One School, One Bracket: Hall of Famer Dan Issel in Batavia (Part 1 of 3)

Well, let's get into the, the high school years, 'cause it...

I was, uh...

Some, you know, some books, uh, it takes me a little while to, to draw me in, but truth be told, this, this one is, is the hook for me.

I have a, a story that I, I tell often that my junior year of, uh, high school my, one of my best friends and I watched Hoosiers every, every day.

We'd go out and play basketball, and every day we, we'd take a break in the afternoon if it was hot out and watch Hoosiers and just, like, got ourselves whipped into a frenzy to go do it again.

But I could have read this section of the book because I, I felt like a lot of this was, you know, could've been the script for Hoosiers.

You know, really amazing.

So I don't know where you wanna start at, uh, but, uh, love the Batavia, uh, portion of it.

Uh, [laughs] I certainly would love to hear you tell the Craig Sager, uh, story in there.

That had me laughing.

I had to already repeat that one myself to someone.

So I don't know where you wanna go first-

[laughs]

...

but I've, I've got a few questions this section, but I'd like to hear what, what pops into your head when, when you started thinking about Batavia again.

Yeah.

Uh, you know, we still have family there.

We get to visit there at least once or maybe more often.

Still have a lot of classmates, good friends, and teammates that still live in Batavia.

But, uh, it was a great place to grow up.

It was on the far western suburbs of Chicago, and the entire, uh, county or town was built around the high school athletics, and they were very successful.

And we had a number of, uh, of people from that little community of 7,000 people at that time that played professional sports.

And of course Craig Sager, um, got that recognition as a, as a broadcaster.

I'll, I'll tell the story.

Uh, my, my brother Greg and Craig were actually best friends.