Ernie Herman was pursuing an angle against a familiar defender when he raised for a hook shot. Harry Bogdos, a 5-foot-8-inch guard who, by his own admission, has shrunk a bit in recent years, did what he could to force Herman into a difficult attempt by extending his arms.
“Get in there!” Herman yelped as the ball rattled around the rim.
Early that morning last week, the gymnasium at the McBurney Y.M.C.A. on West 14th Street in Manhattan was the site of yet another spirited game of pickup basketball, and the usual suspects were on hand — everyone from Basketball Bob to Joe the Dentist.
Phil Marsh, a singer-songwriter from Chelsea, adjusted his headband. Darwin Buschman, a psychiatrist who lives in the West Village, loosened up his arthritic knees.
And then there were Bogdos and Herman, whose matchup might not have seemed all that unusual — except that Bogdos is 82, Herman is 77, and their rivalry dates to 1979, to the early days of a recurring game that continues to feature the same cast of characters at the same neighborhood Y.
“It’s the one thing you can count on,” said Hart Perry, 67, a documentary filmmaker who did not join the game until 1987, which makes him a newcomer. “If you can’t be happy here, you can’t be happy anywhere.”
At perhaps the most persistent game of pickup hoops in the city, age is relative. Bob Pagnotta, the aforementioned Basketball Bob and a regular since 1988, described Bogdos as an “inspiration.” Pagnotta is only 77.
For two and a half hours every Tuesday and Thursday morning, after the careful application of various topical creams and the completion of stretching routines that border on obsessive, the players get after it. The sessions start at 7 sharp. Some are more heated than others.
“We’ll be crawling up and down the court,” said Steve Harris, 55, a professional voice-over artist and one of the game’s top outside shooters. “The minute there’s a woman in the stands, everybody starts playing like we’re being scouted for the N.B.A.”
The players know their roles by now. Joe Towbin, 75, who has a dental practice in the city, has a reliable two-handed set shot — and wears a mouth guard. Mitch Weissberg, 55, sets such solid screens that the other players gave him a trophy. Marsh, 71, likes to do his damage in the paint, even if that annoys certain defenders.
“Harry won’t let me take him inside,” Marsh said. “He gets mad at me if I try to post him up.”
New players are free to join — the game is open to all, regardless of age or gender — but only if they observe an informal set of rules. Or at least that is the hope.
“When the young guys come, we tell them they got to play our game,” Bogdos said. “They can’t be shooting all the time. But some of them do.”
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Bogdos, an artist and a carpenter from the Upper West Side, is the dean of McBurney basketball. The others consider it a privilege to play alongside him. The roots of the game date to 1972, when Bogdos and a friend agreed to meet at the old McBurney Y, on 23rd Street, so they could play one on one several times each week — full court, to 100 points. It was masochism thinly disguised as basketball.
“We were in shape,” Bogdos explained.
As the years passed and the buzz began to build, the game morphed to four on four. Because the court at the old gym was smaller, Bogdos favored a game with fewer players and more room to run.
When McBurney moved nine blocks south to its current location, in 2002, Bogdos reluctantly consented for the games to expand to five on five. If it were up to him, though, the contests would still be four players to a side.
One rule he continues to enforce? The game must use an N.B.A. basketball.
“These younger guys all complain that it’s too slippery,” said Bogdos, who has maintained the physique of a middleweight boxer. “I don’t think so.”
Pagnotta holds an unofficial title as the group’s general manager, which means that he is responsible for picking teams. He has done so for decades, even though other players accuse him of stacking lineups in his favor. Of course, Pagnotta admits that he does this. He wants to maximize his opportunities to take the last shot.
“That’s my job,” he said. “My job is to make game-winners.”
Players call their own fouls, which are rare occurrences despite some physical play. Marsh mentioned Bogdos, Herman and Pagnotta — average age: 79 — as three players particularly unwilling to give up easy baskets.
“They chop when you go to the hole,” Marsh said.
Chuck Hornsby, 60, a longtime regular, said that his first few months with the group were memorable only because he “got injured a great deal.” In addition to herniating a disk in his back, he required stitches after he caught an elbow in his lip and again after gashing his hand while playing defense. Injuries are unavoidable.
“It’s the topic of most of our conversations,” Perry said.
But players say they do their best to play through any pain because once they stop — well, it might be tough to start back up again.
Every possession presents challenges. The players wear random T-shirts and jerseys, so it can be difficult to distinguish teammates from opponents. Harris described such episodes as “senior moments.”
Marsh recalled a former player who tried to take advantage.
“Remember Jan?” Marsh asked Harris. “Jan had this tactic where he would stand there and wave his arms, pretending he was on your team, and then you’d pass it to him, and he’d take off. That was Jan’s thing.”
Above all, the games are about competition and camaraderie — if not necessarily in that order. After Bogdos’s wife died four years ago, he found solace in playing basketball and being with his friends, he said. Marsh credited the morning games with helping him cope with a divorce.
“This saved me, man,” Marsh said. “Just getting here and realizing you’re going to feel good the rest of the day.”
Perry said the games had enabled him to “more or less” quit smoking. Buschman, 58, cited pickup basketball as the second most essential part of his life, beyond spending time with his teenage daughter. And when Herman lost his job as an editor 10 years ago, he leaned on hoops for support.
“It matters,” he said. “It matters a lot.”
The sound of the bouncing ball and the smell of the gym — the players cannot help but return every week, even if they tend to keep their romanticized notions of the game to themselves. They have no such compunctions about trafficking in trash talk.
“Did you know Harry’s first girlfriend was Susan B. Anthony?” Weissberg said between games last week.
“Oh, come on,” Bogdos said. “You know that I keep playing so I stay in shape. Otherwise, I’d look like you.”
Breakfast awaited at Good Stuff Diner, down the street, where the employees always let the players pull two tables together. But Bogdos, having led his team to a victory with two smooth jump shots, hoped to finish his workout before joining his friends.
“Unless you have more questions,” he said, “I’ve got to go do weights.”
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