There's an old showbiz saying, “If it plays in Peoria, it'll play anywhere.” That maxim from the glory days of vaudeville and the traveling circus implied that Peoria, Illinois – at least for those in the biz – served as something of an ideal test market. The city’s Main Street ethos and Midwestern wholesomeness could act as a canary in any entertainer’s coal mine. If you played Peoria, was the thinking, and that bird kept singing, it was okay to keep on digging.
During the 1960’s anyway, Syracuse seemed to serve a somewhat similar role, at least from a political perspective, and at least for the most prominent politician in the land; the President of the United States. Twice in two years, President Lyndon Johnson came to the Salt City, and twice he apparently did so to stick his toe in the water, do a little policy fishing and, just maybe, gauge the extent to which the Average Joe might be willing to bite on the bait he hoped to use on the rest of the country.
The first such visit was on August 5th of 1964. Ostensibly, LBJ’s foray to Upstate New York that first time was to curry favor with media mogul, S.I. Newhouse, who’d just given millions to Syracuse University to build a brand new home for its journalism school. Newhouse owned the two daily newspapers in town, the local Sunday newspaper, the #1 rated radio station, and the city's most watched TV station – not to mention the leading papers in such politically important cities as Portland, Oregon, New Orleans and St. Louis. LBJ had been asked by Newhouse (in exchange for his papers' endorsement) to act as keynote speaker and cut the ribbon on the all-new I.M. Pei-designed school that would bear his name.
Ironically, Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Public Communications was born in the 15th Ward, and housed for years in an ostentatious one-time residence on the eastern edge of it, a 7,000 or so sq. ft. edifice that had carried a few grandiose monikers over the decades, the last of them being Yates Castle.
Yates Castle had been designed in the mid-19th Century by famed architect James Renwick, who’d designed both St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. It was built as a vacation getaway by a wealthy clothing manufacturer named Cornelius Longstreet during an age when most townsmen, if they rode at all, did so by horse and buggy.
The “castle” was located in the area that, following Syracuse's explosion during the Industrial Revolution, would eventually be annexed and become its 15th Ward. The narrow carriage lane on which it was built would, in time, find itself paved over and christened Renwick Ave, just a stone’s throw from Renwick Place. The Tudor-Gothic structure, with its dozens of ornate rooms and oak woodwork, marble floors and stained glass, changed hands twice before falling into total disrepair and finding itself unceremoniously dropped into the lap of the university. The S.U. leadership then retrofitted their new but decaying “castle” and, for a brief time, used it to house their fledgling J-school.
But christening S.U.’s new communications school turned out to be, at least to many historians, just a smokescreen for Johnson’s real purpose for taking time from his busy schedule to travel to Upstate New York. It’s likely the President wanted to personally address the perfect cross section of the U.S. electorate that Syracuse represented. LBJ wanted the city to act as his own test market, in essence, using it as a tool to measure the reaction to an idea he’d been kicking around for a while.
And he had plenty of reason for not just wanting to do that, but for thinking the idea's moment had come. The President just wanted to make sure.
The night prior, LBJ had gone on national TV – a special report that had interrupted the networks’ regular prime time fare, which in early August amounted to a bunch of summer reruns of toothless comedies like McHale’s Navy and the Red Skelton Hour – to announce that a U.S. warship had been fired upon in open waters by North Vietnam. Johnson had stared into the camera and somberly told his “fellow Americans” he would not abide by, nor would he tolerate, such overt aggression. Those “open waters” LBJ mentioned turned out to be an expansive body of water on the east coast of Vietnam, one that in a matter of days millions would come to know as the Gulf of Tonkin.
But for that night anyway, voicing outrage was as far as LBJ went.
The fact that no such attack actually occurred, of course, would not be revealed for almost a decade. What had mattered, at least that night, was that LBJ wanted to drive home the idea he was a leader, a man of action, and a tough, no-nonsense Commander in Chief. So, rather than cancelling his trip the next morning, he decided to use it to advance his whole “man-of-action” message, the seeds for which he’d planted less than 24 hours earlier.
LBJ probably agreed to travel to Syracuse for one other reason as well. Nineteen sixty-four was a presidential election year, his first as incumbent President.
The big, earthy, and rough-around-the-edges Democrat – who’d held the Oval Office for the ten months following the assassination of John Kennedy in November of ‘63, the Harvard-educated Yankee under whom he’d begrudgingly (but faithfully) executed the duties of Vice President – was being increasingly taken to task by Barry Goldwater, the GOP nominee, for being “soft” on Communism. And by August, a mere eight weeks before the election, Goldwater seemed to be gaining traction with his claim, at least in Johnson’s mind. Both Goldwater’s admonition and his own (ever-so-slightly) eroding poll numbers ate at LBJ and rankled him no end. He was, after all, an alpha-dog’s alpha dog, not to mention an old-school politician from the Texas Hill Country who, by all reports, hated to lose as much as any man in the history of American politics.
So on August 5, when he came to the Salt City, and as he stood on the steps of the modern educational facility, he first offered a heartfelt acknowledgement of Newhouse, Pei and S.U.’s shiny, new addition to its rapidly evolving campus. He also welcomed Governor Rockefeller and thanked Mayor Walsh and Chancellor Tolley for their warmth and hospitality.
He then shifted gears and changed the script (if not the moment) entirely.
Just minutes into his address, Johnson launched into an eloquent and impassioned diatribe on the attack in the Gulf of Tonkin hours earlier, telling the S.U. crowd that the acts of aggression were “deliberate” and “unprovoked” and that “there can be no peace by aggression and no immunity from reply."
His words were Texas code-speak for “We can’t let those little bastards get away with this. We need to go get 'em. Whaddya’ll say? Ya’ll with me?” They also represented the first time that Lyndon Johnson had actually verbalized in public the crazy notion he’d been kicking around for months – namely, putting more boots on the ground in Vietnam and trying to win the damn thing once and for all; in essence, simultaneously confirming and escalating America’s commitment to an (as-yet and still) undeclared war.
After the speech – one in which he’d received both hearty applause and uneasy silence – LBJ and his wife, Lady Bird, took a tour of the Newhouse School with Newhouse, Pei and the rest of the dignitaries before hurriedly being chauffeured back to Hancock Air Force Base so he could return to D.C. with the express intent of waking up bright and early the following day and turning up the heat on every last member of Congress.
Five days later, after plenty of arm-twisting – arm-twisting that only a crusty old 6’4” Texas politician could pull off with down-home mix of charm, horse sense, anger, pork-flavored sweet-talk and physical intimidation – along with some cursory debate on the Senate and House floors, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed almost unanimously, giving LBJ sweeping powers to act militarily in the face of any and all foreign aggression.
The swift, bipartisan measure was adopted in the House by a staggering 416-0 vote and by a nearly-as-impressive 88-2 margin in the Senate. Only two lawmakers, Wayne Morse, a Democrat from Oregon, and Ernest Gruening, a former FDR aide, Harvard Med School alum, and former newspaper editor who’d become Alaska’s first-ever governor (and U.S. senator), spoke out, held out, and dared to answer the subsequent roll call vote with resounding “Nays.”
Said Morse, “I believe this resolution to be an historic mistake.” His seasoned and esteemed colleague Gruening was even more pointed. During the Senate’s largely one-sided discussion, he passionately decried the idea of “sending our American boys into combat in a war in which we have no business, which is not our war, into which we have been misguidedly drawn, which is steadily being escalated.”
Regardless, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution had passed and the Vietnam War – or at least the Vietnam that many historians would soon recognize as, perhaps, the most misguided, ill-conceived and mismanaged American conflict ever waged – was on in earnest.
When LBJ returned to Syracuse just two years later that same month – and just two weeks before Corcoran and Sacred Heart opened for the school year – he did so a different man in a completely different place. He’d managed to win the ‘64 election by the largest margin in history, a landslide and mandate of historic, if not jaw-dropping proportions. With copious amounts of political capital now burning a hole in his pocket, the suddenly emboldened Johnson attempted to breathe life into his most ambitious vision yet; a newer, more enlightened, and far more compassionate America.
Just like FDR’s New Deal in the ‘30s and Urban Renewal in the ‘50s, the 36th President’s Great Society of the ‘60s was a broad White House initiative given a catchy name and attached to a sea of progressive, some might even say revolutionary, legislative endeavors; bills that targeted many of the problems that, at least in LBJ’s Depression-steeped mind, continued to dog his country, hold it hostage, and threaten its very future as a Christian nation: racism, pollution, crime, poverty, disease and ignorance.
His second trip to the Salt City just over two years later, on August 19th, 1966, was part of a five-state tour that included New York and four New England states. Orchestrated by campaign officials to promote different elements of that very same Great Society initiative, the president's tour was done strategically in advance of the nation’s midterm elections, kicking off with a three-city stop in three vastly different communities in Upstate New York.
Early the first morning, LBJ flew to Buffalo in the western portion of the state and spoke to an overflowing crowd of Erie County residents about an issue impacting them as much as any other: increasing levels of pollution in a slowly dying Lake Erie, a massive body of fresh water on which the entire region remained forever reliant.
Standing on the site of a proposed water filtration plant, one that would be built with funds made possible by his Water Quality Act of 1965, which he’d just signed into law, Johnson spoke of America’s explosive growth over the past century. He waxed eloquent about how, as a country, America had built a great economy and how we’d “tamed this continent of ours.” And he spoke of the contradiction of how, in taming this rich and bountiful land, we'd impacted it in a way that meant we now needed to address so that future generations might also know the benefits of clean and plentiful water.
Later that same day, hundreds of miles to the east, in tiny Ellenville, a ragtag crossroads community high in the Catskill Mountains, LBJ dedicated an all-new community hospital, using the occasion to extol the virtues of Medicare and government-supported healthcare. Then, with both Lady Bird and Senator Robert F. Kennedy by his side, he spoke of health care as a basic right for every citizen, regardless of age or income, saying that in a hospital “there is no back door for second class citizens. There is only one waiting room and it is open to all.”
In between, however, was a critical stop in the beating heart of the Empire State – bustling little Syracuse. And unlike LBJ’s two bookend stops, both of which were animated and decidedly positive in tone, the President’s stop in Syracuse turned out to be somber and pointed. Oh, the overflowing crowd gathered downtown was certainly animated, and it lined Salina and Jefferson Streets and filled Columbus Circle, where a podium had been built, with all sorts of raucous cheers, festive bunting, and hand-painted signs of welcome, almost as though a conquering hero had returned home. But LBJ’s words in the Salt City that day were, in a word, cautionary. Despite the booming economy and the rosy optimism of many of the locals, they were words, if nothing else, of warning.
Given all the attention that had been raining down on Syracuse for four years, or at least since the start of the city’s slow and systematic demolition of its 15th Ward, they were words that seemed targeted specifically to every Syracusan there that day, perhaps not least the city’s mayor, Bill Walsh.
While LBJ may have spoken about the critical importance of clean water on the shores of Lake Erie, and lauded the righteousness of health-care-for-all in a tiny village in the Catskills, he addressed something else entirely to those gathered that brilliant summer day downtown, something that seemed simultaneously universal and yet, oddly and eerily specific to their time, place and circumstance: namely, the future of the American city.
No one can say for sure why Johnson chose to talk about the state of America's city to the people of Syracuse. Perhaps it was because of the rioting that had broken out in Watts just a summer earlier. Indeed, just three weeks prior to his coming to town, Life magazine had run a cover story with a photo of a stern African American in traditional African dress and Ray Ban sunglasses barking orders at four young equally stern-faced African American boys, no more than ten or eleven, all of them in yellow tee shirts emblazoned with the image of a growling lion. The caption to the side of the photo read in part “young militants are drilled in Watts.”
What was written just above that caption was even more telling and concerning to LBJ and others in America. The bold-faced copy – which ran just below the bright red box into which the word LIFE sat proudly – distilled the tinderbox nature of the dynamic that existed, not just in Watts, but inner cities all across the land:
1965 – When the riot cry was “Burn, baby, burn!”
1966 – Why the ghetto today is close to flashpoint.
But it’s just as likely that Johnson, like so many outsiders, had started to hear about Syracuse and view it as something of a litmus test for what can happen when individual liberties and human rights crash headlong into an industrial city’s need to remake itself and remain viable in a rapidly evolving marketplace.
