Pro Basketball since the 1970s

In the 1970s, professional basketball dipped in popularity.

With two rival leagues (NBA and ABA) diluting the talent, a somewhat selfish "me-first" attitude pervasive, and widespread perceptions of drug use among players, the game was at a point where even championship finals games during weekday nights were shown only on a delayed broadcast.

Three players (along with commissioner David Stern) deserve much credit for bringing the game back to popularity and making professional basketball a major sport alongside baseball and football in the American sporting pantheon. Another then helped popularize the NBA around the world.

Larry Bird and Magic Johnson (top two pictures) dueled in the 1979 NCAA championship game and then took their rivalry to the NBA with the Celtics and Lakers respectively. This game also catapulted the NCAA tournament into the "March Madness" we know today.

Before those two came along, a legendary star plied his trade in the old ABA. When the leagues finally merged in the mid-1970s Julius Erving (Dr. J - middle pictures) finally got to play in front of millions of fans who only knew of him - but might not have actually seen him play many times.

After Dr. J, Magic, and Bird, Michael Jordan (bottom) entered the league in the 1980s and popularized the game on a global basis.

John Wooden - Master of the Final Four

Here is an outstanding piece on the late, great John Wooden (his UCLA teams won 10 of 12 NCAA titles between 1964 and 1975) ...

Wooden article by William Nack

College Basketball 1960s-1980s

College basketball rode the UCLA dynasty of Coach John Wooden and stars such as Kareem Abdul Jabbar (then Lew Alcindor) and Bill Walton to a second wave of popularity in the 1960s that continues to the present.

From 1964 to 1975, "The Wizard of Westwood" led his Bruins to ten NCAA titles in twelve seasons, a record not likely to be matched.

Pro Basketball 1950s-1960s

Professional basketball first truly came to prominence in the 1950s.

Under the leadership of legendary Red Auerbach (first as coach then as GM), the Boston Celtics won eleven of thirteen NBA titles between 1957 and 1969.

The greatest star of the Celtics was Bill Russell (middle picture defending Wilt Chamberlain), who led the team to titles as a player and player-coach (titles in 1968 and 1969).

While the Celtics were the league's dominant team, Wilt Chamberlain (bottom picture) posted individual statistics at a record pace (first with the Philadelphia Warriors then the LA Lakers). In 1962, the Big Dipper became the first and only NBA player to score 100 points in a game when he reached triple figures against the NY Knicks in a game at Hershey, PA.

College Basketball 1920s-1950s

College basketball enjoyed its first era of popularity from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Ned Irish (top picture), initially a journalist and eventually president of the New York Knicks in the NBA, began promoting intersectional college basketball doubleheaders at Madison Square Garden in the early 1930s. Eventually, these intersectional contests grew into season ending national tournaments (first the National Invitational Tournament - or NIT - then the NCAA).

College basketball lost popularity among many in the early 1950s when a wave of gambling scandals (dating to the late 1940s) hurt the sport. Several big-time programs, the most notable being Kentucky with legendary coach Adolph Rupp (bottom picture), were implicated in point-shaving. The resulting bad publicity allowed professional basketball and the newly formed NBA to gain fans.

Basketball the Early Years - Barnstormers

The most popular early basketball teams were barnstorming professionals.

Before college basketball gained national popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, and prior to the professional game developing a stable organization in the 1940s and 1950s, barnstormers such as (pictured from top to bottom) the Original Celtics, the New York Rens (or Renaissance Five), and the Harlem Globetrotters (originally the Savoy Five) were the most recognizable basketball players in the U.S.

Dr. Naismith and the New Game

Unlike most other major spectator team sports in the United States, basketball has a relatively clear origin and inventor.

In the winter of 1891, Dr. James Naismith - a physical educator at Springfield YMCA school (now Springfield College) - was encouraged by the school's director (Dr. Luther Gulick) to develop a new game in the winter of as an indoor activity to fill the cold months between the end of football season and the start of baseball season. Basketball spread quickly through the network of Ys, and then to schools and colleges. Within fifteen years, basketball was recognized as a permanent winter sport.

Curt Flood, Marvin Miller, and Free Agency

The man most responsible for baseball free agency - the player's right to sign with any team - is not actually a player. Instead, Marvin Miller, head of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) from 1966 to 1982, shephered the process through the court system.

After losing a case with Curt Flood (pictured in St. Louis uniform), Miller would eventually gain free agency rights through the cases of Dave McNally (pictured at bottom) and Andy Messersmith (shown in his new Braves uniform).

As a measure of Miller's impact (and others of course), the minimum annual salary for a MLB player in 1966 was $6000 ... in 2016, the minimum salary was over $500,000 and the average salary was more than $3.3 Million (the average salary surpassed $3 million per year for the first time back in 2010).

