The tallest tale.

“I don’t care how tall he is, he can’t hurl so he’s height doesn't matter”. It is a warm June day in my local and the start to the eagerly awaited clash between Cork and Tipp has been delayed because of a northern football match. The conversation has settled on the merits or lack of, of Cork’s starting full-forward Aisake O hAilpin. Seventy minutes later the Tipp full-back line was reduced to quivering Lilliputians blinking at the Gulliver that had escaped, the giant had proven himself as he always has to. It is ever thus. From the player who has a good touch for a big man to those whose height is their principle force they are judged on their size first and ability later. Often they are stereotyped as gentle giants. It is a tired phrase but every once and a while it is appropriate. Picking up Sports Illustrated last week I discovered a man who the phrase perhaps best sums him up, or did. Only in his passing did I discover the remarkable story of Manute Bol. A man who stood out as a giant in a sport full of them.

One wonders what the reaction would have been last week in the most predictable of NBA drafts had Washington picked the son of a Dinka tribe chief from Sudan instead of John Wall. Bol ended up in Washington by way of Cleveland but his accession to the NBA was delayed by two years. Stating a technical fault with his file and passport which said Manute was nineteen they decreed that he was too young for the draft. The passport also said he was five feet two. Bol was measured while sitting down. In Cleveland University his base basketball was improved but it was his rudimentary English that was his biggest challenge, his English instructor Arleen Bialic explained “He couldn't’t use a telephone. He couldn't’t operate a coke machine. He didn’t even know how to hold a pencil, never had done it” But Manute soon learned and got his grade average up to scratch and earned his move to the big time.

In the NBA he was an oddity not just for his enormous size but for the statistical fact that he had more blocked shots then points scored. He was the man who Bill Walton said “throws everyone out of sync”. His stats remained average throughout his career. He was conspicuous by his size. But his career was far more than stats. It was about raising money and awareness to the unceasing suffering of his homeland. It was about blazing a trail for Sudan athletes and showing that a man who stood at seven foot seven could survive in the NBA. He passed at the young age of forty-seven on June nineteenth. Commenting on his height he once said “I am never bothered by the fact I am tall. My height is a gift from God. That is what I say. I did not create it. You have to leave with what you are given. Who Knows what God is dreaming for us? There is a reason. Look at what he has dreamed for me”

Perhaps he couldn't’t really play but his height in body and spirit mattered.