PORTLAND -- The lobster arrived at Al McGuire's table minus a claw. He asked his waitress for an explanation. What's this?

Lobsters sometimes fight in the holding tank and instead of blood in the water there's a claw on the bottom, he was told.

"Take it back," said McGuire. "I want the winner."

"McGuire," the one-man play written by Dick Enberg, is a winner. It is 70 minutes of pungent and poignant monologue voiced by actor Cotter Smith who does bring Al McGuire to life. So well, you might believe you were at a seance.

Except this is much better.

Opening night was Thursday at Portland Stage. The play closes tonight with an 8 p.m. performance.

McGuire died in 2001 at age 72 of a blood disorder. His career as college basketball coach ended at the pinnacle in 1977. Marquette University won the NCAA championship after he announced his retirement at mid-season. Playing as an independent, the Warriors didn't qualify for a tournament berth but were added to the field. Some believe it was a good-bye present to McGuire.

The play opens with the end of that chapter in his life. In the darkened theatre, you see actual video of the last minute of the championship game. McGuire is on the bench, wiping tears away. North Carolina cannot rally to win.

The play opens with the end of that chapter in his life. In the darkened theatre, you see actual video of the last minute of the championship game. McGuire is on the bench, wiping tears away. North Carolina cannot rally to win.

At some point, Cotter Smith walks onto the stage, unnoticed by many in the audience. He stands, watching the same video. When the lights come on, he is McGuire.

"Yeah, that's me. I was crying."

To those who didn't grow up with McGuire as basketball coach or television commentator it was the first clue to the passion that shaped his life from the kid who cleaned beer glasses and later bounced drunks in his parent's Irish bar in New York to the coach who fought with and for his players.

"My players hated me. I hated me. The crazy part was, I really cared about them."

Like the two-clawed lobster, he wanted winners. Or the talent and attitude that would make him a winner. He recruited players with cracked sidewalks, not green grass, in front of their homes.

In turn, he would find the "bounce" in his players that would take them to new heights after basketball.

Virtually all of the players off his 1977 team did just that, from business owners, to banking, to law.

And yet, McGuire and Bernard Toone fought in the locker room during halftime of Marquette's game with Cincinnati, the NCAA tournament opener. "One of our trainers broke his hand, trying to stop that fight," said McGuire.

Sitting beside me in the theatre, my 18-year-old son turned, his expression mouthing the words: Can you believe this?

I could, thanks to six degrees of separation. Toone, or B.T., as McGuire called him because he couldn't remember his players' real names, grew up in Yonkers. I watched Toone and his buddies off a Yonkers playground play in a summer tournament before he went off to Wisconsin. He was special then, too.

If you were a college basketball fan then, you knew McGuire was special. The Portland Stage Company is a relatively small house. My son was one of maybe three teen-agers in the audience. He had no idea who Al McGuire was until Cotter Smith began talking.

Thanks to Enberg and Smith, my son learned that someone didn't have to live in the past 20 years to be truly unique.

On air, Enberg is an effortless master at bringing events and the people in sports to life.

He and McGuire worked together for 14 years and the play is an obvious labor of love. McGuire dies, but his life is an affirmation for living.

"Eat the banana first," he reminded us again and again, referring to the banana he brought to the beach as a kid. Eat before you swim and you'll get cramps and drown is what parents told their children then. When McGuire got back to his towel, the sun had fried his banana. It was ruined and he never forgot.

During those 14 years, Enberg, the storyteller, listened to McGuire, the storyteller. That's why "McGuire" is so personal and revealing and gritty.

"I love a good fight," said McGuire, as the plays nears its end. "But I can't fight no more. For my final confession, I'm going to need a deaf priest."