It’s entirely possible that the President wasn’t in town to offer answers as much as he was to ask, perhaps for the first time, a few tough questions – and do so without any cover and in the light of day.
After acknowledging a few dignitaries and thanking Syracuse for providing his administration one of its favorite sons, Jack Connor (LBJ’s Commerce Secretary who’d grown up in the Bellevue Heights area and who, as a lace-curtain Irishman, graduated some 30 years earlier from Most Holy Rosary), he said: “I want to talk to you today about the center of our society – the American city.”
Over the next 15 minutes LBJ proceeded to praise Syracuse and cities just like it – hard working factory towns that made products and sold them to consumers the world over – for being so essential to America’s development as a nation and for allowing it to grow into the country it had become.
At one point he raised a note of caution, however, and simultaneously issued a challenge. As many in the audience fanned themselves under the bake of the late afternoon sun, he told them, “What took us two hundred years to build we’re going to have to build again in forty years.”
He then asked two questions that were central to almost everything Bill Walsh was trying to accomplish with the rollout of his increasingly unpopular Urban Renewal program. “What kind of city," the president asked, "do we want Syracuse to be?”
He let his rhetorical question hang in the air for a moment, then built on it, adding, “For you and your children, those of you who have come here in this hot sun, the real question is: What kind of a place will Syracuse be 50 or so years from now?
While the crowd in Buffalo had been cheerful that morning, as would be the crowd in Ellenville later that night, the crowd in Syracuse at that moment was subdued, almost as though many were trying to imagine what their beloved little town might look like in another half-century.
Yet, just as it seemed the President had come to town to act as an agent for Urban Renewal and run interference for the mayor, he shifted gears. In fact, it suddenly seemed as though LBJ might have been working as an advocate for the likes of CORE, Saul Alinsky, or maybe even Charlie Brady.
Though he was not looking directly at Mayor Walsh and Onondaga County Executive John Mulroy, two politically secure and entrenched members of the opposition party who were seated just behind him, he may as well have been as he said after a measured and contemplative beat, “Let me be clear about the heart of this problem: It is the people who live in our cities and the quality of the lives they lead that should concern every public servant today.”
The he took dead aim at many of the 15th Ward’s most notorious and unscrupulous absentee landlords, decrying all those who would “profit from poverty” and “line their pockets with the tattered dollars of the poor.”
Even then, the President wasn’t done, going on to reference a bill that had just passed in the Senate that week by a 2-1 margin, a piece of legislation called the Demonstration Cities Bill, that, among other things, targeted slumlords and anyone profiteering from those in the poorest sections of a city.
Johnson announced his intent – in what amounted to breaking news – to build not just a network of community centers, but legal aid clinics in every slum in America, while at the same time assuring the assembled that he was going to ask the Attorney General to make tenants’ rights and fairness under the law, for rich and poor, his highest priority.
In sum, LBJ addressed that day what might be considered a Democratic wish list for the next half century, and did it all within the context of the American city – a startling number of which, as he knew all too well, were rotting from the inside out.
He talked about a “Teacher Corps,” about bringing the best teachers in America into the inner city, and providing them the tools to do their jobs properly. He talked about establishing a commission charged with reviewing all building codes, tax laws, lending practices for any inherent or institutional injustices. He talked about childhood nutrition and the need for schools to offer hot breakfasts and lunches as an inducement to keep kids in the “ghetto” from dropping out. He talked about a civil rights bill that would eliminate discrimination in housing and provide the right to prosecute those who do. He talked about the need for legislation to improve medical conditions in the inner city and incentivizing young health care practitioners to work there. He talked about the need to upgrade urban mass transit throughout the country and to make it more affordable. And he talked about constructing better public housing and providing incentive-based rent subsidies for those seeking to create for themselves and their families a way out of poverty.
Lyndon Johnson was clearly a man with a vision for the American city – if not for millions of his fellow Americans – a vision that echoed even as he drove out of Syracuse a few hours before sunset and headed for the Catskills and the quaint world of Ichabod Crane and Rip Van Winkle. The problem was, the President’s noble vision for his so-called “Great Society” was not going to come cheaply.
Plus, to many who’d heard him that beautiful afternoon in the long shadows of Christopher Columbus and the pillars and gables of the Onondaga County Courthouse, that vision, though noble, felt idealistic, if not futuristic.
What many of those same Syracusans didn’t know, however, was how soon it would be before that future – their future – was standing on their doorstep, banging for all it was worth and demanding to be let in.
* * * * *
As another typically snowy winter continued to bury the Salt City in advance of the Christmas Holidays, and as 1966 was set to turn the page and become 1967, one thing revealed itself to many followers of high school basketball: Sacred Heart had itself a heck of a team. Billy E’s Heartsmen, led by their tall and powerful front line trio of Contos, Sakowski and Schmid, entered the holidays, not to mention their first showdown of the season, with a spotless 4-0 record, having easily dispatched of Most Holy Rosary, St. Vincent’s, St. Anthony’s, and St. Patrick’s by an average of 22 points per game.
What was astounding to many wasn’t so much that the Hearts were great, it was the surprising success of the team Billy E’s club was set to face in its first real test. That team, which came into the game at 5-0, and had likewise handled its opponents with relative ease, was none other than St. John the Evangelist, the very same team that the previous year had steamrolled through the Parochial League undefeated and won a nail-biting (though controversial) All City Championship over Ken Huffman’s Corcoran Cougars.
Those powerful and well-oiled Eagles started five seniors – five classmates, in essence – who’d been playing together since 9th grade and who’d learn over the course of four years, both on and off the court, to fit like fingers in a glove. In addition, the 6th man and first-guy-off-the-bench that year – Joe Russo, a great little player in his own right, and a kid who was the beneficiary of the relatively few minutes Felasco didn’t allocate his five ironmen – was, likewise, a senior.
That meant, remarkably, despite losing his six most important pieces from the previous season – his only pieces, really – and now fielding a team made up entirely of last year’s bench warmers and three kids up from junior varsity, Felasco had managed to tick off five more wins to run St. John's winning streak to 33.
As 1966 was winding down, in other words, the coach from that soot-covered hole-in-the-wall at Townsend and Willow – that strutting little rooster in the off-the-rack sports coat, a guy who, at times, seemed like he was playing three-dimensional chess to everyone else's checkers – hadn’t lost a single Parochial League game in more than a full calendar year.
As Billy E studied his morning Post-Standard and read a story about the not entirely surprising success (at least not to him, anyway) of Felasco’s most recent nest of Eagles, he couldn’t help but note (and grouse about) all the major changes happening in the sports world.
After all, at least for Billy E (and others like him), sports remained so attractive because they always seemed so orderly, measurable, and largely predictable from one season to the next – while still managing to be compelling. For that reason, the four or five pages each morning dedicated to games and those who played them always served as something of a haven from the otherwise confounding parade of uncertainties that, more and more, seemed to be taking root in Billy E's America.
By December of 1966, however, even the certainty of the sports pages seemed in peril. In that one basketball season, the Hearts' head man would read any number of stories that, in their own way, foretold more and even greater shifts in the world upon which he’d come to rely, a world that had always seemed so immune to any change, much less the revolutionary kind. Yet, just like so many other aspects of life, as winter in Syracuse dug in and took hold, change not only came to Billy’s safe haven, it came with fire and fury.
Billy had read that week, for example, about an upcoming game the NFL would play against the still-young AFL, a pro football “championship” that, as he saw it, felt like little more than a cheap way for the two leagues to stuff a few extra bucks into their pockets at the end of the year. And among many longtime NFL fans at the Old Port, he was not alone. That upcoming contest (and likely blowout), slated for later that January, would pit the powerful champs of the NFL, Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers, against the AFL’s top dog, the Kansas City Chiefs of Hank Stram.
Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt, one of the AFL's founding fathers, would eventually have a flash of inspiration one day after watching his daughter play with the Wham-O company's hot new toy in his driveway, one of the most asked-for toys of that Christmas season, a highly compressed synthetic rubber ball. He suggested to Commissioner Pete Rozelle and his fellow owners that they name their fledgling postseason spectacle after his daughter's Super Ball. He suggested they call their crazy idea the Super Bowl.
Billy laughed as he read the name.
Related to that, perhaps, he'd also read how a brash, headstrong young NFL exec, Bert Bell, Jr., had quit his front office job with Baltimore's Colts over the runaway “commercialism” he felt had been unleashed upon pro football. Bell, an old-school scion whose father had been the NFL commissioner before Rozelle, was especially upset by the owners’ decision to allow a second NFL game to be imported into a home team’s market on Sunday afternoons.
In a Post-Standard story on Bell’s somewhat animated departure, Billy read how the young man had decried the new policy, saying the second game was being “elbowed” into the home’s team’s precious TV market. In the same story, he railed about the absurdity of “a football Sunday with football, pre-game shows, post-game shows, for some eight hours...”
Billy E had also read a few weeks prior about the abrupt retirement of the greatest pitcher he’d ever seen, Sandy Koufax, following a season that left many awestruck; one that saw the soon-to-be Hall of Famer win 27 games, fashion a 1.73 ERA, and strike out 317 hitters over the course of 323 innings, before hanging them up at age 27 and simply walking away.
He’d also read about the first-ever varsity game for a UCLA sophomore sensation, a 7’2” giant from New York’s Power Memorial High named Lew Alcindor. The November prior, in a jam-packed Pauley Pavilion, Alcindor had led his freshman team to a win over the varsity – a team that, mind you, had just won the NCAA Men’s Championship a few months prior.
In his first varsity game as a Bruin, the Post-Standard reported, Alcindor had dominated a 7’1” kid from nearby Torrance, a powerful young center named Ron Taylor of the USC Trojans. For the game, Alcindor rang up 56 points against his ready-and-willing but clearly overmatched counterpart, many in the first half when things were still close, and a number of them on thundering (and seemingly effortless) dunks. Just one game into his career, more than a few coaches and sports writers were already starting to question, in the interest of competitive balance, whether or not the NCAA needed to adopt a rule change to limit the impact of a powerful and apparently unstoppable force like Lew Alcindor.
Billy E would also read story in a few days about how world heavyweight boxing champ Muhammad Ali – who weeks prior had changed his “slave” name from Cassius Clay to Cassius X, only to have it changed again by Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad – would not just beat fellow African American Ernie Terrell, but torture him. Terrell, like many Americans, black and white, refused to accept Ali’s Islamic name and continued to call him “Clay,” both to the media and (worse) to his face. So, during the evening’s one-sided affair, writers would note how, even as he savagely beat Terrell, Ali seemed to hold up the shaken boxer and taunt him with almost every quicksilver punch. “What’s my name? What’s my name, Ernie?” he would keep asking as he peppered Terrell’s face and mid-section, just enough so his opponent would hurt, but not so much he would fall.
Billy would also read in a few weeks a story about a new pro basketball league that, to lukewarm fanfare and a boatload of skepticism, announced it was going to challenge the powerful NBA for hearts and minds in such non-NBA towns as Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Dallas, Anaheim and Indianapolis. The American Basketball Association promised a faster-paced and more entertaining brand of ball, with plenty of offense, blaring rock-and-soul music, sexy cheerleaders and a garish and odd-looking red, white and blue ball. More than anything, though, the league announced it would adopt a radical new idea: a three-point shot for any basket made from beyond a certain arced-off point on the court.
In yet another story, Billy E would read how hockey purists were already mourning the end of their sport’s “golden age,” as the original eight franchises would now form their own Eastern Conference, while a group of eight expansion clubs would constitute the NHL's brand new Western Conference – meaning that one of these new watered-down teams would be guaranteed a spot in the Finals and a hall pass to battle one of the sacred "original eight" teams for the right to skate home with Lord Stanley’s Cup.
Escaping Billy's eyes, though, would be a small story to which Billy paid no attention whatsoever – and, once again, he could hardly be faulted in that regard. That tiny item on one of the inside pages reported what, on the surface, looked an inconsequential nugget from baseball’s hot stove; AL president Joe Cronin had granted Chicago White Sox GM Ed Short permission to experiment with an idea he'd been kicking around. Cronin ruled that during a to-be-determined spring training game, the Sox and their opponent could choose one pinch hitter per team. Each would then “designate” (Cronin’s word) which player that hitter would replace every time he came to bat; most likely the pitcher.