Yankee Dominance

The most dominant decade in baseball history belonged to the New York Yankees.

Between 1949 and 1959, the Yankees won seven World Series titles, including an unmatched five in a row (49-53 ... along with titles in 56 and 58), and nine American League pennants (losing World Series to the Dodgers in 1955 and the Braves in 1957). For good measure, they would appear in five straight World Series to open the 1960s ... winning titles in 61 and 62, while losing in 60, 63, and 64.

Managed by the irascible "Ol Perfessor" Casey Stengel, the Yankees boasted many stars. None was bigger than the iconic Mickey Mantle (pictured below).

Joe D and the Splinter

In 1941, two of baseball's greatest stars provided fans a summer to remember (just months before Pearl Harbor and US entry into WWII) and established two records that have yet to be surpassed.

Joe DiMaggio, stylish center-fielder for the NY Yankees who would eventually wed movie star Marilyn Monroe, hit in 56 straight games that season. Here are links to "The Streak" (excerpts from an interview with Kostya Kennedy who wrote a book on the streak) and "The Silent Season of a Hero (a classic sports essay on DiMaggio by Gay Talese).

Ted Williams, the "Splendid Splinter," hit .406 that season, the last player to bat over .400 for a season. Williams, a left-fielder with the Boston Red Sox, ended his career with 521 total homeruns and missed five seasons at the peak of his career for military service in WWII and the Korean War. Here is a link to a wonderful article on Teddy Ballgame ... "What do you think of Ted Williams now?"

Jackie

Jackie Robinson remains most remembered for breaking major league baseball's color barrier in 1947, reintegrating the game after more than a half-century of racial segregation.

However, Robinson was a tremendout all-around athlete at UCLA where he became the school's first four-sport letterman (baseball, basketball, football, track).

Shadow Ball

After black players were driven from "organized baseball" by the mid-1880s, it would take another six decades before they returned to the white major leagues.

During those decades the greatest players of color initially barnstormed, sometimes entertaining fans with a realistic pantomime style of play called shadow ball, then later competing in the fabled Negro Leagues.

Satchel Paige (bottom image), Josh Gibson (top image), Cool Papa Bell, Oscar Charleston, and scores of other talented players starred in the Negro Leagues.

The signing of Jackie Robinson by the Dodgers in late 1945 (and his arrival in the majors with Brooklyn in 1947), while a tremendous event in American sport and social history, ironically meant the death knell for the leagues.

Fleet Walker - Forgotten Pioneer

Moses Fleetwood Walker ... not Jackie Robinson ... was actually the first African American player to reach the majors leagues of organized baseball.

In 1884, Fleet Walker played in 42 games for Toledo of the American Association (recognized - along with the National League - as a major league at the time). Walker was one of several forgotten pioneers of the period (including his brother Welday and outstanding pitcher George Stovey).

By 1889, African American players had been driven from the majors because of racial prejudices of the day and would not return until Robinson's arrival with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

Fleet Walker- Forgotten Pioneer

The Babe

The Boston Red Sox sold baseball's greatest star to the NY Yankees after the 1919 season.

Babe Ruth became a baseball immortal because of his hitting prowess (.342 average, 714 career HR, 60 HR in 1927), but the Babe was also the dominant left-handed pitcher of the pre-1920 era while playing for the Red Sox.

He sported a 94-46 W-L record and threw 29 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings in the 1916 and 1918 World Series ... a record that stood for 43 years. The Red Sox, winners of four World Series titles between 1912 and 1918, would not win another until 2004 ... finally breaking the curse of the Bambino.

Ruth - for the excitement and new style he brought to the game - and Kenesaw Mountain Landis - for the integrity and authority he exuded - are credited as the two most sigificant people in rehabilitating the national image of baseball in the aftermath of the Black Sox scandal.

The Bambino

The Black Sox

Baseball's most perilous moment was the Black Sox scandal of 1919.

Eight members of the Chicago White Sox (including Shoeless Joe Jackson - pictured below) conspired with gamblers to throw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. News of the scandal surfaced in 1920, the men were acquitted in what most everyone concedes was a tainted trial in 1921, and Kenesaw Mountain Landis (baseball first commmissioner) permanently banned the "eight men out" from baseball.

The standard work on the Black Sox scandal remain's Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof.

Fall Classic

The World Series has been played annually since 1903 with two exceptions.

In 1994, labor strife between club owners and players resulted in a cancellation of the playoffs and much of the season.

The more interesting case happened in 1904.

John McGraw, influential manager of the New York Giants of the National League (the Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958) simply refused to have his club play Boston of the upstart American League (winners of the first World Series in 1903 over Pittsburgh).

