Doc Freeman

For thirty-eight years, Dr. Nathaniel Freeman was the physician half of Tuskegee kept on speed dial — house calls, church pews, sideline duty at every high school game. He retired from medicine. He did not retire from Friday nights, which have run at his house, eight o’clock sharp, since before some of the Sharks were born.

They call his read “the diagnosis” because that’s exactly what it feels like: you discard once, a little too quickly, and Doc looks at you over his glasses the way he used to look at an X-ray. Then he tells his partner — not you — what to lead. He’s diagnosing your hand off symptoms you didn’t know you were showing.

He and Uncle Ray have a running argument, four decades old, about a renege that may or may not have happened in 1986. Neither will let it go; both would be heartbroken if the other did. Doc’s been set twice since 1987. Ask him. He remembers both, the way other men remember weddings.