Guest post - “The NBA in Black and White”

 While this book has been on my radar, I received a request to post this review on my blog and frankly, I know I would not have done this as well as Syl did, so I will simply post the review and let you enjoy.  

Book Review: Ray Scott’s The NBA in Black and White

A Memoir, a Tribute to Black Trailblazers, and a Lesson in Race 

By Syl Sobel

 

Today’s basketball stars often acknowledge that they stand on the shoulders of African American players who came before them. They credit stars of the 1960s and ‘70s like Elgin Baylor, Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, and Wilt Chamberlainfor building the foundation for today’s game and opening doors for Black athletes.  

But what about the generation of Black players before them, the groundbreakers of the 1950s who cleared a path for African-Americans in the NBA? Men like Earl Lloyd, Chuck Cooper, and Sweetwater Clifton who broke the league’s color barrierin 1951? Or pioneers who came after them like Hank DeZonie, Don Barksdale, Ray Felix, Jim Tucker, and the great Maurice Stokes, who labored in the trenchesat a time when the NBA had an unwritten quota on African Americans and expected them to rebound, play defense, and run the floor, but not score or overshadow the white stars?

Thanks to Ray Scott, former great NBA and ABA player and coach and a member of the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame, today’s players and fans now have a chance to remember players the NBA forgot. In The NBA in Black and White: The Memoir of a Trailblazing NBA Player and Coach, which Scott wrote with prolific basketball author Charley Rosen, we learn about all of these players and morealong Scott’s journey from Philadelphia high school star, to NBA and ABA star, to the first African-American to be selected as NBA Coach of the Year. Scott doesn’t just tell their story – he lived it with them. He is one of the last remaining links to the first generation of African American NBA players who made the modern game possible. 

Scott began his career in the playgrounds and high school gyms of Philadelphia where he competed against Chamberlain, Hal “King” Lear, Guy Rodgers, and other city legends. He went to the University of Portland where he played against University of Seattle star Elgin Baylor; to the Catskills where he, Chamberlain, and other college players competed against each other and visiting pros in summer exhibition contests; and to the Eastern Basketball League where he teamed with fellow Philly great Sonny Hill and developed his game for three years after he left Portland, and played with and against some of the best basketball players you probably never heard of, like Lear, Wally Choice, Dick Gaines, Tom Hemans, and former Globetrotters Andy Johnson (a former Philadelphia Warrior), Carl Green, Roman Turmon, and Gene Hudgins. 

In 1961, the Detroit Pistons made Scott their no. 1 draft pick and fourth overall. He played nine years in the NBA for Detroit and Baltimore, battling Chamberlain, Russell, Nate Thurmond, Willis Reed, Robertson, Baylor, and other greats of that era, averaging a double-double at 14.9 pts. and 10.5 rebounds per game. Then he ended his playing career with the Virginia Squires in the ABA where one of his teammates was a young Julius Erving. 

Scott readily traces his lineage and his development as a player, coach, and personto Earl Lloyd, who not only was the first African American to play in an NBA game, but was also the league’s first Black scout and assistant coach. Lloyd was the scout who recommended that the Pistons draft Scott, became Scott’s valued mentor as Detroit’s assistant coach, was the head coach who hired him as an assistant in 1972, and who Scott replaced as head coach when Lloyd was fired early that season. 

Lloyd was Scott’s confidante who not only taught him how to prepare and conduct himself on the court, but off of it as well. Lloyd helped Scott navigate the delicate balance of being a Black NBA player and coach in what was still a white league in the early 1960s, with many false preconceptions about Black athletes and culture. 

As the title suggests, race and its influence on professional basketball are as important an element in Scott’s story as the game of basketball itself. Scott’s career spans the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, and he weaves race into his story from his personal observations, insight, and involvement.

Scott’s racial consciousness was born during his childhood in Philly and matured through his basketball and life experiences. Lloyd introduced Scott to Dr. Martin Luther King during a chance airport meeting, and after King’s assassination Scott became Coretta Scott King’s bodyguard. He met Malcolm X, befriended Muhammed Ali, and played pick-up basketball in Harlem with H. Rap Brown (“a good player”).

Scott recalls how he informed his college search by identifying which college programs already had their “quota” of African American players and which played games in places that were hostile to Blacks. He explains how the Eastern League became the landing place for many great Black players who were limited by the small number of NBA teams at that time and the NBA’s unwritten quotas. He remembers how he and other Black NBA players were denied service at restaurants in some cities, and how white owners undervalued Black players and coaches thinking they required a lower standard of living than their white contemporaries.

Scott recounts these and many personal slights now not with bitterness but as teaching points.

“My purpose . . . in writing this book is to explore, and hopefully to encourage a better understanding of, a certain portion of the history of “We the people” as I have experienced it,” Scott says in the Prologue. “My ultimate aim is not to shock but to encourage readers to think.”

Scott succeeds, on three levels. First, he describes a remarkable life in which he has excelled not only at the highest levels of professional sports but also in business and community service. 