All these stories would unfold within weeks of each other during the ‘66-‘67 Parochial League season. And all, as ground-breaking as they would ultimately prove to be, would be confined to Billy E’s otherwise early morning refuge from life’s daily tumult. It’s no wonder then, why a diligent, nose-to-the-grindstone company man like Billy found it comforting to pay such stories little mind and to focus, instead, on the task at hand; his upcoming battle for league supremacy with that son-of-a-beehive from the North Side, Bobby Felasco.
Make no mistake; Billy Ewaniszyk was, and would always remain, a terrific coach – one of the best in the city. But, just like every other high school coach in Central New York, for all his success he was just simply not in Felasco’s league, especially at game time.
That was true even when the latter was given less-than-spectacular talent with which to work. In that regard, Felasco was like no high school coach Syracuse had ever seen. Part of his brilliance was the fact that he could both inspire and intimidate just about anyone in any gym: players, opposing coaches, even the referees. He refused to give any man or boy involved in a Parochial League Friday night affair even an inch of slack. And he challenged everyone on just about everything.
Felasco was particularly hard on the refs. As a longtime game official himself, he knew what buttons to push. He knew which refs could be bullied, which ones who needed to be coddled, and which ones responded to some combination of deference, praise and flattery.
It would be impossible to quantify Felasco’ impact in terms of points on a scoreboard. But his influence could be felt in countless calls made during the course of any one game. That’s why one of his best all-time players would later speak of him in reverential tones: “It was huge, knowing Bobby was on our bench. Having him fighting for us, and never giving anyone a (expletive) inch, was like having a sixth man out there with us.”
The irony, of course, is that the very inverse of that quote may have been the single biggest reason Bob Felasco was able to enjoy a such an extended run of success. From his earliest days at Evangelist, he always tried to ferret out and nurture one kid per season, one special kid who’d then act as something of a “coach” for him on the court.
Sometimes he was able to find that kid among his starters; other times not. But he was always searching for that one youngster who could fill that role – which was why Bobby Felasco, the referee, constantly asked to be assigned to grammar school games throughout the city, so that he might get up-close and personal looks at the finest and most athletic of Syracuse’s 7th and 8th graders (while planting seeds for, just maybe, recruiting a handful of them to Evangelist).
In other words, while some of Bob Felasco's biggest stars may have viewed him as a sixth player, in reality, his special sauce was the almost magical way he could turn one of them into a second coach.
Felasco’s de facto “coaches” weren't always the most talented, and weren’t always the biggest names or the highest scorers. But, like Felasco himself, they all had a deep understanding of up-tempo ball and possessed an intuitive sense of the game. What’s more, they not only had an intuitive feel for the ebb and flow of a game, they always seemed to understand exactly what Felasco wanted, almost as though they had an intuitive sense of him.
Over the decades, the kids who’d serve as Felasco’s on-court coaches, though different in many ways, all had at least two things in common: one, they all mirrored some aspect of their coach’s combative personality, whether it was his fearlessness, his stubbornness, his uncompromising nature, or the almost criminal amount of self-confidence he possessed, and two, they all played the same position – point guard (and although the term was still a decade or two from general use, the responsibilities remained the same).
What these kids all were, in essence, was an extension of their coach, the most dominant (and indomitable) personality in the long and storied history of high school sports in Syracuse.
Marshall Nelson, the African American youngster from the 15th Ward who as an 8th grader in 1948 helped his brother Al break the Parochial League color line, would prove to be Felasco’s first such playing “coach” at Evangelist. He’d soon come to embody his mentor’s sharp, analytical mind, his natural talent for leadership and his 6th sense for getting the ball to the open man, regardless of how frenetic the action grew.
Billy Jones, who came to St. John’s from tiny St. Brigid’s a full decade later, the future priest who’d spend his initial days as a post-seminarian fighting for those he saw as living “in the shadows,” was another. Jones, who served as both a high powered distributor and a point-a-minute scorer, typified Felasco’s moral resolve, his love of hard work, and his willingness to always look beyond traditional lockstep thinking.
And Tommy Downey, who was the linchpin of the previous year’s undefeated squad – the once-in-a-lifetime collection of six perfectly molded and in-sync seniors – turned out to be the living, breathing embodiment of Felasco’s wealth of basketball knowledge, his cool under fire, and his magnetic sense of self-confidence.
But it was two boys sandwiched in between those three who, in many ways, would become symbols of the bond that, every so often, could exist between Bobby Felasco and a certain kid under his wing, a Syracuse teenager who’d proven he embodied a meaningful part of whatever it was that made his half-Italian/half-Polish, potty-mouthed, God-fearing and game-altering coach such a life force and survivor of so many Friday night wars.
The first was Jack Underwood. For years, the lore that shrouded sawed-off, little Underwood was the stuff of legend in the Salt City. Even with the benefit of time, distance and a lifetime’s worth of anecdotes, it's hard to figure just which of the stories about the one-of-a-kind street urchin are true, and which, just maybe, could be true.
Regardless, for those of a certain age, and for those who grew up in the mosaic of parishes and neighborhoods that, together, made up the Syracuse, New York of the early 1950s, Jack Underwood was an All Parochial comet across the nighttime sky. He not only did special things on a court, he was a larger-than-life character straight out of a Damon Runyon tale – try to imagine a fast-taking, dice-rolling and basketball-loving mix of Sky Masterson, Nathan Detroit and Nicely Nicely.
As a kid, Understood grew up in the Valley on the South Side and, according to legend, did so with an entirely different last name than the one he'd eventually adopt. He began his high school career at Valley High, where for two years he served as a hustling, lightning-quick, yet largely overlooked football and basketball player.
At some point, the pint-size hustler decided to change things up a bit. Whether it was due to his mother’s shifting marital status or because his birth name carried some baggage, it’s at least also possible that young Jackie selected a new last name for himself because he wanted to gain another year of high school basketball eligibility.
Whatever the truth, the name change allowed Jackie Underwood to become a different person, acquire a new identity, and grow a full year younger, all at the same time – a change that also allowed him to become, for the very first time, a Parochial Leaguer.
The day a strutting and raven-haired young buck named Jack (“Don’t Call Me John”) Underwood showed up at St. John the Evangelist, he had a few books under his arm, a cigarette on his lips, and a hustle in his heart. The young man and erstwhile street urchin had come to the North Side hoping for some action, any action; a basketball game, a touch football game, a card game, a craps game – hell, even a sidewalk penny-pitching contest or card-flipping match.
Jack Underwood, you see, loved the high of winning – winning anything – especially when he had something riding on the outcome. And the only thing he loved more than the high of winning was the high he felt walking around with a pocketful of cash.
At Evangelist, Underwood eventually teamed up with a tall, humble, studious and well-mannered Polish boy from the West Side, a devout and lifelong Sacred Heart parishioner named Bob Dietz. Together, the two young men formed one of the most fearsome and highest-scoring duos in Parochial League history.
Dietz and Underwood. Underwood and Dietz. Either way, for one season the two schoolboy talents became the bane of Parochial League coaches, players and fans across the city, the heart and soul of what would prove to be the first of a steady stream of Felasco powerhouses at St. John’s.
In many ways, Underwood and Dietz were like Mutt and Jeff of the funny pages. They were both talented and highly competitive. They wore the same uniform. They said the very same pre-game prayers. But in almost every other way they were different, if not the photo negative of each other.
Underwood was 5’8”, maybe 5’9.” Dietz was a good 6’3,” possibly 6’4.” One played inside, the other outside. One was a slasher, perhaps the fastest player in the Parochial League; the other was cerebral and fluid, a silky smooth scorer with a magnificent shooting touch from all over the court, and possessor of, arguably, the very first jump shot ever seen in a Syracuse high school game.
It was their personalities, though, that really set Bob Dietz and Jack Underwood apart. Dietz was kind and gentle, fueled by an alluring combination of humility, moral clarity and civility – extraordinary, even in an age when such things were expected of a young man, if not taken for granted. Had he chosen to enter the seminary (something he briefly contemplated) before meeting the young lady who’d eventually become his wife, his unassuming ways and quiet dignity would have, doubtless, allowed Father Dietz to play to packed houses week after week in some well-appointed parish.
Dietz was devoted to his family as much as just about any boy in the Parochial League. In fact, one of his greatest thrills in his storied high school and college playing career was the night he set the Parochial League record for points in a single game. Yet, afterward, he was not nearly as excited about the fact he’d just broken a coveted scoring mark as he was about the fact that it was the very first time his Polish mother had gotten a chance to see her son play for St. John's.
Jackie Underwood, on the other hand, had little time for sentiment (or as he might have called it, “sappiness”). Underwood was a classic child of the streets; a kid who’d learned first hand and the hard way the importance of self-reliance and how to get by on one’s wits. He took nothing for granted. He walked around with a chip on his shoulder the size of a mountain lion. Street jargon and wisecracks were his preferred mode of communication. And long before he ever trusted anyone, he always made it a point to size the guy up, especially his weaknesses.
After summer school – hour-long classes to which he’d religiously haul his ratty golf bag and clubs on the Midland bus – he’d hitchhike from Central High in the run-down 15th Ward to one of the posh, upscale golf clubs on the East Side where he’d then talk his way past the starter and hook up with either a threesome or some lone golfer.
After sizing his playing partner up, he'd play well enough to look legit, but poorly enough to convince the guy he actually had a chance to win. It didn't hurt that the picture the kid from the South Side presented to the outside world – greasy hair, black Converse high-tops, and some threadbare, bamboo-shafted clubs – was less than imposing. Once the bet was made and locked in, however, as if by magic, a certain crispness suddenly emerged in Underwood’s ball-striking, and his putts – both the long and the short ones – began to consistently rattle the bottom of the cup.
Years later, Masters champion Lee Trevino, a dirt-poor kid himself who’d learned the game on the hardscrabble public courses of his native Mexico, and a kid who, like Underwood, hustled unsuspecting golfers for cash, was once asked by a sportswriter if he felt pressure over a big putt at Augusta. Trevino laughed and said, “C’mon. That’s not pressure. Pressure is putting to win a $10 bet when you don’t have a dime in your pocket.”
One could argue that for all that golf-hustling did to help Jackie Underwood put a few extra bucks in his wallet, it did even more to hone his basketball skills. If nothing else, it readied him for the intensity and dog-eat-dog nature of Friday night Parochial League play. Competing for money that he didn’t have helped steel his nerves, forge his resolve, and show him what it took to go toe-to-toe with any man, anywhere, and do so without a safety net.
One time during his senior year, Underwood, whose on-court cockiness was, maybe, the deadliest in his finite but deadly arsenal of weapons, got under the skin of one of the St. John’s priests, a forty year old man-of-the-cloth named Jim Nicholson. Nicholson, a classic alpha with slowly diminishing skills, and a guy who liked to mix it up with Felasco’s boys whenever the coach needed an extra body, was so unnerved by Underwood that day that the priest actually knocked the youngster out of an upcoming playoff game.
What happened was that Nicholson, sick of being abused by Underwood through an entire practice, not only physically but from a steady and relentless stream of verbal jabs, finally reached his limit. The next time the cocky kid faked the aging, beet-red cleric out of his jockstrap and glided past him, smirking as he did, Nicholson ran up behind the airborne Underwood and knocked him into the back wall, causing him to sprain his ankle so badly that Bobby Felasco initially feared it broken.
It's fair to say Bob Felasco thought the world of Bob Dietz, his finest player, leading scorer, and resident All-American boy. Fair to say he loved Bobby Dietz. Loved him much so, in fact, he would have laid down his own life if it meant shielding the young man from harm. But there was something about that damn Jackie Underwood that lured Felasco in like the proverbial moth to a flame.
He knew full well Underwood was a kid he always had to keep one eye on, more often than not, both eyes. He knew the youngster was constantly playing one angle or another, and he would cut whatever corner necessary, if doing so worked to his benefit. Felasco also knew that the brash and slippery little son-of-a-gun was never going to be his, or anyone else’s idea of a choir boy. For those reasons and others, the St. John’s coach felt entirely justified keeping Jackie Underwood at a safe distance, at least emotionally.
