(BALTIMORE – September 29, 2026) – For years, I bought The Final Call and bean pies from a tall, quiet brother on the corner of Eutaw and Lexington. Years. I’d hand him my money; he’d hand me the paper. “As-salaam alaikum.” “Wa alaikum salaam.” “Alright now, brother.” And I’d keep it moving.
I had no idea who I was talking to.
That brother was Rasul Muhammad. Before he was Brother Rasul, he was Pat McKinley: a Towson University Hall of Famer, a Washington Bullets draft pick, and one of the first four players inducted into the Baltimore Neighborhood Basketball League Hall of Fame. A Baltimore basketball legend.
He never said a word about it. Not once.
“He Couldn’t Have Done It Without Pat McKinley”
I first heard the story at Legends Day at the Dome at Madison. Roger Dickens was talking about his playing days. Dickens was himself a Bullets draftee and later a longtime coach at the Community College of Baltimore. He admitted he wasn’t the greatest defensive player, but he didn’t have to be. He’d chase his man toward Pat McKinley, and McKinley would swat the shot away, beat everybody down the floor, grab his own rebound, and get the ball right back to Roger.
“Roger Dodger” put it simply: he couldn’t have done it without Pat McKinley.
Coach Wells carries a list of more than 500 Baltimore all-stars and legends in his head. He said it plainly: Pat McKinley belongs in a Baltimore basketball hall of fame.
Pat McKinley. Brother Rasul. The same man.
I had to go do some reading.
The Record Book
What I found stopped me cold.
From 1973 to 1977, Pat McKinley, a 6-foot-7 Baltimore native, took Towson State to the top of NCAA Division II basketball. By the time he finished, he had set the school’s career records for points (1,832), rebounds (1,421), and blocked shots (229).
His senior season was the stuff of legend. Towson went 27–3, the best record in school history, and finished ranked No. 1 in the nation in Division II. McKinley averaged 16.6 points and 12.2 rebounds while shooting 56 percent from the floor. He led the Tigers to the NCAA South Atlantic Regional championship before they fell to Sacred Heart in the national quarterfinals.
He was a three-time All-Mason-Dixon Conference selection, a Basketball Weekly All-American, and Towson’s Male Athlete of the Year. In June 1977, the Washington Bullets drafted him. He later played for the Washington Metros of the Eastern Basketball Association. In 1993, Towson inducted him into its Athletics Hall of Fame.
Let me put that in perspective. In 1976, the Bicentennial year, McKinley was leading Towson toward the top of the national rankings, and I was playing center field for the championship James Mosher Mets. In 1977, the year he was drafted, I had just started at Lemmel Jr. High School. In 1978, I was playing 13-and-under ball for Easterwood.
We came up through the same city, the same rec centers, and the same hunger Roger Dickens talks about. Baltimore always had a chip on its shoulder because recruiters would come up and down the East Coast and skip right over us. Pat McKinley was one of the men who made them stop skipping.
A Living Museum in Northeast Market
Last week, I finally made it to see him. I told Brother Rasul I’d come, and I’m a man of my word. My daddy always said, “Your word is all you got.”
Brother Rasul and his partner, Jay, run Jay Books inside Northeast Market. They’ve been there about five years. Before that, they were downtown, but after COVID things slowed down and just weren’t happening the way they used to. So they moved, and now folks come straight to the market to get their books.
But make no mistake: J Books is much more than a bookstore. It’s a living museum. There are cassette tapes. There’s a 1961 Jet magazine. There are books by Baltimore authors like his sister C Love, who writes mysteries. On the wall hangs a Cloverdale photo of Dominique Wilkins, Ernie Graham, Magic, and Pat McKinley himself. Nearby is a portrait of Frederick Douglass, my main man Freddie D, and a photo of the Minister and the First Lady. It’s nothing but history in there.
I brought him a gift: the new print edition of BMORENews. “The news before the news.” We’ve gone print. He remembered me from way back, when I had the North Avenue Review.
Then he pulled out the book.
It was the BNBL Hall of Fame book, with Wes Unseld on the cover. When I called him the first inductee, he corrected me right away. “No. I was fourth.” In 1977, the Baltimore Neighborhood Basketball League Hall of Fame inducted its first four players: Marvin Webster, Skip Wise, Larry Gibson, and Pat McKinley.
Think about that company. Marvin Webster, “the Human Eraser,” led Morgan State to a national championship. Skip Wise, the Dunbar sensation, is someone many call the greatest player this city ever produced. Larry Gibson was the big man in the middle of Dunbar’s legendary early-’70s teams. And Pat McKinley stands right there with them.
Stay Grateful
Before I left, I asked Brother Rasul for a shout of hope.
“Stay grateful,” he said.
I asked what advice he had for the entrepreneurs out here.
“Accept your own and be yourself.”
He told me the Minister had spoken to the men of the Nation for five hours that Saturday. The message was that self-improvement is a must. We need to make our word our bond and build unity among ourselves. For more on that, he said, go hear Brother Salam Muhammad.
As I headed out, he said, “You made your word. Very good, Doni Glover.”
That meant something to me.
Stay grateful. That one hit me somewhere deep because it was my mother’s message. She brought it home many, many times. One day she put it plainly: “You don’t appreciate shit.” It stung. But I’ve since learned to be extremely grateful for anything anyone does for me. Why? Because they didn’t have to do it.
Here was a man who had set Towson records, who was drafted by the Bullets, and who was enshrined alongside Webster, Wise, and Gibson. He stood on a downtown corner for years selling papers and bean pies without ever mentioning any of it. That’s humility. That’s gratitude lived out loud.
Stay grateful. Accept your own. Be yourself. Make your word your bond.
That’s the Rasul Muhammad I know now, and the Pat McKinley I’m just getting to know.
This is more than a game.
— Doni Glover is the founder and publisher of BMORENews.com.
