They were billed as “The Gauchos…Freddy and his bold partner, Francy,” a husband-and-wife trick shot team from Massapequa, on the south shore of Long Island, near Oyster Bay.
The Great North-Eastern Sports Show, an outdoor extravaganza celebrating its 11th year and featuring many of the latest advances in hunting, fishing and camping gear, was slated for March 1st through the 5th, Wednesday through Sunday, at the Onondaga County War Memorial. Headlining were some of the biggest names in field and stream; in particular, Roscoe Vernon “Gadabout” Gaddis, the world-famous “Flying Fisherman” and host of a popular syndicated TV show of the same name.
Jack Contos loved that show. He loved its host, too. That’s why the Hearts’ senior rarely missed the folksy and homespun pilot’s weekly excursion to yet another exotic fishing locale; a half-hour escape presented in full “living” color, one that ran just about each and every Saturday on channel 3.
In truth, Contos loved fishing for bass, walleye, perch and bluegill almost as much as he loved lifting weights, playing basketball, listening to rock and roll, and talking to pretty young girls, though necessarily in that order. So, one day that week while downing his customary two baloney sandwiches in the cafeteria over a second-hand copy of the Post-Standard he came upon an ad on in the sports section for the annual Great North-Eastern Sports Show. That’s when he decided he’d stop by Uncle Andy’s after school to ask his fishing buddy if he’d like to join him for a chance to meet the great Gadabout. The Flying Fisherman, as Jack read in the ad, was giving a free clinic on Saturday afternoon.
As luck would have it, that was the day between the Friday's Parochial League semifinals and its championship game on Sunday. And, as Jack knew, it was just six days before the much-ballyhooed All City Championship at that same War Memorial.
He and Uncle Andy, in other words, would not be attending the Sports Show on opening night, Wednesday, the night on which the Gauchos would be taking the stage for the first time.
(Also, truth be told, much like almost everyone else, Jack would never have gone just to see some husband-and-wife trick shot team. But, by the same token – and, again, like so many others – he’d find it near-impossible to turn away in those final few hushed moments before Freddy took aim and pulled the trigger on yet another one of Francy and his death-defying trick shots.)
“Freddy Gaucho” was, in reality, Fred Gray, a 58-year old carny who’d spent over forty-four years as a trick shot artist. “Francy Gaucho,” in turn, was Elaine Gray, a raven-haired 31-year old mother of one; a small and slightly plump downstate girl with thick, shoulder-length hair and an even thicker Long Island accent, who’d been performing with Gray since the day twelve years earlier that he got down on bended knee and asked her, at nineteen, to become his wife.
If the crowd was sparse that first night, it was mainly because most knew that the first night of any trade show was always something of a shakedown cruise for the vendors. Many would still be hanging signs and tweaking booths, hoping the weekend would bring them overflow crowds.
Even with those modest expectations, attendance that first night was disappointing, the crowd, in fact, amounting to probably no more than 600 Central New Yorkers who'd braved both the rain and chill. Yet the show, as has been said, must go on.
In the opening moments of the Gauchos first set, Freddy, using a handheld mic wired to a nearby speaker, announced to the gathering that his lovely partner – Francy – would place a coffee cup on her head and that, blindfolded, seated, and with his back to her, he’d shoot the cup from atop her head.
Most in the hall paid him little or no mind and simply went about their business, many at the sprawling freshwater fish tank on the left side of the floor, others moseying from booth to booth, asking questions, looking at displays, and, whenever possible, pocketing an outdoor calendar or ballpoint pen – whatever tchotchkes they could get their hands on.
Relatively few were actually paying attention to the rifle-toting “Gaucho” and his pretty little assistant; that is, until the first shot rang out and echoed through the rafters. That’s when virtually everyone in the place turned and began noticing what was happening under the Deco-style proscenium and the faded, smoke-stained American flag that hung beneath it.
Freddy’s first shot had missed high, maybe on purpose, maybe not. Who knew? Regardless, suddenly, a few hundred Central New Yorkers were turned toward the southern end of the hall, watching and listening, their interest now piqued.