But on the court and in the heat of battle, it was an entirely different story. Even if Felasco saw the young man’s flaws for what they were, and would regularly shake his head at his on-again/off-again relationship with the rules of polite society, he trusted the kid with the ball more than any young man he’d ever coached. He was a kid, in other words, who, with everything on the line, Bob Felasco wanted in the foxhole with him.
Just as the Evangelist coach firmly believed that every time he set foot in a gym anywhere in town, he was the guy everyone else had to try to beat, Felasco saw in Underwood a young man who harbored that very same belief about himself.
Felasco was one of the few people in Syracuse who was able to look upon Underwood’s cockiness, not as a flaw in the kid’s character, but as the single biggest reason he could regularly go toe-to-toe with often bigger, stronger and more skilled opponents. He saw the kid's outsized feeling of self-assuredness as a seventh bullet in the six-shooter God had given him at birth; a rare and elusive quality that allowed him to shine when the lights were on, and when other boys might wilt.
What’s more, unlike countless other high school greats over the years, the legend of Jackie Underwood only seemed to grow once his glory days ended. Even late in life, back in his hometown, some level of mythology always seemed to float above the conversation whenever the name “Undie” happened to be brought up by a group of former Parochial Leaguers; a reference that, more often than not, was accompanied by a number of chuckles and more than a few belly laughs.
Though no one ever seemed quite certain of the specifics, one such bit of lore held that Underwood had stayed in the South following his run at, first, Belmont Abbey College (where one year he set the school single season scoring record that would stand for six decades) and, later, at Atlantic Christian College (where he transferred after butting heads with Belmont Abbey’s new coach). There, he had lived out his days grifting, gambling, hustling, and doing whatever it took to eke out a living, including – again, according to legend – selling Bibles under the baking, hot sun on a series of Army, Marine and Air Force bases, going door-to-door and using his charm, wit and bedroom eyes to sell one Bible after another to neglected housewives.
Another sliver of legend held that, his grades being as comically bad as they regularly were, in order to stay eligible at Belmont Abbey one semester he concocted a plan to give his sagging GPA a shot in the arm. Somehow getting his hands on a “borrowed” extension ladder, a few paint brushes, and a gallon of latex paint, Underwood appropriated a pair of used coveralls and a painter’s hat. He then, all by himself, carried the heavy, 40’ oak ladder across campus and propped it up against the teachers’ office building.
He then proceeded to climb up, paint can in hand, and when he reached the correct window, jimmy it open. Once inside his teacher’s office, Underwood searched feverishly until he found where the guy had filed his copy of his final exam, which the young man then quickly transcribed onto a blank piece of paper and stashed into his “borrowed” (and two-sizes-too-large) coveralls. He then went home and, knowing all the questions, looked up all the answers.
There’s also a story that when legendary Hall of Fame coach and street philosopher Al McGuire was asked by a sportswriter to name his favorite player ever, he said his favorite player was not one anyone knows. It was not, for example, Dean Meminger (his first All American at Marquette), or Butch Lee (who helped him win his one and only national title), or even his own son, Allie. The ever-quotable McGuire reportedly looked at the reporter and said, "My favorite player of all time was a kid I had my first year at Belmont Abbey, a kid who eventually transferred out because we kept going at each other like cats and dogs; a tough-as-nails little son-of-a-gun named Jackie Underwood; a kid from Upstate New York who, despite all his shortcomings, simply refused to back down from anyone – including me. In fact, Underwood reminded me so much of myself that I was constantly torn between wanting to hug the kid and wanting to kill him."
If Jackie Underwood was the most colorful playing “coach” in Bobby Felasco’s long and storied tenure, it was a young man named Bob Kallfelz, entering St. John's three years later, who would turn out to be one he embraced with open arms and loved with every fiber of his being.
Bob Felasco worshiped the game of basketball. Lived and breathed it. He'd been a nice player in high school, but with his small stature, limited range and iffy athleticism, he was never going to be a star at the next level. All the same, if he had to do it all over again, he'd sometimes think years later, he wouldn't have changed much about how he approached the game as a kid – other than maybe be born a little taller and with a whole lot more talent. He'd done all he could, he felt, with what God gave him. And he'd long reconciled himself to that.
But then came Bobby Kallfelz, a young man who, for all intents and purposes, was Bobby Felasco – only fourteen years his junior. The kid even looked a bit like him. What separated the two was talent. Bobby Kallfelz was light years ahead of where the gutty and hard-nosed Felasco had been as a schoolboy.
If, in high school, little Bobby Felasco had been something of a textbook gamer, Bob Kallfelz was the quintessential star. A full-blown, bonafide, hardcourt superstar, and one in every sense of the word; a powerful kid who not only outworked, outthought and out-willed just about every other player on a court, but an athlete who commanded attention by the mere fact he was, quite simply, so much better than anyone else.
Yet, because they were so much alike – physically, spiritually, mentally, and in their approach to the game – Felasco and Kallfelz developed a real love/hate relationship with one another. Oh, to be sure, there was more love than hate. But the fact remained the two were so similar and so close in temperament that they could go at each other at the drop of a hat, and do so with fire and rage. In practice and during games, neither man seemed willing to give the other an inch.
Their frequent flare-ups would quickly pass, of course, and the two would then act as though nothing had happened. But among the other St. John’s kids, there remained a deep understanding that their coach and their teammate had a connection that transcended a mere mentor/student relationship, a bond that allowed the two to go to places that no one else – least of all, they as players, classmates and largely interchangeable parts – could go.
Bobby Kallfelz was not simply talented, though. He was as dedicated as any kid in the history of Syracuse basketball, Parochial League or otherwise.
An Eastwood youngster who grew up near the corner of Midler and James, he could regularly be seen dribbling east or west along James Street, day or night, either going to or coming from the Eastwood Sports Center, whose proprietor, Danny Biasone, also happened to own and operate the Syracuse Nats. Kallfelz worked as a pin-setter for Baisone in the small area behind his tavern’s handful of well-maintained and well-waxed bowling lanes, removing downed pins, feeding balls into return chutes, and, of course, feverishly resetting racks after each and every throw.
It was hard work, but Kallfelz liked to think of it as basketball training. In fact, he'd often pretend that the heavy bowling balls were basketballs and would handle them as though he was shooting or passing. In the young man’s mind, the heft of a 16-pound bowling ball made an air-filled basketball seem ridiculously light by comparison, something he felt would allow him to ultimately shoot freer, quicker, and from greater distance.
The bowling ball exercise eventually convinced Kallfelz he should start to work his lower body as well as as his upper half. So one day the basketball-obsessed Eastwood kid went home and fashioned his very own ankle-weights (long before anyone had even heard of ankle weights) using two belts and a pair of iron rings from his old man's tool bench. He’d then wear those cobbled-together training aids at the Sports Center as he raced from alley to alley, setting pins, returning balls and miming jump shots, believing he was improving both his foot speed and his jumping ability (the latter being the only gift the Good Lord had chosen not to bestow upon the otherwise magnificently gifted Kallfelz).
Bob Kallfelz also regularly worked on his dribbling and ball handling skills. One drill – a personal favorite – could only be done after a heavy rainstorm or one of those textbook Syracuse flash downpours, when the streets of Eastwood would puddle up from one end to the other. Taking his trusty and well-worn outdoor ball into his strong and oversized hands, he’d go outside as soon as the rain let up and dribble his way over to a side street, often Nichols Ave or Mosley Drive, where the only traffic might be a milkman or, maybe, the Charles Chips guy in his signature brown van.
Closing his eyes, Kallfelz would begin dribbling up and down the pavement as fast as he could – always with his eyes shut. In his mind, dribbling through puddles of differing depths and dimensions on uneven blacktop allowed him replicate perfectly the dead spots and inconsistencies he would find on so many of the Parochial League’s oldest, creakiest, and most uneven floors. If he could dribble through puddles of water of various sizes and shapes without even flinching, much less looking down, he thought, he could dribble anywhere.
It turns out, young Mr. Kallfelz also became a regular church-goer during his days of high intensity training, though not for the reasons one might normally associate with church-going; noble, God-fearing goals like piety, contrition, and/or the idea of saving one’s soul. No, young Bob Kallfelz religiously dribbled to Blessed Sacrament four or five days a week as part of his own little improvised drill to improve his peripheral vision.
Sitting in the far corner of the last pew of his always dimly lit church, with his trusty Voit by his side, he’d regularly take a votive candle he’d appropriated from the bank of candles at the rear of the apse and light it. The shrine for special causes in Blessed Sacrament, if not most traditional, 20th Century Catholic churches, was an area (usually in the rear, but often to one side) in which sat a kneeler, a coin box, a jar of long, white, waxy wicks, a few tiers of votive candles (some lit, most not), and a small box of matches, all of which were placed there so parishioners might donate a few pennies, strike a match, light a candle, and say a prayer for the health and/or salvation of some sick, dying or departed loved one.
Young Bobby Kallfelz, from the time he was in 7th grade, would regularly sit alone in the last pew of Blessed Sacrament and hold one of the appropriated candles at arm’s length, moving it slowly from left to right and making sure to keep his eyes straight ahead and fixed on the body of the crucified Christ above him as it hung above him behind the altar. Then, with his eyes glued to his Savior. Kallfelz would focus on the flame for as long as he could, both to the left and to the right, until it disappeared entirely. Doing so, in his mind, helped improve his peripheral vision, something he felt would be critical if he ever wanted to lead Coach Felasco’s fast break on Friday nights.
And Bobby Kallfelz would enact this ritual for the better part of an hour, or at least until the candle grew so small that the wax began to singe his hand. Why not? He’d put a hard-earned nickel into the box, after all. He might as well try to get every penny’s worth of candle time out of it.
Bob Felasco eventually would have children of his own. But before they’d come along, Bobby Kallfelz turned into something of an adopted son to the him. Felasco rode the young man hard and was constantly pushing him to be his very best. But he did so out not out of some manic obsession or unfulfilled schoolboy fantasy. He did it out of genuine love and deep affection for the boy.
Though the two often butted heads, Felasco gave Kallfelz greater leeway than any other kid he’d ever had (or, frankly, ever would have). In fact, there were occasions during tense games when Kallfelz would go toe-to-toe with Felasco in front of everyone; fans, cheerleaders and teammates, both of them screaming at the top of their lungs.
Afterwards, regardless of what Felasco had been demanding, Kallfelz would invariably leave the huddle, nod his head, and then do exactly what he'd wanted all along. And when that happened – an act of insubordination that would have drawn a suspension or worse for any other player – it almost seemed to illicit a gentle smile from Felasco, if not an ever-so faint glint of approval.
That’s why John Caveney, one of Kallfelz’ best friends, and an Evangelist star in his own right, would later contend that if, indeed, there was a father/son dynamic between the two men, it might have been Kallfelz playing the father role. He always seemed to be the one in charge – something that never would have happened had Felasco not allowed it to.
This bond between player and coach was one for the ages. That’s why it tore Felasco apart when Kallfelz's athletic life and all his dreams shattered in the blink of an eye on night.
Two-thirds of the way through his senior season, a simple, knee-to-knee collision with a faceless, hustling opponent in a lopsided win over St. Vincent’s sent Kallfelz sprawling to the ground, writhing in pain. Soon, the offers he'd received for full basketball scholarships to a number of schools, including Syracuse University, were quietly withdrawn.
In 1958, a major knee injury meant full, deeply invasive surgery that was often more traumatic than the injury it was designed to correct. Kallfelz tried as best he could to avoid going under the knife and simply play through the pain. But, try as he might, the knee was simply too damaged.
His boss at the bowling alley, Danny Biasone, made sure he regularly rode with him to Nats practices during that dark and uncertain time, especially in the injury’s immediate aftermath – something Felasco quietly permitted Kallfelz to do, even though it meant missing his own practices – so that an NBA-quality trainer might work on the knee and try to get the kid even halfway back to where he’d been.
