TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

I've played with Jeremy Lin.

If you have ever played a pickup game at the park, a city league game in some raunchy half-lit gym or mixed it up on a high school or college team, you have too.

I've seen a thousand Jeremy Lins -- lesser versions, or course, but they were still part of the brotherhood. Their names were different. Bobby Sharp, my brother Derek, Glenn, Juan, the heavy guy I used to play with at Mar Vista Park, Tony, a guy I work with.

We've seen them, but better yet -- we've been them. You, me, everybody.

We all had one thing in common: We were feeling it. We were in the groove, so we called for the ball and lit it up.

For a minute, for 15 glorious minutes, we fantasized about playing in the NBA because nobody could stop us.

A slight exaggeration, but why not.

Is Jeremy Lin one of the greatest sports stories ever? If not "ever," how about the last 110 years? How about the last 10?

If you haven't caught the Jeremy Lin wave yet, I am referring to the 6-foot-2-inch guard who plays for the New York Knicks. The guard no one even heard about until six games ago because he had been cut from Houston and Golden State and picked up by the Knicks. It wasn't until stars Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony were injured that the coach even thought about playing him.

Since that time, Lin has scored more than 20 points in six of the seven games he's played (the team has won seven straight), and 27 points Tuesday night when he hit the winning three-pointer over the Toronto Raptors.

Where do you start? There are so many delightful jumping off points.

Lin went to Harvard. Harvard? NBA players don't get to Harvard. CEOs do. People who start companies like Facebook go to Harvard. People who row Eights in the Olympics go to Harvard.

He's Chinese-American. There haven't been many Chinese-Americans in the NBA. Like close to zero.

Lin has an unassuming build. He looks like we do. He looks like a thousand guys in the park who've gone on a hot streak. He probably wears a size 10 shoe.

It's an "American Idol" moment. That doesn't happen often and because it has, theories abound.

My brother likens him to the great blues singer Robert Johnson who, legend has it, sold his soul to the devil at midnight at the crossroads near Dockery Plantation in order to become a blues singer (this may not quite fit because Lin is a devout Christian).

I thought about "The Natural," the book by Bernard Malamud and the movie starring Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs. Hobbs begins a promising career as a pitcher, drops out of sight after getting shot by a jealous lover and then re-emerges at 35 a great slugger, one of those players (actors, singers, substitute whatever profession you like) about whom people say: "He seemed to come out of nowhere."

Jeremy Lin might as well be an alien. He makes people believe in aliens. If not aliens, magic.

The story is fresh, and freshnesss has never been more welcome. Freshness includes surprise and we are never too jaded, old or cynical to feel the cleansing powers of surprise.

Jeremy Lin is fun, and we cannot have too much of that either.

Every day, after hearing about Lin's last brilliant game, it's hard not to call, text or email somebody. It's a share-the-joy moment for those of us who tasted greatness for 15 minutes in an overheated gym with zero spectators.

Streaks don't last forever. They don't have to. Brevity may increase their poignancy and pleasure.

Ask Juan at Mar Vista Park. He doesn't have to hit that 22-footer from the right side under the mulberry tree forever. Just then, when the shots were plentiful, clean, and all (metal) net.

These are the opinions of Herb Benham, not necessarily those of The Californian. Email him at hbenham@bakersfield.com