ONTARIO HIGH’S ONE-DER
When you meet Walter Bratton, the stump is covered. When anyone meets him, it is covered. A baggy sweat shirt, a loose-fitting Oxford, anything to hide the right arm that stops at the elbow.
“Sometimes walking in the mall, I’ll walk real close to somebody so nobody can tell,” he says.
Show me a jumper, you say. Show me dribbling. Show me basketball.
Walter Bratton smiles. Suddenly the sweat shirt comes off, the stump hangs free, the child doesn’t care.
On a court at Ontario High in the middle of the day, surrounded by gawking students, Bratton shows you.
One-handed, he dribbles between his legs and behind his back.
One-handed, he throws up a textbook jump shot.
One-handed, he soars and grabs rebounds from shots that a coach throws against the glass.
You ask if you can play defense. You chuckle to yourself. You force him to his right.
One handed, he dribbles between his legs and around you and lays it in.
“Seen enough?” asks the coach.
Seen enough? say the smiles of the students.
Seen enough to know this:
Basketball, a sport that sometimes corrupts our young, has rescued Walter Bratton.
Off the court, he is a high school junior struggling to come of age with a birth defect.
On the court, he is the most amazing thing you may see on any court.
Off the court, he doesn’t want anybody to notice his deformity.
On the court, as a 5-foot-11 reserve guard on a Jaguar basketball team headed for the playoffs, he wants everyone to notice him.
One of the few one-armed high school basketball players anywhere has a huge poster of his idol hanging in his room.
Jim Abbott, you ask?
“Jim Abbott?” he says, incredulously. “No way, man. It’s Michael Jordan.”
*
The first time Walter and Marilyn Bratton couldn’t believe their eyes, it was Sept. 6, 1980.
The doctor handed them a newborn boy with a little stump dangling from his right shoulder.
“I said, ‘Marilyn, our boy just has one arm,’ ” recalled Walter. “Then we started crying.”
Seemed like for the next two years, they cried.
“I kept dwelling on my son and all the things he couldn’t do,” recalled Walter, a fireman who worked long shifts with a lot of time for thinking. “I thought, ‘He can’t play basketball, he can’t play baseball. . . .’ ”
The next time Walter and Marilyn Bratton couldn’t believe their eyes was when son Walter was 4.
He was in the front yard of their home, playing with a stick and a pine cone.
“He tucked the stick under his right shoulder, threw up the cone with his left hand, grabbed the stick, and hit the cone,” recalled Walter.
In telling the story, the father’s voice rose, as if describing a son who just hit a World Series home run.
“I thought, ‘My goodness, how did he learn that?’ ” he said. “It was a turning point for me.”
How did he learn that?
Walter, the son, doesn’t know. But he figures it has something to do with the reason he has a giant left hand, the reason he has such quickness, the reason he can soar above the rim to grab one-handed rebounds even though he is barely 5 feet 11.
“Some things, God didn’t give me,” Bratton said. “But other things, he did. I think about what he did give me.”
Another one of those things was basketball.
He tried soccer and didn’t like it. He tried baseball and found it too slow.
But basketball . . . those kids who stared at him all day, he could get even every afternoon on the playground court.
The half-arm that made him so uncomfortable in social situations, he could proudly flop around on the basketball court while running around his stunned opponents.
“In everyday life, people stare, say things,” Bratton said. “Out on the court it’s like, fine, what can you say now? Out on the court, for me, everything is even.”
These days, Walter and Marilyn Bratton can’t believe their eyes every time they watch their son play.
They are not alone.
This season, his first on the Ontario varsity, the response from crowds around the Inland Empire is always the same.
When he steps on a floor for the first time during pregame warmups, there are gasps.
“Everybody in the stands is like, ‘Oh my God,’ ” said his coach, Jerry Ronnebeck.
Then, when he comes off the bench to play his average of six minutes a game, the murmurs arise from the other bench.
“The other coach and players always shout, ‘Force him to his right, force him to his right,’ ” Ronnebeck said. “And I always chuckle. Because Walter is like, ‘Fine, go ahead and do it.’ ”
They force him to his right, he somehow dribbles around them, and now the crowd reacts in awe.
“You hear them saying, ‘Look at the one-armed guy, he’s amazing,’ ” said Ronnebeck.
Eventually, maybe if he breaks a trap with his behind-the-back dribble, or hits a picturesque three-pointer, something even stranger happens.
“I look up sometimes, and the other team’s crowd is cheering for me,” Bratton said. “It’s hard to believe.”
Is he on the team just for those moments?
“No way,” said Ronnebeck, a 10-year coaching veteran. “I’ve never sold out for anybody. If he couldn’t help us, he wouldn’t be here.”
But can a one-armed player be any good?
In the team’s first 22 games, during which it went 16-6, Bratton led the team with a 60.6 shooting percentage, but shot little and averaged only 3.1 points and 1.5 rebounds.
“This is a deep team, so he doesn’t always get a lot of minutes, but at times he can be so good, you forget he doesn’t have the other arm,” Ronnebeck said. “He’s quick, he can run and jump, he has a beautiful shot, he hustles.”
But surely there is something he can’t do.
Bench press weights with the team after practice?
He balances the weight on his stump, and lifts like everyone else.
Jump rope with the team?
He ties one end of the rope around the stump, and jumps like everyone else.
“OK, here’s one,” said mother Marilyn after thinking long and hard about something her son cannot do. “He cannot drive a stick shift.”
She pauses. “At least, I don’t think he can drive a stick shift.”
This boy his parents once considered ruined, at times he can even fly.
Did it just the other week, after practice, fooling around with buddies, took off from the foul line, palming the ball in his giant hand.
An instant later, he dunked. For the first time in his life, he dunked.
“I came down, looked up, and couldn’t believe it,” he said.
His teammates began shouting, “Walter dunked, Walter dunked.”
So Walter Bratton took off, racing around the court in a victory lap, his left arm pumping, his right side flapping, once a stump, now a wing.