After those rehab sessions at the War Memorial, he also got to regularly play one-on-one with Hal Greer, the Nats’ 21-year old rookie from Marshall. And it was Greer who every day watched at how hard and how diligently Kallfelz trained to get his knee strong again and who, in short order (and in large part because of the young man’s passion for the game that he, himself, loved) became his unlikely friend, often sharing a burger with the youngster, along with fries and Coke, at the Walgreens on Salina.
The hardest part for Felasco was to watch Kallfelz limping through the final few games of his schoolboy career, working as hard as ever, if not harder, but no longer being able to do so many of the magical things he’d once been able to do. This was especially true at halftime, when he gave Kallfelz permission to go to the parking lot, where, in a form of primal therapy, the young man had designed for himself a therapy consistent with so many of the Rube Goldberg-like methods he’d conjured up over the years, the kid would kneel in a crusty snow bank alone for the duration of halftime, visualize the second half, and mentally gird himself for the excruciating pain that was going to dog him like a hellhound.
Now, ten years later, Bobby Felasco entered the 1966-67 season faced with the daunting task of trying to, somehow, go toe-to-toe with Billy E’s powerful five from the West End, and did so with the full understanding that he’d lost yet one more player/coach he’d managed to fall in love with – this one a remarkable little floor general named Tommy Downey who’d graduated from St. John’s the previous June, leaving him, yet again, with no one to fill a most important pair of sweaty, size-nine high-tops.
Felasco had at least a few replacement options for Downey, he knew that. But he found himself, more and more, coming back to just one of them: a youngster named Jimmy Benz, a 5’11” senior who'd ridden the pines for Felasco the previous year, only playing token minutes near the end of a handful of games. The kid practiced hard, to be sure. And he’d not missed a single practice all year, much less a game.
But he was rough-around-the-edges and wildly inexperienced, or at least that’s how Felasco remembered him as he took his boys through their first five days of tryouts and practice – his dreaded “five days in Hell” that every year served as his own little way of christening yet another basketball season.
One of the hallmarks of any Bobby Felasco team was that his boys were always in top shape, and would always outrun, outwork, and out-hustle every other team in the Parochial League. So running became the one thing that defined Felasco’s tryouts and early practices year in and year out, especially the first five days.
For that reason, during most of those five days, with the exception of the opening layup lines he used every day as a quick warm-up, the leather balls, for the most part, remained tucked away in the canvas bag he always kept stuffed in the trunk of his Plymouth.
Basically, the only thing Felasco’s teams did that first full week of practice was run. And then run some more. Some of the boys called them “lines.” Others, in time, would call them “suicides.” Either way, they were all-out, balls-to-the-wall sprints from one baseline to one of four stripes; first to the nearest foul line and back, next to the half court stripe and back, then to the opposite foul line and back, and finally to the far baseline and back. Sometimes the sprints were run forward, other times backward. Before too long, they would be run while dribbling, sometimes with the boys’ dominant hand, other times with their off-hand.
To be fair, most coaches ran suicides as a matter of practice. But Bob Felasco ran them as a matter of religion. He also ran them to exhaustion, or at least until one boy invariably doubled over and started retching in a series of full-body spasms, throwing up not just that day’s bologna, peanut butter or egg salad sandwich, but, likely, pretty much every scrap of food that poor kid had eaten over the past 48 hours.
And while finishing first in such pre-season sprints for Bobby Felasco meant little, beyond perhaps a small measure of personal pride for the winner, finishing last meant death. Finishing last meant having to immediately sprint five, maybe ten laps around the gym, all at full speed, and all without even thinking about stopping. Finishing last meant you ran and you kept on running, and then you ran some more, knowing that you too, but for the grace of God, might soon be bent over in some far corner of the gym, puking your guts out.
Even if my boys never win a game, Bobby Felasco often thought to himself during those five days in Hell, we’ll be the best conditioned losers this town has ever seen.
Not that the running stopped when tryouts and the first few days of practice ended. Since Evangelist didn’t have a home court, or even a small gym to call its own, Felasco always made it a point to try to find the biggest gymnasium possible to hold practice or host games. Many times that meant Grant Junior High, whose court was one of the most massive in the city, or the downtown Armory, whose court was, likewise, a monster. Later, it would also mean Henninger (a high school that, with Corcoran, was one of the city’s two all-new, state-of-the-art facilities), with its modern, well-lit and jumbo-sized court.
If that weren’t enough, every so often, Felasco would call Father Nicholson at the rectory and ask if he could book the gym at the Hancock Air Force Base, a few miles north of town.
The Air Base gym was not so much a regulation basketball court as it was a holding tank for jets and a number of military planes and vehicles. The hangar’s highly polished and sprawling concrete court wasn't merely wide – from end to end, it was downright silly, looking more like a football field or a soccer pitch than a place to conduct a high school basketball practice.
But back to Jimmy Benz.
Bobby Felasco liked everything he saw in Benz those first days of practice in ‘66. The kid had filled out over the Summer and grown visibly stronger. He was obviously in great shape. What’s more, he now carried an air of confidence that Felasco had never really detected before. Yes, Benz was a senior, and Felasco always preferred to have at least two years with a newly anointed “coach,” to test, train and temper the kid. But these were unusual circumstances. He’d just had eight seniors graduate, five of them starters.
So, almost from the get-go, he targeted Benz as his new trigger man, the kid who’d direct his club and take the wheel of his legendary fast break. It wasn’t just Benz's conditioning, ball handling skills or above-average shooting. It was a sense of maturity and self-confidence that Felasco was now seeing in him.
The seventh of eight kids, Benz had started his educational career at Webster Elementary, a public grammar school on the city’s North Side. One August day, just before 6th grade, his mother told him over his Frosted Flakes that he was going to St. John’s next month. He resisted, claiming he’d be leaving all his friends to go to school with kids he didn’t even know, or care to. But his mother’s mind was made up.
At Evangelist, the world became a much bigger place for little Jimmy Benz. He embraced his faith and developed a real appreciation of personal discipline. And, for the first time in his life, he began to see basketball as more than just a way to pass the time. When he first picked up the game in the 6th grade, even though it was something he intuitively loved, he was horrible at it. He couldn't dribble, or pass, or shoot. What’s more, he knew nothing of the game’s ins-and-outs or its rules –not to mention its many, often complex offensive and defensive strategies.
All he knew, from the very first moment he saw a St. John the Evangelist varsity game at Grant Junior High, as he watched the Eagles sprinting up and down the court to the roar of the crowd, every one of them dressed in brand new white Chuck Taylors and magnificent royal blue uniforms with the word “Evangelist” across the front – was that someday he wanted to be a part of that world.
Bobby Felasco knew at least a little something about the Benz family and their home situation, which helped him form an opinion of the kid he saw winning sprint after sprint during tryouts. He knew the kid’s father, Andrew, was a hard-working factory man and loyal UAW guy who, for years, had walked to his job as a grinder at the New Process Gear plant on Plum Street – not because he wanted to, but because the Benz family didn’t own a car.
He knew too there were eight kids (four boys and four girls) in the house, and that Andrew Benz somehow managed to cover the bank note each month, along with the monthly bills, while dropping a dollar into the collection basket each Sunday.
What Bobby Felasco didn’t know was that the tiny Benz family home on Schiller Ave had only two small bedrooms, one of which was reserved for the Mr. and Mrs. The four Benz boys slept in a single bunk bed in the other, while the four girls slept upstairs in a bunk bed in the attic, a tiny V-shaped space Andrew had renovated and insulated just as his budding family was starting to expand.
The other thing Felasco didn’t know was that Benz’s little brother, Billy, the youngest of the four boys, had been born with a profound hearing loss, making him, at least by the standards of the day, deaf. At first, little Billy’s teachers though he was just being disobedient or maybe a little scatterbrained. Then they thought he might be a touch slow, mentally.
What they didn’t realize was that Billy Benz was fine; more than fine, actually. He just couldn’t hear much. So, like many other Syracuse kids with disabilities, little Billy, who at the age of seven or eight, and whose only problem was the fact he couldn’t hear well, was sent to a place called the Percy Hughes School, next to the S.U. campus.
Percy Hughes was the city’s catch-all for any school-aged child determined by its experts to have a “defect,” be it mental, physical or emotional. It was home to kids who were mentally impaired, often severely, kids who were born “crippled,” with birth defects and/or childhood diseases like cerebral palsy, polio, and cystic fibrosis, kids who’d been orphaned, kids who were emotionally unstable, and kids who like little Billy were, in the terminology of the day, either “blind,” or “deaf,” or “dumb.”
The Percy Hughes students, while being cared for, often with tenderness and insight by a small group of devoted professionals, nonetheless ended up as isolated and stigmatized as any kids in the city. They were constantly being lumped together in school, despite the "disability." They all rode the same short bus together, to and from Percy Hughes. And they were all regularly mocked by their peers for being “cripples,” “spazzes” and “retards,” even though the vast majority were normal, right-minded young men and women with thoughts, hopes, and dreams no different than any other child.
For years one of the go-to taunts in playgrounds and schoolyards throughout the Salt City was some variation on the following, meant to impugn the mental capacity, if not the intelligence, of any kid at whom it was directed: “Seriously, retard? Where you go…Percy Hughes?”
Eventually, Andrew and Elizabeth Benz pulled their baby out of Percy Hughes and placed him back into a more mainstream and traditional educational environment, despite his profound hearing loss and ever-increasing reliance on his ability to read lips. The social stigma of Percy Hughes could have crushed a sensitive and loving child like Billy Benz, even in the two short years he was part of it, and Andrew and Elizabeth soon realized that. That’s why both were adamant about getting him out of that “special” school, and getting him off of that short bus, with all its stigma and all its profound, and perhaps lasting, social implications.
Jimmy Benz, in the years that followed, developed a bond, if not a deeper understanding and more abiding love for his kid brother and bunkmate than he’d ever had, a bond that fundamentally changed him as a young man, one that was as much about protecting Billy as it was about discovering and embracing his own sense of family pride.
His baby brother was a remarkable kid on many levels, and Jimmy had finally come to realize that. Even as the two boys did silly, best-friend things like play whiffle ball in the yard for hours, team up for games of touch football against the older kids in the neighborhood, head over to the Goodie Shop for an ice cream cone, or just hang out at Le Mack’s store, drinking root beers, munching on Mallo Cups and popping Necco Wafers, he never lost sight of how much he loved and wanted to protect his kid brother.
Maybe it was that hard-fought and hard-won maturity that Bobby Felasco recognized in Jim Benz those first few days of tryouts in 1966, perhaps for the first time Or maybe it was something else entirely, something about his game and skills that caught the coach's uncanny eye for detail. It’s hard to say.
Whatever it was, there were still at least a couple of things Felasco didn’t know about Jimmy Benz.
First, he didn’t know how long and hard the young man had been preparing himself for that very moment, how Benz had spent almost every day that summer working on his game, particularly his ball-handling and passing. Felasco had no way of knowing that the kid had eaten a quick, self-made breakfast every morning for three months straight, left the house, and not returned home until almost eight at night, rain or shine.
Even on Sundays, little Jimmy would crack the screen door open on the side of the house at 7:45 AM, week after week like clockwork, then dribble up to Holy Trinity, attend eight o’clock mass and take Holy Communion with his ball under one arm. He’d then bless himself, sneak out of church before mass was over, and head up to Schiller Park where he’d spend the next ten or so hours as he did every Sunday, playing pickup games and faithfully doing drills, many involving dribbling as fast as possible with his head up, eyes forward, first left-handed, then right-handed.
Perhaps, the biggest thing Felasco didn’t know about Benz, though, was that the previous year, while the young man’s teammates had been on the bench cheering on their teammates to victory after victory, he’d spent the entire season sitting there in almost total silence, going to school on one teammate in particular – his coach’s floor leader, Tom Downey.
Benz was well aware that he, himself, would never be able to rebound or score in traffic the way the great John Zych did, nor would he be able to defend anywhere near as effectively as the rangy and high-energy human octopus, Al Denti. But he’d practiced day after day against Downey for a full season and, as good as Downey was, he’d more than held his own against the All-Parochial guard.
He knew it, too. Knew it in his heart.
Benz had come to understand he was similar to Downey in terms of size, speed and ability. He’d sit on the bench, quarter after quarter, game after game, not playing a minute; just watching and learning. Sometimes he'd even forget to cheer.