McGraw (through his team president John Brush) declared the Bostonians "inferior," but the true reason for his refusal to play the Series was his immense dislike of American League president Ban Johnson.

John McGraw

The National Pastime

While baseball is known as the National Pastime, it's origins are generally traced to various forms of informal stick and ball games that have been played for centuries.

The most direct link to what would become American baseball is probably the English game of rounders (pictured below).

The man and group that receive credit for modifying the game with rules that we would certainly recognize today are Alexander Cartwright and the NY Knickerbocker Club (pictured at bottom). Click on this link for a good explanation of the early evolution of baseball in America. (Cartwright is the gentleman in the top/middle).

The Greatest to the Latest

Perhaps more than any athlete we study this semester, Muhammad Ali reflects an era of American society (the 1960s).

Whether it be race and civil rights issues of the American mainstream, radical and militant racial attitudes of the American fringe left (check out this book review of The Champ and Mr. X for a terrific discussion of Ali's relationship with the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X), a growing and then surging anti-Vietnam War sentiment among America's youth, or the broader establishment-anti-establishment perspectives of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ali seemed to capture it all.

Here is a video link to the legendary Ali-Frazier I fight from March 1971, in my view still the most exciting and significant modern prize fight, and discussed all his major fights including the Rumble in the Jungle victory over George Foreman in 1974 when Ali regained the title many thought he should not have been forced to surrender in the first place.

In recent years, I would argue that Ali (while garnering almost universal praise and tribute) is treated too simplistically by most observers. The accolades he receives are deserved, but fail to fully do justice to a man that engendered such passion, hatred, animosity, and respect for nearly three decades of boxing. Please be able to discuss a full perspective of Ali in class.

And Still Undefeated

Rocky Marciano was not the most skillful or polished boxer, and maybe not the greatest prize fighter of all time either.

However, few doubt that he was perhaps the toughest and most fearless of fighters, and in one statistic he is unsurpassed ... the Rock finished his career with a record of 49-0 - the only heavyweight champion to retire and remain unbeaten.

The Brown Bomber - American Hero

Joe Louis holds distinction for his fame in and out of the boxing ring.

"The Brown Bomber" held the heavyweight title longer than any other fighter (1937-1949) and also defended the title the most times (25).

Louis also transcended racial attitudes of the time by becoming one of the first African American athletes (the other being Jesse Owens) to gain widespread popularity among black and white Americans. Like Owens, Louis did so by defeating a foe that represented a larger threat to the nation. Click on the link to see and hear a terrific video clip on the famous Joe Louis-Max Schmeling battles.

Million Dollar Mauler

Jack Dempsey, nicknamed the Manassa Mauler, ushered in the era of huge money in prize fighting.

After winning the title with a brutal victory over giant Jess Willard in 1919 (we watched the youtube video clip in class), Dempsey reigned as America's most prominent athlete-celebrity of the roaring 1920s (eclipsing even such luminaries as Babe Ruth, Bobby Jones, and Knute Rockne).

Dempsey's 1921 bout against Frenchman Georges Carpentier was the first prize fight to draw a $1 million gate ... and the first of five consecutive Dempsey fights to reach that magic amount. To my knowledge, Jack Dempsey still holds the distinction of attracting the most million dollar gates in prize fighting history (much of the revenue from fights since 1971 comes from closed-circuit and pay-per-view buys).

Jack's "long-count" match (bottom picture) against Gene Tunney in 1927 became his most famous and last fight.

Video Clips:

Dempsey vs. Willard
Dempsey vs. Tunney (Long Count)

Papa Jack

Jack Johnson was many things ... a good (perhaps great) prize fighter, a racial pioneer of sorts in sport (the first African American heavyweight champ), a scofflaw, an abuser of women ... but without doubt a person who lived life on his own terms.

Like him or dislike him, Papa Jack (and if you read the book by Randy Roberts we'll be spare here) is an American sporting icon and a natural predecessor to a later generation of African American athletes (most notably Muhammad Ali).

Big Jeff

The early fighter who holds up best when compared to modern champs (in the view of boxing historians) is Jim Jeffries.

"Big Jeff" stood over 6'2 and weighed nearly 220 pounds and is considered perhaps the strongest of all champs. He retired as the undefeated champ in 1903, but is most remembered for coming out of retirement and losing to Jack Johnson on July 4, 1910, in one of the most socially significant sporting events of the 20th century.

The Great John L

The "Boston Strongboy" ... John L. Sullivan is generally recognized as the first heavyweight prize fighting champ.

Holding the title from 1882 to 1889, Sullivan is remembered as the last bareknuckles champ and as America's first true sporting superstar.

Sullivan lost the title to Gentleman Jim Corbett, a scientific boxer from San Francisco, who managed to outbox and tire out the aging champ.