What they next heard was Francy’s pixie-like voice and nasally accent coaching her partner where to aim the well-oiled .22 rifle balanced on his shoulder, while he sat facing the crowd and with his back to her.
“Up a bit…”
Or…“Down a skooch…”
Or…“Just a little to your right…”
As little Francy continued aligning Freddy, many of the men couldn’t help but be drawn to her, or at least her attire. She wore a skin-tight, sequenced bathing suit-style getup in jet black and ruby red and featuring a handful of well-located tassels. She also sported black high heels and a pair of fishnet stockings that had, alas, seen better days.
But what most eyes were drawn to – men and women alike – was not Francy’s Vegas-style getup, it was the odd-looking gizmo around her neck. The apparatus, constructed of wooden dowels extending out to a pair of angled elbows secured by a thick leather collar, was apparently designed to support the small porcelain cup perched atop a seven-inch high pedestal, keeping it fixed on Francy’s head and preventing it from falling.
Freddy, for his part, wore a blue-and-black Western-style shirt made of satin and trimmed with thin, white piping. It featured a dozen or so hand-sewn white-and-yellow daisies along the lapels and cuffs. Though Freddy didn’t wear a cowboy hat, he did sport a pair of fresh-pressed Levis, a studded belt, and a newish-looking pair of two-tone, black-and-white cowboy boots. He also wore a silk bandana in sunflower yellow around his neck. In keeping with the rest of his drugstore cowboy getup, the blindfold he wore was shiny black satin and wrapped dramatically over both eyes.
By the time Freddy was ready to pull the trigger on his second shot, the cavernous room had quieted considerably, everyone in full-hush mode, less out of morbid curiosity than a real and, perhaps, growing, sense of intrigue.
Certainly, some of those on hand believed Freddy was using blanks, and that the whole thing was just a big hoax designed to lure them in before letting them off the same hook the two carnies had used to lure them in in the first place.
The true outdoorsmen in front of the stage, however – most of them gun owners, themselves – knew full well the sound of live ammunition. And when they heard Freddy’s first shot crack and echo throughout the largely empty hall and heard, too, the faint thud on the pock-marked wall behind the young lady in the skimpy outfit, they knew it was a real .22 caliber rifle the guy was firing and that the bullets were the real deal as well.
Freddy’s second shot, however, like his first, missed its mark and embedded itself into the small, portable wall that Francy and her eight-year old daughter had, together, wheeled out and set in place that very afternoon.
With that second miss, however, there were now a few groans and a growing sense of impatience starting to rise from a crowd expecting that the white porcelain cup on the young lady’s head would explode into a jillion pieces at the next crack of her partner’s .22.
Undeterred, Francy dug in and began the aiming process for a third time. Her husband, meanwhile, smiled sheepishly and humorously apologized for missing yet again. He even chuckled and said not to worry, three had always been his lucky number.
Who knows if there’d been any traces of flop sweat forming on the guy’s aged brow – or if his first two misses were just part of some well-rehearsed shtick? In the end, it didn’t really matter. Those two conspicuously loud misses upped the ante in the hall considerably. Now most everyone's attention was focused squarely on the stage – or, more to the point, on the 58-year old Long Island guy who sat perched upon it.
Gray had performed the trick maybe a thousand times, if not more. It was a shot he could pull off, virtually, in his sleep. Sitting there, her legs still crossed and her smile still bright, little Francy told her husband to relax and take a breath. Then she coached him through the process, yet again, of taking aim.
“Another skooch to the left,” she offered coquettishly in her somewhat baby-doll accent. “There! That’s good. Now,” she paused, looking intently at her husband and the rifle suspended on his shoulder, “Up just a bit. A little more. Nope. Nope…too far. Down. Down. Stop!!! Right there! That’s it. Now you got it.”
As a few hundred hunters, fishermen and gawkers on the floor below waited, Freddy’s .22 caliber long-arm cracked for a third time, echoing, once again, under the rafters and up and down the largely empty hall.