He’d study everything Downey did, as a scientist might study the slide at the business end of the microscope. He paid particular attention to the way Downey directed Felasco’s non-stop offense, led Evangelist’s fast break and brought to life Bob Felasco’s vision for how the game was meant to be played.
At some point during that 1965-66 season, Jim Benz came to realize he could do the very same thing for Coach Felasco that Tommy Downey had done, and that next year he would finally get a chance to prove it.
Whatever the reason, in the early days of November, 1966, just days into his infamous tryout/practice period, Bobby Felasco started to see senior Jimmy Benz as the answer to his most burning question every year: Which of these kids is gonna be my guy?
* * * * *
Normally, in the Parochial League, there was never much need for scouting because there were few, if any, surprises from year to year – much less week to week. Players throughout the league had grown up playing against one another since grammar school and every team’s maturation always seemed to develop in slow motion as JV players evolved into varsity ones, sophomores grew into juniors, juniors into seniors. It was not rocket science, therefore, to get a strong sense of which kids from any one parish could play and which were merely scrappers, bricklayers, kamikaze pilots and, more or less, seat fillers.
But Billy E was a little worried about the upcoming match-up because he really didn’t know much at all about the current incarnation of Evangelist, beyond the team’s spotless 5-0 record. It was hard enough to be facing Bobby Felasco, the most exacting and well-prepared coach in the league when you knew where you stood, but to do it without any feel for his players was like playing blackjack against a stacked deck. None of Felasco’s current kids had really ever played varsity before, so Billy E had been asking around for days about who to watch out for on Felasco’s current club and which of his kids had established themselves as threats.
It came down to three, Billy was told by, among others, his JV coach, friend and confidant, Paul Januszka: the ball handler and floor leader, a tough little senior guard with a nice shooting stroke named Jim Benz; a second kid named Dave Dame, a deceptively strong, but not particularly tall junior who could shoot a bit from the outside but who played taller than his height because he could box out like nobody’s business and loved to mix it up underneath; and, finally, Pete Ganley, a decent-sized but somewhat skinny kid from Eastwood. Ganley, a junior like Dame, was up from junior varsity, and was not particularly fast. But he could, reportedly, according to one source, “shoot the (expletive) lights out.”
Ganley, the source said, also could get off his picture-perfect jumper almost any time he wanted because he launched it with such a high arc and slight fall-away that it was almost impossible to block.
The other two starters for Felasco, Billy learned, were nice, complementary pieces. And each of the three bench players who got regular minutes played hard, ran like jackrabbits, and, as you might expect, did all the right things. But Benz, Dame and the Irish kid, Ganley, were the three you really had to stop.
The game was set for a Wednesday night at Sacred Heart’s still-shiny but now ten year-old gym. There’d been a long line of Hearts’ loyalists standing in the cold since well before the JV game on that brittle and star-lit December 21st night.
That night it was more than just Sacred Heart fans and parishioners lining up, though. Thanks to a couple of above-the-fold, pre-game features in the past 48 hours in the Post and Herald, fans across Syracuse – Parochial Leaguers and non-Parochial Leaguers alike – had developed more than a passing interest in the Winter Solstice showdown between the two small, storied and still undefeated Catholic academies.
They wanted see first-hand how the Hearts front line might match up with Bobby Felasco’s most recent collection of upstart, undersized Eagles, a team that, to just about everyone’s surprise but Billy’s, found itself alone and in first place as the jingle bells rang on street corners up and down Salina Street.
Billy E was never one for big, pre-game speeches. That day was no different.
As a result, in the Hearts’ musty locker room, He simply warned his boys one last time about getting back to protect against the fast break, reminded them once again to move their feet on defense, and told Jack Contos and Tommy Sakowski one more time to cheat to whatever side of the court Ganley was on, and to come at him hard with both arms raised whenever the ball made its way toward him.
Billy E then hitched up his pants, index-fingered his glasses, and barked out in a voice that broke momentarily and ever-so-slightly, “Okay, bring it in, men.” And with that, all twelve boys on the 1966-67 Sacred Heart varsity team rose as one and circled their coach, each extending their right hand forward, palms down, fingers splayed, their hand together like streamers from a maypole.
“This is our night, gentlemen. Let’s prove it. And let’s prove to all those sons of bitches out there who Sacred Heart really is,” said Billy, a touch surprised at the extent to which his stomach was roiling in a queasy yet intoxicating mix of desire, worry and anticipation. Looking around and making eye contact with each of his five starters, he teed up his go-to break line, “Aaaaaand….GO, HEARTS!!!”
At that point, Contos, the powerful senior forward, the kid who’d moved to the door, been standing with one hand on the D-shaped handle, and looking over his shoulder, waiting for Billy’s word, yanked the door open and one-by-one he and his fellow Heartsmen, along with their two coaches, poured into the half-lit basement, jogging as their classmates and fellow parishioners screamed, called to a few by name, and funneled every boy upward; up toward the muffled cheers on the other side of the door, up toward the wisps of cigarette smoke that hung below the pipes above, and up toward the thin crack of light that beckoned them to the top of the stairs.
As the heavy, steel door that led to the gym suddenly burst open with a loud boom, Old Andy, the big parishioner in the ratty Elmer Fudd hat with the un-tied straps and always-down flaps – the guy who from his vantage point on the top step of the bleachers had been leaning out and peering at the steel door in anticipation of his favorite team bursting forth – suddenly turned, cupped his hands to his unshaven face and, with eyes wide, almost tear-filled, and rolling skyward, summoned one more lungful of smoke-filled air and bellowed so that all might know, “HERE COME THE HEARTS!!!”
* * * * *
If there was one certainty to the Sacred Heart 1966-67 season, at least early on, it was this: when Pete Schmid was in the mid-court circle for the opening tap and Jack Contos just outside it with his knees bent, feet planted and spread, and backside sticking out in the direction of his own basket, the odds were pretty good the Hearts would be ahead 2-0 before the other team had a chance to blink, much less realize what just hit them.
The play was simple. Schmid, all 6’7” of him, would tap the ball directly to Contos, but high enough so that his frontcourt partner had to jump to retrieve it. Contos, the leaper extraordinaire, would then tip the ball behind him, often over his head and without looking, to a streaking Zaganczyk who, at the moment the ball left the ref’s hands, made a juke step inward, toward the mid-court circle, before reversing course and bolting in the opposite direction toward his own basket. There, he’d invariably find the ball bouncing a few feet in front of him and would then scoop it up and turn it into an easy and often-uncontested two points.
Given the height of Schmid compared to the other centers in the league, not to mention the leaping ability of Contos, it was almost a surefire hoop every time for the Hearts – until, that is, the other teams caught on and began putting a man back at the top of the key to defend against it.
That December evening, however, the play was still relatively new. What’s more, Zaganczyk, ever the loyal friend and teammate, had a slight wrinkle in mind for Evangelist that he’d purposefully kept from his coach. So, while standing behind Dan Van Cott in pre-game warm-ups, he whispered into Van Cott’s ear that tonight he should be the one to streak to the basket on the opening tap. “Go ahead, Dan. It’ll be the easiest two you’ll ever get,” said Zaganczyk. “And, trust me, I been there. It’ll really gets the juices flowing to get that first one in the book early.”
“Sure,” said Van Cott with a slightly surprised but knowing and appreciative half-smile, whispering to Zaganczyk without actually turning around. “Thanks…” Then, over one shoulder, as Van Cott grabbed a ball fired his way, he made a small skip-step toward the basket and added as he began his dribble, “Thanks a lot, man.”
This was not a normal night, however, and St. John the Evangelist was not just another Parochial League foe. Before the ball even had a chance to hit the ground following Van Cott’s opening lay-up, the ball got quickly snatched out of the air by an Evangelist kid named Chet Brostek who, stepping out of bounds, spun in a flash and fired it ahead to Benz who then pushed it straight up the gut up of the Sacred Heart defense, a defense that, however formidable in a half-court set, at that moment was still backpedaling, still seeking a toehold, and still very much in transition.
Once Benz got to just this side of his own foul line, maybe 18 feet from the basket, he eyed the rim coolly, a look that triggered Sakowski to come up to meet him to try to stop his dribble or, perhaps, contest his shot. Doing so, however, created just enough of an opening for him to find Ganley, unguarded, out of the corner of his eye. Bobby Felasco’s newest floor “coach” then whipped the ball to his teammate on the left wing, just as he’d seen Tommy Downey do countless times the year prior.
The metronome-perfect Ganley – the young East Side Irish lad who, in the words of one knowledgeable Old Port patron, could “shoot the (expletive) lights out” – did just that with an arcing shot that proved to be equal parts backspin, balance and beauty, a textbook mid-range jumper that was as stately as it was true. The Evangelist cheerleaders and cluster of St. John’s fans behind their team’s bench jumped up and exploded in rapture as their boys headed back on defense, now tied with the Hearts at two apiece.
The game was barely a dozen seconds old, yet in the space of a few ticks of a clock Billy E had not only delivered a haymaker to his rival, but taken one as well. Felasco’s counter-punch staggered him like a blow to the chin. For the first time all season, the Hearts were in a dogfight, and Billy E didn’t have to feel or sense it; he knew it.
As the half wore on, each team did what it did best, the Hearts pounding the ball inside to Schmid and relying on the relentless offensive rebounding of Sakowski and his high-flying wingman, Contos, while Evangelist continued boxing out the longer and beefier Heartsmen and keeping their vaunted frontcourt trio at bay.
At the same time, Felasco’s Eagles continued charging upcourt at each and every turn, snapping the ball around, left to right, in and out, with a crispness and precision that was textbook and invariably unearthed tiny seams in the Hearts’ zone. The result was clear looks and open shots that, in the hands of long-range snipers like Benz, Dame and Ganley, allowed Felasco’s undersized kids to stay hot on the heels of the Heartsmen.
The Hearts fans in their shiny, brightly lit and packed-to-the-gills gym felt the undercurrent of something oddly different, even as they hooted and howled with each wisp of good fortune. It wasn’t so much an audible reaction to how well St. John’s was playing, as it was a general and almost palpable sense of unease that seemed to quietly creep from parishioner to parishioner as they began to behold the confidence with which St. John's was playing, a confidence that the undermanned Eagles were feeding on against the more physically imposing Heartsmen.
Soon, just like their team's coach, they came to understand their boys were not just in a basketball game, they were in an honest-to-goodness Parochial League dogfight.
The game remained a nip-and-tuck affair throughout the first half, with neither team establishing command and neither showing any signs of flinching; the Hearts pounded away inside through the magnificent Schmid, and Evangelist ran non-stop, regularly finding open jumpers, usually from a wing or one of the corners.
One thing the Heartsmen had going for them, in the first half especially, was something Felasco hadn’t anticipated. The Evangelist coach knew full well that Schmid was a force inside. He knew, too, that Contos could soar, snatch rebounds and follow errant shots like few he’d ever seen. Likewise, he knew Zaganczyk was an understated but icy-cool deadeye who could catch fire and shoot with the best of them for stretches at a time.
What he never in a million years expected, given how long he’d been watching Schmid and Contos develop, and how deeply he respected not just their abilities, but their knack for scoring, especially in traffic, was Sakowski, the bespectacled oak tree of a kid who’d worked so hard for so long to improve his speed, lateral movement and skills in and around the lane. Truth be known, one of the last things that Felasco had told his boys in his pre-game pep talk was that if they did their job well each time Hearts had the ball, it wouldn’t be Schmid or Contos or even Zaganczyk taking the shot. It would be Sakowski or Van Cott – and that, he told them, was what he wanted.
But Felasco didn’t factor just how very far Sakowski, who'd worked long and hard to improve his speed, lateral movement and skills around the lane, had traveled since last season, how much he’d refined his skills over the summer and how much he had been able to sand down, at least to a degree, the admittedly rougher edges of his game.
As a result, time and time again, as Evangelist defenders continued to swarm Schmid, Contos and Zaganczyk, there would be Sakowski wide open on the opposite side or drawing token coverage near the foul line, no one – not even his own teammates – figuring him to be much of threat.
