Part 1 Summary

The Basketball Diaries is made up of a series of entries in the diary of Jim Carroll, a thirteen year-old boy living in the lower east side of Manhattan. The diary begins in the fall of 1963 and describes the activities that take place in Jim's life.

In the first entry, we learn that Jim is about to play in his first organized basketball league game. The league he is in, the Biddy League, is for players 12 years old and younger, but Jim is able to play on the team because his coach, a man named Lefty, got him a fake birth certificate.

Jim thinks Lefty might be a homosexual because of some of the things the coach has done, including touching Jim inappropriately. Nonetheless, Jim likes Lefty so he chooses to keep his suspicions to himself. Jim describes his coach as a "great...