“Dad, you play, you play!”. The phrase still echoes in his head. The eyes are moistened, happiness is breathed. His figure is erected, promises are kept. The commitment is attended to and the scene is filled with magic. The beach of Monte Hermoso, a call and the innocence of Vicente, who is seven years old. He can’t resist it and there he goes, picks up the phone again and asks that the pertinent procedures be carried out. No matter the age, they are 44 years old, eight seasons without official competition, but the key is in their hands. Dad crystallizes desire. Bay Basket it benefits. Argentine basketball is experiencing a miraculous night and he shows that time has made him even wiser. John Ignatius Sanchez, Pepe, one of the emblems of the Golden Generation, made friends with uncertainty. With the 4 on his back he played again, in the National League, on his own team. So, like a baby, he came back and felt that life gave him another beautiful gift.
“It is very hot in Bahia, so I ate late and went to bed quite late as well. Now we are going to return to Monte Hermoso. The truth is that I am tired, but I feel good, I am whole. Without major pain, but we will see how the hours go by”. The talk of Pepe, the president of Bahía Basket, with THE NATION, the day after his return to basketball, is a story in which emotion is the common denominator.
-How did the idea come about?
– It was all very abrupt, so to speak. In the afternoon Pipa (Gutiérrez, head of the Bahía Basket basketball area) called me, because I was in Monte, to update me and tell me that we were super short, that another boy had been injured. We were six, all juveniles, except Iván Catani. Then all boys of 16 and 17 years. That’s why it was difficult to compete. I went down to the beach to look for a cell phone signal, because in the neighborhood it is very bad and when I go upstairs to tell what was happening as something else, my son tells me: “You play, dad, you play!”. I immediately thought: ‘this is crazy, I’m on the beach’. But it was a chance. I had promised him to play a basketball game, because he never saw me. He is 7 years old and I retired eight years ago. He knows that I used to play and that I dedicate myself to basketball, but he never saw me. Vicente considers himself an artist, he paints, he makes pastries, he does magic tricks, he fixes things, that is to say, he is a different palo from mine. I always tell him that I admire him as an artist. I told him on more than one occasion that I liked the idea of him seeing me play, so he would know what I did. So, well, I called Pipa, told them to sign me up, ask for the permits and do all the paperwork. Suddenly, a few hours later, he was on a trip to Bahía Blanca to play. A beautiful madness and a madness that has a beginning and an end. It was to play this game to help the team, I had promised the boys to play, that Laura (Cors, the head coach) lead me was special, symbolic.
He couldn’t stop, the happiness at once again feeling the sensation of being a player still runs through his blood and that passion boils: “When I arrived I was a little nervous. Before the game I didn’t know if I was going to hold out, because even though I train and I’m in shape, a game has a different rhythm. There are people, there are the referees, the rivals who want the points. I had many unknowns. But when I stepped on the court, in the place where I enjoy and feel fullest, what happened happened, ”said Pepe Sánchez, who had a night in which he was decisive for Bahia’s victory over Gimnasia 91-87, in overtime, and in which he closed a list with 12 points, 8 rebounds, 8 assists and 2 steals, in 28 minutes.
“Embrace uncertainty,” reads a tattoo on his forearm. And from there you can begin to understand why he came back to play and why he was so special. Some time ago, he told LA NACION: “The doctors told me that I could not have children, and at that moment, due to my linear view of life, I asked myself «how can it be, if I am a high-performance athlete ? How can I not have children?». And it becomes an issue with oneself, because one thinks «if everything I set out to do in life I achieved it. This, which is something natural, how can I not achieve it? There one had to accept that life was not linear and that it was possible not to achieve everything that I thought I could do. Life put me in my place and told me “you had a good run. Well, now it’s cut.
From there you understand what happened that night at the Dow Center and why it represents a landmark in Pepe Sánchez’s life: “Vicente shouted at me all the time: ‘Dad, dad’ and greeted me. It’s like he didn’t understand very well what was happening, but he had a proud little face… It was like feeling that he thought: ‘That’s my dad!’ I looked at my wife and son all the time. My old man and my brother watched it via streaming from Monte. For us it was beautiful. For us it was very special. Because it was very difficult to have Vicente, that’s why he came so long after, but he came. It is no longer part of this story. To think that it was not possible to have it and that it happened, is very related to everything that happened last night.”
No improvisation. Planning is part of your life. This is how Bahía Basket was built, that is why his task was up to the task, he offered touches of his talent, he showed that there is no expiration date for his talent. “The nerves came from doubts, from my physical response. I stayed in shape, but I was more than seven years without playing. I trained the boys, it’s true, but I didn’t play. When the pandemic broke out, I made it my goal to feel like I was back on the court with some fluidity. It’s difficult to do it after so many years, because there are certain movements that if they don’t flow, you get injured. So I worked with a teacher (Pablo Moyano) and a kinesiologist (Clemente), and Martín Luis (part of Bahía Basket’s technical staff), they trained me. We stayed like this for three months. This was over a year ago. What I wanted was to be able to feel good on a court to be able to train the boys. My idea was to be able to generate more pressure on them in game situations, to make it more real. That was months of back pain, until I felt like a player again and with that, obviously I kept training alone. What I do is catch a ball and I move, I have fun, with the turns, the rotations… That kept my back very healthy. And I even used it as mental therapy. Also, from time to time I would start playing with the boys. But from there to play a game… Well, luckily I think it went well”.
Pepe Sánchez was the first Argentine to debut in the NBA, in 2000. He was European champion with Panathinaikos. He played in Barcelona and in Real Madrid. He is a world basketball figure. The news crossed borders, naturally. The Spanish magazine Gigantes wrote: “They are not reading a joke, nor are we at the beginning of the century. It is 2022 and this morning, in the second division of the Argentine league, the magical Pepe Sánchez returned to the fields at the age of 44. Nine years after his retirement. And he did it as if he had never hung up his boots. With fantasy assists and a ‘clinic’ in the direction. Like all life.” Similar news was published on sports portals in Greece or Italy.
Juan Gutiérrez published on Twitter the photo with Pepe Sánchez’s emblematic 4 shirt with a paper written by himself president/player for one night from the team: “This has been all friends”. The feeling of having fulfilled a beautiful and ephemeral madness, summed up with the simplicity of five words. “The idea was to play a game. Ok, It’s right. They are already pulling me to play another one. I was interested in being fluid so that people who saw me could notice it. It’s what I always liked about basketball, being part of a team. That always seduced me. I always saw the game as an art, as something aesthetic. That’s why when people go to the court they are looking for those aesthetic expressions of the players. And I feel that I was able to live up to it, beyond my 44 years. I think it was worth it.”