Sakowski’s first basket was an open look early in the first quarter from 15 feet, just to the left of the lane. He bent his knees, rose up, and confidently flipped the orange leather Wilson in the direction of the shiny backboard and bright orange rim. The crowd roared its delight as the ball caromed once, twice, then arced two feet above the rim before falling straight through.
The next trip down the court, from almost the exact same spot, but on the opposite side, Sakowski looked at the rim, pump-faked Brostek, who’d moved toward him, and then drove past the startled defender for a muscular, clear-the-deck layup from the right side that brought the Hearts partisans to their feet.
More, perhaps, than what those two quick baskets did for his teammates (and the scoreboard), was what they did for Sakowski personally. That pair of two-pointers seemed to ignite something inside the youngster. If his self-confidence had been a small, glowing ember until that point, after those shots managed to fall, that ember seemed to ignite into a full-blown brush fire.
Big Tom Sakowski could not only feel the fire, he felt it raging. For the first and only time in his life, he actually wanted the ball from his more talented mates, and to that end began waving his hands high above his head, either adjacent to the lane, or on the far side of it, beckoning for them to see him and send the ball his way.
Decades later, great shooters on any number of levels would talk about being “in the zone,” a stretch of indeterminate time during which almost anything and everything they’d throw up found its mark. Tommy Sakowski, indeed, would not be in that place often (and quite possibly never again), at least not to the extent that he was that night. But for that one night, and that one crucial game – a game with first place in the Parochial League on the line – the big, lumbering Pole from across the tracks found himself, truly and most certainly, in that fleeting, rarified and Zen-like state that would one day be known by kids his age as simply, “the zone.”
Whenever the big Pole would drop in another two, Evangelist coach Bobby Felasco would jump to his feet, grimace and spin away in disgust. He knew his game-plan – as well mapped-out and strategically sound as it might have been – was never going to work if Sakowski (or, for that matter, Van Cott) started thinking and acting like a scorer. Every time yet another shot by Sakowski rattled home, Felasco would drop his head a little lower, his left hand covering his eyes while he kneaded his sweaty, wrinkled and increasingly worried brow.
Just before half, Benz drilled an 18-footer from out near the top of the key for St. John’s, matched a moment later by Zaganczyk with a jumper of roughly the same distance for Hearts, this one from the right wing. The flurry gave Billy E’s boys the thinnest of margins, a one-point lead, as the clock wound down toward halftime.
As the hands on the circular scoreboard clock continued to run unchecked, Benz brought the ball up against moderate pressure from Van Cott, and did so with one intent, to find the open man and get him the ball with enough time left for one final shot. For their part, the Hearts settled back into their zone, bunched tightly, with Van Cott’s pressure only the token variety and designed less to actually stop the St. John’s guard than eat up precious game time.
In the left hand corner, Ganley kept feeling for a soft spot in the Hearts’ 2-1-2 zone and positioned himself some twenty feet out. The closest defender to the sharp-shooting Evangelist junior was Sakowski, the unlikely star of the first half, who was positioned low on the left hand side of the zone, knees bent, arms raised, eyes darting back and forth.
From the bench, Billy E suddenly jumped up and began yelling at his big, bespectacled forward. “Sakowski! Sakowski!!! Get out on him!” He pointed at the open Ganley on the far left wing. Billy had noticed him positioning himself for one last shot.
Billy didn’t know much about Pete Ganley, beyond what the old guy in the Old Port had told him. This was, after all, the first game he’d ever seen the kid play – and even that, technically, was only half a game. What’s more, at that point, the junior had only scored four measly points on a couple of long jumpers, one from the wing, the other from the corner.
But Billy E had built his career teaching and coaching defense. He knew a shooter when you saw him. And young Pete Ganley, the Eastwood kid, was a shooter, pure and simple. In fact, just one year later in that very same gym and against that very same Evangelist club, Billy would employ a game-long box-and-one on Ganley, using a kid now buried on his bench to hound him all over the court, a gangly sophomore named Richie Dabrowski.
Dabrowski, a first-generation Polish immigrant, might have been a touch undercooked offensively, but he'd proven himself to Billy in just four weeks to be a relentless defender with long arms, nimble feet and quick hands, a kid with the heart of a thoroughbred who, in practice anyway, could stick like glue to players of twice his standing and stature.
But that would be next year. What mattered to Billy now, and what currently occupied every square inch of landscape in his mind, were the few seconds remaining on the clock.
Ganley had scored his four points on a pair of beautiful jumpers in the game’s opening two stanzas, but what impressed Billy more than the two he made, were the six he didn’t. Of the eight attempts that Ganley had launched that half, each one seemed letter-perfect and destined to end up as another X in the scorebook. Six had missed, but not because they were off-line or lacked touch. To the contrary, each of the six had either hit back iron on a perfect line and bounded straight back or rattled around two or three times before popping out.
There was little doubt in Billy's mind that the guy in the Old Port had been right: the kid could shoot the (expletive) lights out.
That’s why the Hearts’ coach bounded off his bench screaming out at his big forward and pointing over to Ganley. Young Peter Ganley of St. John's had that look – the look of a shooter – and Billy E could see it in his eyes.
But as Sakowski went to meet Ganley, and as the Hearts big man planted his feet and held his hands high, just as he’d been taught by Billy, the Evangelist sharpshooter wasn’t just cocked and loaded, he’d already pulled the trigger.
The soft leather Wilson arced magnificently as the junior’s wrist snapped toward the basket, and his trigger finger did likewise, the ball’s textbook backspin seemingly occurring in the slowest of motions, and – again, as if in slow motion – all eyes in the gym watched breathlessly as Ganley’s shot, perfect in form and rotation, ripped through the net so cleanly that the nylon immediately snapped back and doubled over the top of the rim, sealing the first half and leaving the Hearts' faithful standing in there stunned silence. For the first time all season, their boys were trailing as the halftime buzzer sounded.
As the two teams headed toward the steel door that led to the locker rooms below, Frank Najdul, the volunteer track coach, first generation Polish immigrant, and former prisoner of war, bolted from his seat in the bleachers and began running to catch up with his pet project. Nipping at big Tom Sakowski's heels like a border collie, Najdul barked up at the hulking forward, “Faster, Sakowski! Faster!!! You listen to coach. Listen!!! You move feet! You run…faster! Faster, you hear? Faster, Sakowski…Faster!!!”
Tom Sakowski had just played the first half of his life, if not the game of his life. He’d answered the bell like he’d never answered any bell before, managing to put up 12 critical points in just two quarters of play. But it wasn't enough. Not for Pan Najdul. Not for Billy E. And certainly not enough to keep his teammates from having to leave their home court on the short end of a deficit, however small, that was now spelled out in unforgiving certainty in glowing 45-watt bulbs on the scoreboard above: Visitors 33 Hearts 32.
None of the Hearts – not Billy E, not Paul Januszka, not a single one of the players – knew what would happen in the second half, but to a man they all knew that Bob Felasco’s unlikely and overachieving collection of scrubs, role players and JV grads was not about to quit.
Billy E wasn't a yeller. He didn’t scream at the top of his lungs or let loose salty parades of four-letter words whenever he was displeased. He internalized things. He stewed inside.
So in the locker room at halftime, as the Sacred Heart starters wiped their brows, peeled the fresh oranges, and squeezed cold water into their mouths from plastic bottles, Billy cleared his throat and tried to stay within himself. He spoke firmly, with a calm softness, ticking off a handful of game specifics, trying to remain calm and positive.
Van Cott needed to “up the pressure” on Benz, picking him up closer to half court and forcing him to his weak side. Schmid needed to come up to meet the entry pass more aggressively, and look for his shot before lowering his head and taking the ball to the basket. "Your shot is there, take it," Billy told his superstar forward calmly. Contos needed to work harder to establish his position on the offensive end. Above all, he and Sakowski needed to cheat even more on Ganley in either corner, setting up closer to the kid, even if doing so meant loosening the fabric of the Hearts’ zone to a degree.
Billy E remained the picture of calm as he issued these instructions, but inside his stomach was churning, skin tingling with a hundred micro-charges of electricity that radiated from somewhere deep within his soul. It’s wasn’t that Billy E was obsessed with staying undefeated, he simply hated losing. From the bottom of his heart, just hated it.
He might have played the jovial clown and happy-go-lucky jokester for many in the parish, but he took every loss to heart, often dwelling on them for hours as he laid in bed later that night.
Billy E knew the Hearts were the better, deeper and more talented club. So the thought of losing, especially to an inferior squad – even one coached by a basketball lifer as relentless and unforgiving as Felasco – literally, made him sick.
But he hadn’t let it show that night, not once; not on the bench, not in the huddle, and certainly not in the locker room at halftime. He didn't let it show, in fact, until the start of the third quarter when the game began unraveling right before his disbelieving eyes. That’s when, perhaps for the first time since he took over for the stern, methodical and often bone-dry Adam Markowski two years prior, Billy E – Sacred Heart's favorite clown, cut-up and storyteller – let it rip.
Billy could live with the fact that there would be no easy lay-up to start the second half, given that Felasco had placed Dame back at the top of the key to prevent his boys from getting another Schmidt-to-Contos-to-whomever gimme in the opening seconds.
He could even live with the fact that his boys, in their first three possessions of the half, had missed their first two shots and committed an unforced forced turnover.
What he could not abide by was the fact that Evangelist had hit three outside shots in a row – their first three of the second half, boom, boom, boom – two by Ganley and one by Dame, to give St. John’s the largest lead either team had enjoyed to that point, 39-32.
What’s more, there was only a minute or so gone in the quarter. Billy had implored his forwards to get out on Ganley at halftime, especially when he was lined up in either corner, but neither had – or at least they hadn't to the extent they needed to.
As a result, Billy jumped off the bench and angrily signaled for a time out, barking his directive out to floor leader, Van Cott, as he hitched his pants and craned his neck. In the huddle, as the young Hearts stood around their coach, Billy E let his starters have it, screaming at them above the roar of the crowd. He then pointed to his sixth and seventh men, Paul Stepien and Tommy Godzac, and ordered them to report in for Van Cott and Zaganczyk, his two starting guards.
Van Cott and Zaganczyk were hardly the reason for the Hearts’ sudden deficit, but Billy wanted to talk to them about something specific and he wanted to point it out to them in a real-life, game situation. They’d be back in there in a moment or two; he knew that, even if they didn’t.
He next turned to Sakowski and Contos, pointed at his two muscular forwards, and told them through clenched teeth and in no uncertain terms, “You either get out on that son of a bitch or you’re going to be spending the rest of the night sitting right here next to me. You hear me?”
When they simply stared at their coach without responding, he barked out his question again, this time with fury in his eyes. “You hear me?” roared Billy, leaning in toward the pair of them, a bit of spittle accompanying his words.
Both boys both nodded, their eyes wide open and fixed on his. “I hear you, coach,” said Sakowski. “Yes, sir,” offered Contos, almost simultaneously, nodding his head quickly.
None of them had ever seen Billy this upset before. But more than unnerve the players, their coach’s outburst seemed to trigger some sort of awareness inside them, right down to Rich Dabrowski, the last boy on the bench. It was Sacred Hearts biggest game of the year, at least to this point -- and, just maybe, the biggest game of their lives -- and they were letting it slip right through their fingers.
Even the crowd sensed the danger. The unspoken unease created by Ganley’s buzzer-beater at the end of the second period had amplified into something else entirely with the three quick shots that had just now fallen. The Hearts fans weren't in full-fledged panic mode, but they were close. St. John the Evangelist had a hell of a team. That was clear. Those Eagles weren't just winning, they were taking it straight to the taller, stronger and more experienced Heartsmen, playing as though they were the ones expected to win.
That’s why, following the timeout, when Schmid’s bank shot from the right side caught glass and fell through cleanly, the crowd didn’t so much cheer as it let out a sigh of relief. The bleeding had stopped and their boys, thank the Lord, now seemed to be somewhat back on track.
Even before the crowd’s collective blood pressure had a chance to ease, Benz pushed the ball upcourt, found Ganley yet again, and once again the junior sharpshooter set up, launched, and drained a twenty footer that caught in the net and fell through. The crowd moaned. Billy E threw up his hands. The knot in his stomach tightened another notch.