Second, he adds to the growing literature on African American basketball players who are finally getting recognition for their contributions to the game. Other recent books on this topic include Claude Johnson, Black Fives: The Epic Story of Basketball’s Forgotten Era (2022); Syl Sobel and Jay Rosenstein, Boxed Out of the NBA: Remembering the Eastern Professional Basketball League (2021); Douglas Stark, Breaking Barriers, A History of Integration in Professional Basketball(2018); Earl Lloyd and Sean Kirst, Moonfixer: The Basketball Journey of Earl Lloyd (2011); Mark Johnson, Basketball Slave: The Andy Johnson Harlem Globetrotter Story (2010); Ron Thomas, They Cleared the Lane: The NBA’s Black Pioneers (2002); Bijan C. Bayne, Sky Kings: Black Pioneers of Professional Basketball (1997).

But perhaps most importantly, Scott sees in basketball and its history of racism a hopeful metaphor for society. “In so many ways,” he writes, “the NBA and the WNBA are showing the way for a future in which all Americans have a seat at the table.” 

To the extent one agrees that basketball has succeeded in furthering opportunities and inclusion for African Americans, it provides both lessons and optimism for the future.

 

Syl Sobel is a writer, attorney, and the coauthor, with Jay Rosenstein, of Boxed Out of the NBA: Remembering the Eastern Professional Basketball League. His website is www.sylsobel.com.

Review of "Nolan Ryan" - guest post by The Sports Book Lady

I belong to a few online book clubs on the social media site Goodreads, and one of them is a baseball book club.  Some of us decided to read this book as a group read, and while I enjoyed it, rated it four stars and wrote a review; another member of the group, the Sports Book Lady (who co-moderates the baseball book club with me) wrote an even better review.  Therefore, instead of following my usual format for posting a review of a book I have read, I am going to post her review here of "Nolan Ryan: The Making of a Pitcher."

Rating:
4 of 5 stars

Review:

I have always had a wild imagination. It’s the type that forbids me from watching scary movies past 3 in the afternoon. I used to think Darth Vader was coming for me in the shower among other things. Yet, what stands out is a recurring nightmare that I had through my adolescent years. I would be in a tunnel that was fast filling with water and a shark was out to get me until the great Nolan Ryan quickly pulled me to safety through a door on the side. I would be gasping for breath in the comforts of a baseball stadium and Ryan would save the day yet again, this time on the mound. Why, I ask, Nolan Ryan, if I am a Cubs fan to the core and greatest Chicago athlete when I was growing up was Michael Jordan? I still question this nightmare but I do remember watching Ryan’s final no hitter on ESPN and vaguely remember him pitching for the Houston Astros when I first started following baseball during the mid 1980s. When my baseball book buddies decided to read Nolan Ryan: The Making of a Pitcher, I was on board to join them if only to deconstruct the man who has been among the best to ever put on a baseball uniform. 

The Ryan family were among the earliest settlers of Texas when the Republic fought for its independence from Mexico. The Ryans had originally immigrated to the colonies as early as 1760 to escape Irish brutality at the hands of the British. Following the war for independence in 1776, the Ryans eventually settled in Mississippi and later played a role in the battle of the Alamo, settling on farm land near Bexar that they dubbed Old Ryan’s Hill. By the time Nolan Ryan was born in 1945, the youngest of six children to Nolan, Sr and Martha, the Ryan family had been in Texas for one hundred years and were products of the so called Texas mystique. Nolan Sr and Martha would settle in the small farming community of Alvin and along the way pass on a strong work ethic and family values to their children. Although their youngest enjoyed farming and cattle, little did they know that his arm and ability to throw a baseball upwards of 95 miles an hour would have him destined toward fame. 

In Alvin, the best entertainment was a movie, a night at the legion hall, or an ice cream at the Dairy Barn. Nolan took his future wife Ruthie on a date to these town staples for the first time when he was sixteen and she a mere fifteen. The chemistry was instant and the couple was promised to each other from that moment on. Nolan already possessed a strong arm and would drive to Houston if the Dodgers were in town to watch his idol Sandy Koufax pitch. Little did either man know that one day Nolan would surpass all of Koufax’s numbers. By the time Koufax retired following the 1966 season, Nolan would sign with the New York Mets. Scouts and management envisioned him as a cog of a young pitching staff that included future Hall of famer Tom Seaver. Nolan would rise meteorically and join the Mets by the end of 1967 but was sparsely used. He credits management’s inability to use him with extending his career as long it did because he logged so few innings at the beginning. In the 1967 offseason Nolan and Ruthie were married and he reported immediately to spring training. It was Ruth’s presence in New York and her insistence that he stay the course that kept him grounded in an otherwise poor relationship with Mets management. Ruth has been a part of all of Nolan’s baseball decisions since and has been a rock for him at every stop of his baseball journey, twice convincing him not to give up when he had a bright future ahead of him. 

Nolan Ryan would move to the upper echelon of baseball pitchers while a member of the California Angels during the 1970s. Playing away from the bright lights of New York and on a team largely out of contention, Ryan came into his own as a pitcher. With the team he would throw four no hitters, strike out 383 batters in one season, and one year lead the league in strikeouts, wins, and earned run average. The achievements and accolades started to pile up, yet Ryan never envisioned himself as a top pitcher. He worked hard because his father, a product of the Depression, worked hard, and Nolan sought to earn a living to support his family. During the off seasons, he would return to Texas and take up cattle ranching, developing a lucrative business that over time would include four ranches and his own brand of beefsteak. If Nolan, known in baseball as the Ryan Express, had chosen to retire during this earlier portion of his career, he knew that he had a Texas sized empire of ranching to fall back on. 