The time, that small white cup at which Fred Gray had been aiming did, indeed, break into a cloud of fragments. But not because the small .22 caliber lead projectile that he'd fired from his rifle, blindfolded and backward, had somehow pulverized it into thousand pieces of particles and dust.
No, it shattered because of the impact of little Francy’s head hitting the stage, while both the cup and the contraption that held it crashed violently against the floor.
The people watching directly in front stood stunned and silent, if only for an instant. For the tiniest fraction of a second, none of them seemed to realize what had just occurred, or how to process the fact that the pretty young lady a few feet from them, the one with the pixie-like voice, had just been shot in the face right before their eyes.
What finally shook those Central New Yorkers out of their stunned silence was the God-forsaken sound that followed: Francy, face down, twitching and bleeding, emitting a scream so chilling and so full of pain and disbelief, that no one there that night would ever forget it for as long as they lived.
Bolting out of his chair, Fred Gray ripped off his blindfold and raced to his wife’s side, falling to his knees beside her. He was soon joined by his daughter, Lisa, who’d run onstage from one of the wings and was now kneeling beside her mother, screaming and sobbing uncontrollably.
When Freddy turned Francy over, where had been a right eye was now little more than a black hole of jagged flesh and oozing body fluids. The sight made both father and daughter gasp, the woman they loved stretched out before them, her life seeping from the wound inflicted upon her by her husband and partner.
Within moments, Francy had all but stopped moving and making sounds. She simply lay there in a quiet, eerie stillness – her good eye now closed, her left hand reflexively twitching, and her breathing growing shallower and fainter with each passing moment.
Fred Gray was quickly helped to his feet and led away, sobbing loudly, by two off-duty cops who’d been hired as security guards. An elderly family doctor, who'd been in the watching crowd below, continued to do his best to treat Francy and keep her breathing. Meanwhile, her daughter, Lisa, simply knelt by her mother’s side, held Francy's hand and rocked back and forth, now sobbing quietly as she did.
“What have I done?” wailed Gray to the two off-duty cops who’d ushered him away, gasping audibly as both hands ran through the two sides of his Vitalis-laden and jet-black dyed hair. “My God…My GOD!!!…What have I done???”
He then turned to one of the officers, the one who’d placed a hand on his back as a small gesture of empathy. “Kill me,” he pleaded, shaking his head, the tears streaming down his cheeks. “For God’s sake, please…PLEASE! Kill me!!!” When they didn't respond, he burst out, “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR???”
By the time the paramedics arrived, Franny, under the direction of the doctor, had been carried to the basement in a woolen army blanked via the freight elevator. She was then gently loaded into the back of a large red-and-white modified station wagon with the words “Eastern Ambulance” stenciled across each side door.
The now-dozens of the volunteers who’d hurried into the basement to lend a hand, one of them still holding Francy’s bloody woolen blanket, watched as the ambulance, with its rooftop gumball pulsing ominously, pulled off into the darkness.
But when the driver got maybe a third of the way up the ramp to Montgomery Street his vehicle slowed to a stop, even as his tires continued to spin faster and faster. The rains had fallen so suddenly and with such ferocity that when the large overhead door was opened to let the ambulance out, a gush of water began poured down the oil-stained concrete ramp, making traction all-but impossible.
Even as the ambulance's two rear tires continued to whine and spin, one of the volunteers bolted off into the darkness toward its glowing taillights, followed by another, and another still. Before long, there were five, maybe six Central New York men of various ages and sizes pushing for all they were worth, with others soon rushing to join them. With little Elaine Gray in the rear of that red-and-white ambulance, still bleeding and fighting to stay alive, twenty men and a few teenage boys, shoulder-to-shoulder and three deep, pushed that ambulance up toward the neon lights and cold damp air, moaning and straining, inch by inch, until they got it to the top of the steep slick driveway.
Elaine Gray would end up holding on for almost two full days. She’d continue to cling to life, even as the doctors and nurses who treated her remained keenly aware that the end was near.
And, of course, they were right.