Heading upcourt on offense, Contos began barking across the court to Sakowski, yelling at his man-sized frontcourt partner as he ran parallel to him to get out even further on Ganley, to not let him get his shot off, whatever it took. “Come on, Tom. Get out on that (expletive) guy,” Contos implored his friend.
What happened next, even to this day, almost defies description. It certainly defies logic.
Contos, who’d only moments earlier seen his dad enter the gym as he always did, right before halftime, and, along with some guys from work, position himself in the doorway of the standing-room-only gym. The elder Contos, adorned in a wool overcoat and his trademark brown fedora, had stopped off at the Polish Home for bowling league to wash down the dirt and grime of yet another week of freight handling with a half dozen cold Genny drafts and thirty frames of bowling. Andrew Contos never got to see many of his son's first-half moments, as a result. But he lived and died for the Heartsmen's second-halves.
What happened next would be, arguably, the most memorable of all those Andrew-and-Jack Contos’ second-half moments.
As Evangelist worked the ball around midway through the quarter, Sakowski, as he’d been instructed to do time and time again, cheated a step or two in Ganley’s direction and kept one eye on the white-hot junior sharpshooter. He and his fellow Hearts still trailed by seven, and they could ill-afford to fall behind further. Falling behind a Bobby Felasco team in the second half of a game – a team that by was conditioned like few others and rarely made mistakes or missed free throws – was a virtual recipe for disaster.
On the opposite side of the zone, Contos also had one eye on Ganley. Like his coach, had recognized that even when Ganley missed, it was by fractions. Unlike Billy, however, Jack Contos had a front row seat for each of Ganley’s misses. He’d seen up-close-and-personal how dead-solid perfect all six appeared to be before either hitting back iron or rattling around and falling out.
Not only that, but Billy’s tirade had burned a hole into his psyche. Jack had never seen his coach that mad before. So he knew Ganley had to be covered like a glove. No more open shots. No more easy looks. And for that reason, even as Benz, Dame and a talented kid named Jim Jarvis continued to work the ball to his side, Contos remained hypersensitive to Ganley lurking behind him, and maintained a strong sense of where he was in relation to the ball.
Sure enough, after working the ball around sharply for nearly twenty seconds of game time, Brostek flashed up to the foul line from a point down low. Jarvis hit him with a well-timed entry pass, and Brostek, as he’d been taught to do by Felasco, immediately spun and lofted a perfect touch pass over the top of the now-collapsing zone to the opposite side, where Ganley had found a seam in the Hearts' zone. Eighteen feet from the basket, the young sharpshooter took dead aim. At that same moment, Contos screamed to Sakowski, “Get on him!,” and reflexively pushed his teammate out toward their royal blue-clad opponent.
Because he was already cheating in Ganley's direction, Sakowski didn’t have far to go. Just as he’d been trained, he did not lunge at the Evangelist deadeye or leave his feet in a vain attempt to block his shot. He simply planted his massive size thirteens on the squeaky hardwood a couple of feet from Ganley and raised both arms high above his head.
The problem was, for a shooter – especially one with built-in radar and an ever-so-slight fade-away – the two feet of space could have been, for all intents and purposes, ten yards. It was more than enough room to square up, take measure, and get off a good, quick shot.
From Ganley's perspective, all he saw was the bespectacled man/child, Sakowski, standing in front of him like a rooted oak, his thick hands and fingers reaching toward the sky.
Which didn’t phase Ganley in the least. To him, Sakowski was not so much defending him as striking a pose for the benefit of his coach and a few fans. But, just as young Pete Ganley let fly, suddenly, and from out of nowhere, Jack Contos appeared, soaring up from behind Sakowski like a Phoenix and elevating higher than he’d ever seen a man elevate before.
For his part, all Tom Sakowski had felt was a slight pressure on his right shoulder and hip. In anticipation of Ganley’s launching yet another picture-perfect jumper from the opposite corner, and his teammate still too far away, Contos had instinctively taken one giant stride in the direction of his fellow forward and planted his left foot on Sakowski's right hip. He’d also simultaneously (and for additional leverage) placed his left hand on Sakowski's right shoulder before launching skyward, up toward the lights, up toward the perfectly rotating ball, a ball that only a fraction of a second earlier had been in the process of leaving Ganley’s hands in gentle pursuit of yet another X in the scorebook.
Jack Contos didn’t just block Pete Ganley’s seventeen-footer, he hammered it. He swatted it violently and directly into the white cinderblock wall just beneath the scoreboard, the sound echoing throughout the gym as the ball caromed back onto the hardwood floor and bounced out past the top of the key. For a brief moment there was a stunned silence, then the crowd erupted in an explosive roar.
The hundreds of Hearts crazies fortunate enough to have gotten a ticket that night, men and women who’d just witnessed the incomprehensible, couldn’t tell for a moment if they were excited or just plain dumbstruck. Possibly, they were both. This much was certain: none of them, in all their years of basketball, had ever seen anything like it.
Jack Contos, the greatest leaper in the Parochial League, and one of the greatest in Syracuse history, had just soared to legendary heights. Using big Tom Sakowski’s massive hip and equally massive shoulder as a springboard, he’d somehow managed to elevate some twelve or so feet above the playing surface, if not higher, in blocking Peter Ganley’s heretofore un-blockable jumpshot.
From his place on the ground, his back flat against it, Contos could see his father in his fedora looking down, a few feet away in the hall foyer, cheering loudly, his eyes glowing, himself reeking of beer, and the proud papa in him clapping like a madman. Jack could feel the floor vibrate and hear the roaring of the crowd echoing through the space about him, the Hearts’ faithful stomping madly on the parallel sets of bleachers, making each one quiver and resonate.
From the Hearts bench, Billy E exploded upward and he bolted down toward the scorer’s table, bending forward and leaning in Contos’ direction, yelling loudly to his star forward as he lay there slightly dazed, screaming his name and pumping both fists. His boys in maroon and white, at long last, had risen from their game-long slumber and – Billy could feel it – were now ready to play some roll-up-your-sleeve, bare-knuckle basketball; the kind he’d worked so long and hard to teach them.
From his backside, Jack Contos looked up as well and saw a St. John’s cheerleader staring down at him from the first row of the bleachers, where she and her fellow cheerleaders were seated with pompoms in their laps, legs together, knees bent and tucked gently to one side, ankles crossed just so. The young lady, a pretty, raven-haired (and, perhaps, North Side German) junior or senior, was wearing a curvy, blue knit sweater, frosted lipstick, bangs, and a pink ribbon through her shoulder-length, tousled, sprayed, and upturned hair. She looked down her perfect little nose at the muscular Hearts jumping jack, who began rubbing the back of his head because it had slammed hard into the ground, and said to him with a mix of exacerbation and respectful disdain, shaking her own head ever-so slightly, “I hate when you do that.”
The next thing Contos knew, there was a giant shadow above him, one that blocked out the bright fluorescent ceiling light that might have otherwise been blinding him. Big Tom Sakowski, the Hoss Cartwright of his team, was standing over Contos beaming, glasses and glass strap dripping with sweat, his hand extended in a mix of support and thanks. The Hearts crowd was still roaring, their gym rocking to its freshly painted rafters.
Contos reached up and Sakowski pulled his teammate off the ground like a rag doll, slapping him on the shoulder and smiling. Schmid, meanwhile, came over and just looked at Contos, nodded his head once and then smiled his own little half grin as the cheers continued to rain.
Billy E was right about one thing. The tenor of the game had, indeed, changed. Jack Contos’ jaw-dropping rejection hadn’t merely prevent a basket. It had ignited something inside his team and the home crowd, something inside even Billy himself. The Heartsmen thus summoned and began playing with a passion and energy that, as a unit, they'd simply not shown all night.
Soon Schmid began calling for the ball aggressively, taking command from the low post. Van Cott stole a pass intended for Jarvis that led to a breakaway. And Zaganczyk soon hit two pretty jumpers, one from the far right corner, the other from the left wing. Before anyone in the crowd could say “Sacred Heart of Jesus,” the 3rd quarter buzzer had sounded, a jarring blare from a scoreboard that told the tale and set the stage for the game's final 12 minutes. The fourth and final quarter of the most eagerly anticipated Parochial League game of 1966 – one played a mere ten days before that year would fade into history – was about to kick off with two powerful and undefeated rivals knotted at 45 apiece.
In the opening minutes of that last quarter things only got worse for Felasco and his Eagles as the Hearts continued to do what they did best on a basketball court, establish their physical dominance. Tom Sakowski, who in the game’s first two quarters had somehow managed to score 12 points, but who didn’t manage a single free throw in the 3rd, quickly hit three shots in a row, that last of which was a powerful and athletic offensive rebound and follow-up of a Van Cott miss, while Schmid and Zaganczyk each chipped in with a pair of field goals.
It looked for a moment, especially early in the quarter, that the erstwhile nip-and-tuck battle might quickly devolve into a Sacred Heart blowout. And that, indeed, could have been the case had the dog-tired Evangelist kids not continued to claw tooth-and-nail and do whatever they could to cut into the Hearts’ lead.
Somehow, and mostly on the strength of the hot shooting of Dame and Benz, Felasco’s Eagles managed to keep the deficit under ten throughout the remainder second half.
But it was not enough, and they’d get no closer than eight, which would turn out to be the game's final margin. The Hearts had just received the scare of their young basketball lives, but had still managed to come away with a 61-53 win over a team that, in the opinion of many, they probably should have taken to the cleaners, if only because it was completely incapable of matching up physically.
Later, in his office in the Hearts' locker room, Billy E and Paul Januszka sat down, took a deep breath and exhaled. Billy E loosened his tie, reached down into the small refrigerator beneath his desk, pulled out two cans of Schlitz and threw one of them to his friend and assistant. He pulled out a small can opener from his top drawer, opened his beer with two quick whooshing pops on either side, and then, just as with the beer, tossed it across the room to Januszka.
“Never a doubt, was there?” said Januszka smiling as he made the second and smaller of the two triangular cuts in the top of his own Schlitz can.
“Never a doubt,” answered Billy, hoisting his beer in the direction of his friend, as if to toast their hard-fought victory.
At that point the two refs, John Sherlock and Don Blaich, stuck their heads in Billy E’s door. They’d come to get their coats, of course, which they'd draped over the back of a chair. More than that, though, they'd come to collect their booty.
“Nice game, Billy. Big win,” said Sherlock, a long, angular Irishman and former Parochial League star. “Sure looked like your boys were in trouble there,” joked Blaich laughingly. Billy handed each ref a cold six pack of Schlitz and held up the can opener, as if to say, care to join us?
It was an age-old tradition in the Parochial League for the home team’s coach to have a few cold beers on hand for the refs afterwards. Under the stern and frugal Markowski, of course, the practice was largely ignored at Sacred Heart, at least in the school's first few years. But under Billy, the practice was not merely embraced, it was enhanced.
Billy E made sure he always had two full six packs in his refrigerator following every home game, one for each ref to either take home or drink there – which, as much as collecting their coats, was why the two refs had stuck their heads into his office. Because, like clockwork, after each game Billy would present each man in black slacks and striped shirt six ice-cold tokens of his thanks for a job well done. He would then invariably ask the refs to sit so that, collectively, all four men might do a quick post-mortem and analyze some of the game's more noteworthy moments and performances.
But this night was different. And even though Billy was his normal, jovial self, verbally sparring and joking with Januszka, Sherlock and Blaich, just as he would with anyone who set foot his office, inside his thoughts were consumed with a certain reality that had revealed itself to him over the course of the previous two hours.
What Bobby Felasco and his Evangelist boys had exposed, and what Billy had seen with his own eyes, was the fact that Sacred Heart, while deep, talented and physically powerful, was not a particularly fast team. It was a team, in other words, with a big, fat Achilles heel: they lacked foot speed.
As he sat in his office bantering with his JV coach and the two officials who’d just worked the biggest Parochial League game of the season, Billy’s mind kept coming back to that one fact, a truth laid bare by a physically overmatched but jack rabbit-quick collection of young men and their remarkable coach. And as he sat there telling jokes and swapping stories, a small part of Billy began to wonder how, when, or even if that nagging little truth he’d just seen laid bare might, at some point down the road, rear its ugly head.
* * * * *
