and public, The Hustle is the story of a disparate group of men finding – or not finding – a place in America.
Although it’s been 20+ years since I talked to Doug, I immediately pre-ordered the book and anxiously awaited its delivery. Starting in 5th grade we had been classmates for many years and had played together on our middle school basketball team (although not the team profiled in the book). I recall that Doug had left Lakeside - the “elite” private school referenced - while we were in high school, but didn’t know why. The book also promised to explore the lives of the players now that they were grown. Having lost track of them after graduation, I was curious to learn what had happened to these individuals I had been close to in my youth.
As I began reading it became very clear that the scope of the book was much greater than I had anticipated. Not only did Merlino detail the personal histories of the players, he put their experiences into a much broader cultural context. Anyone with an interest in the history of Seattle, race relations in the U.S., basketball, or education policy will find something meaty in The Hustle. The book is a great combination of investigative journalism, compelling storytelling, and honest memoir.
It was the last quality that stuck with me most. Doug and I weren’t close friends, but at such a small school you tend to know quite a bit about everyone. However, I didn’t know why Doug left Lakeside until I read the book. Let’s just say that the school provides an intense experience, both socially and academically that can be overwhelming. Doug realized it wasn’t the right fit for him and made the switch to another high school. I didn’t realize how intense the experience was until I had some distance in terms of time and geography. I am extremely grateful for the education I received, and the opportunities it afforded, but I had quite a few negative emotions associated with those years that took a long time to unravel and resolve.
Since the book was published I reached out to Doug and we’re hoping to connect and chat next time he visits Chicago. The Hustle is an amazing first book, and I can’t wait to see what he has in store for future projects.
