After 36 years of twice-a-week pickup basketball at the Cambridge Y at Central Square, I recently cleared my locker and said adieu.

Cambridge’s Central Square YMCA — Gerald Peary bids farewell to the Court of Dreams.

By Gerald Peary

It’s hardly as monumental as Larry Bird’s shedding his sneakers or David Ortiz’s farewell tour. But after 36 years of twice-a-week pickup basketball at the Cambridge Y at Central Square, I recently cleared my locker and said adieu. At 72. At last, my joints and knees just can’t take the pounding.

I can’t be too sad. I’ve held out far beyond countless other players who, over the decades, have passed through the gym at this venerable Y. Most of the current crop weren’t even born when I first started participating in these afternoon games. When Ronald Reagan had just become president.

How did I survive so long? Besides my willfulness, credit my ineptitude as an athlete. Because I’m a dreadful rebounder, I stayed clear of the danger area for basketball players, around the basket, where sprained ankles and broken thumbs are common. I knew my limited offensive skills: stand in the corner! Swing me the ball and, on my best days, I put it adeptly in the basket. A B/B- player for three-and-a-half decades.

And a chronicler of the basketball scene at the egalitarian Cambridge Y.

With whom have I played basketball in the afternoon through the years? Whoever could figure out how to sneak to the Y during regular work hours. Fireman, policemen, laborers, civil servants, several ministers, a bishop, college profs, college students, also the underemployed and the unemployed. These have been the most multicultural of games. Perhaps three quarters of the ever-shifting populace are African-American, but there have been players from China, Haiti, Jamaica, French West Africa. I am proud to say that, though there is trash talk galore (I plead guilty to being among the spouters of garbage), there has never been a racial incident that I’ve witnessed, and I have never once heard the “N” word spoken.

Once a young student arrived at the gym with new dreadlocks and spouting anti-Semitic nonsense from the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I’m Jewish, and was pleased to hear his African-American peers dismiss his diatribe as ignorant and stupid.

Sure, there’s cussing, but I have never heard seedy, demeaning “locker room” talk like that of President Trump. Ours has been predominantly a man’s game, but whenever women have wanted to join in, they’ve been welcomed on every occasion. It’s a long time ago, but a social worker named Lois was a regular participant.

It can take years to learn anyone’s last name or bio. Here’s a sampling of memorable hoopsters: Jimmy Tingle, Cambridge’s comedian-in-residence, and perhaps the Y’s best pure point guard ever; Mike Curtis (nickname “Bear”), monosyllabic on the court, off-court a legendary Atlantic Monthly editor and Thomas Pynchon’s college roommate; Terry Donahue, ace percussionist for the Alloy Orchestra, and the hard-dribbling guy who slapped me with a “Y” nickname. As opposed to Big Jerry, who was 6’2”, Terry called me, at 5’11, “Regular-Sized Gerry.”

My other nickname: “G.” As in “G., go to your corner for your shot.”

The most chilling things that have happened in my 36 years? One ever-smiling guy, a bit goofy and delusional, on a day away from the “Y” murdered two people in a drug deal. He’s in maximum security for life. In 200l, a remarkable human being, John O’Connor, a Cambridge political activist, collapsed and died on the court during a noon game. He was on my team, and I regret forever my lame last words to him: “Please pass me the ball.” So sorry, John.

Even before my time, the Bob Cousy-era Celtics held their practices on this very same basketball court. It’s sacred ground. May b-ball be played at the Cambridge Y forever!

Gerald Peary is a retired film studies professor at Suffolk University, Boston, curator of the Boston University Cinematheque, and the general editor of the “Conversations with Filmmakers” series from the University Press of Mississippi. A critic for the late Boston Phoenix, he is the author of nine books on cinema, writer-director of the documentaries For the Love of Movies: the Story of American Film Criticism and Archie’s Betty, and a featured actor in the 2013 independent narrative Computer Chess.