Ryan would pitch the last fourteen years of his career for the two teams in Texas, the Astros and the Rangers, in order to be closer to his home in Alvin. Both he and Ruth were family oriented people and the chance to live at home while competing at the highest levels of athleticism was a tantalizing prospect. Ryan credits Dr Gene Coleman of the Astros and pitching coach Tom House of the Rangers for using technological innovations to help prolong his career. Using cutting edge training methods as well as the budding use of computer technology to chart Ryan’s pitch delivery and use of various pitches, Coleman and House kept Ryan on the top of his game well into his forties, at a time when most professional athletes had long called it quits. During years meant to be the twilight’s of his career, Ryan pitched three more no hitters, including one at age forty four. As pitchers become more specialized and fail to pitch deep into games, his records of seven no hitters and 5714 strikeouts with twenty seven years in the major leagues will probably never be broken. 

Through it all, Ryan stayed grounded. He and Ruth are still happily married and could teach a lesson or two to the athletic and celebrity couples of today’s generation. The author Goldman was a bat boy for the Angels during Ryan’s tenure there and got to know the family off the field, becoming like another child for them. It is from this close relationship that Goldman was able to provide a window into Ryan’s life on and off of the field, where he was able to separate from being a Texas gentleman and fierce competitor who instilled fear in the eyes of his opponents. As a ten year old, Ryan is the athlete who I chose to lead me to safety from my nightmares. As an ace pitcher who was grounded in his values and his family, Ryan was probably a perfect choice. His Ryan Express fast ball most likely would have also instilled as much fear in the shark of my nightmares as it did in his opponents across two generations of ball players, as well as today’s ball players who still revere him as an ace hurler. 

4 stars

Guest review: "Playing the Enemy"

Through the wonder of social media and blogs, I have discovered another book review site that like this one, aims to review books on many different sports and introduce readers to them.  One of these bloggers from the United Kingdom, Aiden Williams, has been kind enough to allow me to share some his reviews here. Keeping in mind the goal of increasing the variety of sports portrayed here, here is Aiden's review of "Playing the Enemy", a book on rugby and Nelson Mandela that inspired the movie "Invictis."

Rugby enthusiast or not, there won’t be many people who don’t instantly recognise iconic the cover image of the moment Nelson Mandela, dressed in a Springbok jersey, handed the Rugby World Cup to the imposingly tall, blonde Afrikaner Francois Pienaar. It’s an image that has come to symbolise the moment that South Africa really began to become the Rainbow Nation. The moment that Mandela’s forgiveness manifested itself in such a public and heart winning way. The moment that appealed to the Afrikaner’s hearts rather than their minds.

John Carlin was the South African correspondent for the Telegraph through the turbulent end to apartheid, Mandela’s release, the first free elections and of course the 1995 Rugby World Cup. In that time he developed not only as deep an understanding of the troubled nation and is people as a foreign correspondent could, but also got to know Mandela and the thought processes which lead the great man to that symbolic act on the Ellis Park turf.

Rugby was the Afrikaner sport, a sport where the non whites of apartheid South Africa would actively support the opposition over the hated Springboks. The green jersey and the Springbok name and symbol itself were emblems of the regime hated by the oppressed majority. But Mandela saw it as the vehicle to win over his former oppressors and in the World Cup, his chance came to show his forgiveness and unite a nation.

Mandela had long taken an approach of wooing those who held him captive; learning their ways, their passions, their language. He soon learned that Rugby held the key to the Afrikaner’s emotions, and the sporting boycott which prevented international competition was hurting them deeply. Carlin’s engaging book charts the political evolution in South Africa through the tumultuous years from Mandela’s imprisonment and release. The country’s future hung in the balance through this time with the threat of civil war ever present, and a fearful white minority seeking solace in their one true passion: Rugby. Carlin weaves this political mess into a compelling tale with Rugby at its core along with interviews aplenty with both oppressed and oppressor alike, all the while against the backdrop of the approaching Rugby World Cup and all that it meant to the country.

The interactions between President and players both before and during the World Cup make for very interesting reading, as Mandela urged “his boys” to take their opportunity to push the country further along the road to integration on the back of the political prefabricating. The players bought into his vision and as they progressed through an ultimately successful World Cup, the story reaches its iconic conclusion, and the rest is, as they say, history.

The book was also the basis for the 2009 film Invictus, and in both formats the story is well told, but in the book form, the greater detail, depth, insight and context Carlin is able to provide makes for a great read for both sports fans and non sports fans alike.

Links:

The Sports Book Review blog:  http://thesportsbookreview.com/ 

For more on this review:  http://thesportsbookreview.com/2013/12/18/playing-the-enemy-nelson-mandela-and-the-game-that-made-a-nation-john-carlin/#more-61