The Early NBA – Not the Game We Love Today

Greetings, “historyaddicts,” your fearless servant here. It sure has been awhile, but research in the Andes does take a up time, just ask the fossils It’s time we hop back on the “historytrain” and play a “pickup game” of History in Action on the “history court” as we take a look at the early National Basketball Association. Today we know basketball as the wonderful game played by dashing hoopsters like Anthony Mason, Larry Johnson, and Detlef Schremp. But, over sixty years ago the game was quite different. Here is how basketball looked in 1934!!!!!

• The net is fairly recent basketball innovation. The early game was literally basketball, with a peach basket standing in place of the net. After every score a man with a ladder would have to take the ball out of basket and play would resume. The shot-clock and backboard would also come later. Games would last many hours and scores would sometimes enter the double digits!
• Early players may not have been able to “dunk” or “hit a shot from more than five feet from the basket,” but they could perform many dazzling moves like “the dribble for ten seconds,” “the bend down without injuring the back,” “the hop,” and the every popular but rarely achieved “bounce pass.”
• The league featured only three teams: The Celtics, at that time actual located in sickeningly ethnic Brooklyn, NY; The Raptors from the Canadian fur trading post known as “Toronto”; And the Barn Stormers from what was once America’s number one vacation spot, Saratoga Spring New York.
• Everyone’s favorite game, Horse, finds its origins in the Ol’ NBA. Hershey, the mascot of a team from Pennsylvania would routinely dazzle the crowd with its ability to actually dribble and toss the ball into the basket. Take that Air Bud!
• Although, African Americans were not officially involved with the professional game until the mid 1950s, minorities of all kinds were instrumental to the game. Many varieties of colored peoples contributed to the NBA by wiping floors, cleaning game worn uniforms, and taking beatings from angry players.
• The early game was far more violent then today’s game, players would punch and kick one another and even attack the fans that shouted things at them. Incidents were so common that chicken wire was setup around the court. Thankfully far more civilized and gentile players and fans exist today.
• The Laker girls may not have been around, but half time entertainment was usually provided by a a gaggle of chubby burlesque dancers that would provide tasteful stripteases between halves of games. Jealous Kobe?

The early NBA. Dangerous? Maybe. Fun? Sure. History? Definitely!

Jesse James – America’s first Surfer!!!

Jesse James wore many hats – outlaw, gunfighter, folklore hero, and surfer?!!? That’s right Jesse James, once America’s most wanted , is believed to be the first ever to “hang-ten.” Although born in Missouri, James bandit exploits would lead him to the west coast in the year of 1875.  Allan Pinkerton, the leader of the famed Pinkerton detective agency, had been hired to detain James and doggedly pursued him to the coast of Santa Barbera.  Pinkerton encountered James in small saloon directly across the Madras beach, then sparsely occupied due to the frigid autumn weather.  James immediately ran.  As he scrambled his gun holster caught on the doorknob.  James incredible speed caused the door to be ripped from its hinges, the door then dragging behind James as he ran for his life.  Outside the saloon James found the area swarming with Pinkerton agents.  Having no where else to escape, James darted for the Pacific Ocean with the door still in tow.  Hitting the water James began to panic.  In an act of sheer desperation, James grabbed the wooden door and placed it on the water. He laid prone on it and began to paddle towards oblivion. Wave after wave crashed down on James. The Pinkertons then watched in amazement as James stood erect on the door and began to ride on the waves, hooting and hollering with drunken delight (Although he never said “Cowabunga.”) Eventually the waves brought him back to shore. The Pinkertons surrounded him. But instead of the click of handcuffs, the only sound heard was applause for the greatness seen by all.  Allan Pinkerton himself shook James hand saying, “Tomorrow you are an outlaw, but today you a free man.” The story made headlines across the nation inspiring children to throw old doors in the ocean in hopes of finding similar thrills.  The door surfing trend would eventually die down. In the 1960s surfing from Hawaii would hit mainstream America, but James’s achievement would still stand as a first. The story of an outlaw surfer would even make the silver screen over a hundred years later, you may know it as “Point Break.”

Jesse James – America’s first extreme sports star.

Strange? Yes. Extreme? “Totally” History? Definitely!

Sports Friday: Eleanor Roosevelt – NFL Halfback?

Eleanor Roosevelt has been many things: First Lady, author, speaker, UN Human Rights Commission chairperson, and National Football League Player?!!??? It happened. Here’s the story.

Dateline October 1946

The war had ended. America now had time to turn its collective attention to raising families, boosting its economy, and a new popular sport known as “football.” Initially a collegiate activity, football was establishing itself on a professional level in the form of the National Football League or the NFL.  Still dwarfed by the popularity of baseball, football owners (then a group more akin to carnival barkers) attempted marketing schemes to drum up interest.  Such gambits included using midgets as balls, assigning a horse as a place kicker for each team, and the ever popular “fan plays for a day.”  This bit of “P.T. Barnum” thinking combined with Eleanor Roosevelt’s love of pigskin would find the former First Lady in the thick of a real football game. From the Canton Repository dated October 28, 1946:

A crowd of ten thousand stood witness to history today as America’s favorite gal, Eleanor Roosevelt, donned shoulder pads to battle as a grid iron gladiator for the hometown Canton Bulldogs.  Initially laughed at by her own teammates in the huddle, Roosevelt silenced the detractors gaining a respectable five yard on the first play as the Bulldog’s halfback. Teammate William “Link” Lyman called Mrs. Roosevelt, “the guttiest lady he’d ever seen,” adding “I’d gladly fight next to her in any foxhole.”  By the game’s end Roosevelt had netted a respectable eighty yards and two touchdowns exhibiting stunning combination of stiff arms, ballet like spins, and bruising power to thwart the Detroit Lion’s defense.  The only black mark on an otherwise sterling day came in the third quarter.  After Mrs. Roosevelt gained a first down, Jimmy Conzelman of the opposing Lions uttered a comment to Mrs. Roosevelt that apparently referenced the reproductive challenges of her late husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  This comment will go unprinted in this publication.  The usually peaceful woman responded with a knee to the groin resulting in a fifteen yard unnecessary roughness penalty against the Bulldogs. Despite the setback Canton would go on to defeat Detroit 24 – 17.  Perhaps the highest compliment of all came from Canton star and Olympian Jim Thorpe, “All in all I am against woman in sports, but that right there is a football player through and through. We could really use her the rest of the season, but I understand she has more important affairs to attend to.”  When asked by this reporter if a having a female like Mrs. Roosevelt in the locker room was distracting Thorpe responded, “Not at all.  She’s just like one of the guys.”

Although women and men never again intermixed in football, undoubtedly Eleanor Roosevelt paved the way for future trailblazers like golfer Michelle Wie.  Eleanor Roosevelt’s football career ended the same day it began, but her sports endeavors were far from over as her arm wrestling opponents would soon discover – that however is a story for another day.

Eleanor Roosevelt – Football Player.

Strange?  Maybe.  Weird?  Probably.  History?  Definitely!