In the end, “bold” little Francy Gray never regained consciousness. Before she died, however, the doctors not only ended up removing what remained of her eye, they also made the difficult decision to leave the bullet where it was, for fear of causing even further damage to the poor girl.
Fred Gray would spend three days in Crouse Hospital, as well, not as a visitor or a man on a vigil at his wife’s bedside, but for treatment for a case of shock his doctors termed, “severe.”
Meanwhile, a 39-year old reporter writing under the byline, Peter B. Volmes, covering what most of his colleagues had simply assumed would be just another trade show at the War Memorial, wound up offering readers three days’ worth of detail-rich accounts of one of the most unspeakable human tragedies to ever play itself out in Syracuse. The very first of those found itself splashed all over the front page in the following morning’s Post-Standard – complete with photos and a screaming, above-the-fold headline. Indeed, the old newspaper adage, “If it bleeds, it leads,” had never been so true in the Salt City.
It wasn’t just that by the first day of March 1967 – the week before the last All City game the town would ever know – Syracuse’s 15th Ward had all but fallen to the wrecking ball.
And it wasn’t just that a colorful and vibrant neighborhood, if not an entire way of life and/or sense of community, had been erased from the face of the city forever.
Likewise, it wasn’t just that that pesky little conflict in Southeast Asia, a half a world away, was now spinning so out of control it was costing even a few local boys some combination of life and limb.
No, it was that there was – embodied by the gruesome death of little Francy Gray – something else entirely afoot. It was a something few could explain, or even name. It was, however, something just as real as it was present. And it was something that had at its very core, violence.
But not just any violence. And not just the kind of violence that, in years past, had always been reserved for the usual suspects; the gang members, the hooligans, the criminals and the political lightning rods and trouble makers.
To the contrary. It was a violence that invaded and tore at the core of so many who viewed themselves as the heart and soul of working-class America. It was violence that regularly spilled large quantities of blood onto countless, unsuspecting middle-class lives, the vast majority of which were white. And it was violence that was bold, ugly, and cruelly random; a violence that was mad as hell and viewed the world with its fists and teeth clenched; a violence that, in the end, showed little or no regard for such basic human concepts as boundaries, propriety, decency or, above all, innocence.
Indeed, by the second week of March of 1967, the week of the All City game, the violent and turbulent Sixties had, at long last, come to Syracuse.
* * * * *
For Kenny Huffman, the first week of March always felt like the best of times and worst of times. Corcoran’s head man loved the early days of Spring and the long-awaited drying of the city’s maze of concrete sidewalks. He loved the Section Three Playoffs as well, a single-elimination tourney that pitted the best schoolboy teams in Central New York against one another: it was a game that, for a few years, anyway, his squads had gone into as favorites, if not won outright.
On the other hand, since there were no City League playoffs each season (while the Parochial League spent the weekend between the end of its regular season and the All City game staging a two-round playoff featuring its four top teams), Huffman’s boys had more than a few extra days to catch their breath, relax, and give their tired muscles a rest; in fact, they had almost two full weeks without a single game.
For the coach of the City League champion, with all that time off, along with the growing daylight and ever-looming threat of (for lack of a better word) senioritis – keeping his kids razor sharp was no small task.
Beyond that, though, Ken Huffman was no fan of Syracuse’s All City game. To him, it was just a big dog-and-pony show, a hardwood carnival conceived and staged by a few insiders for bragging rights and a few moments of tavern-based chest-beating.
To his thinking, the All City game, for all its hype, did not, in any way, shape or form, constitute a meaningful postseason achievement for any team fortunate enough to actually win it. He had firsthand knowledge, after all. He’d won the thing more than any other coach in the city.
What’s more, the All City game was becoming a contest in which the larger City League schools were, more and more, finding themselves in a no-win situation. Because whenever a City League school happened to win, many in town, sports reporters on down, would diminish its significance by implying or even saying aloud that, once again, strength, numbers and sheer schoolboy “athleticism” had somehow triumphed over good old-fashioned Parochial League grit, hustle and determination.
As such, by 1967, any City League victory short of a blowout, increasingly anyway, was started to be almost looked on at as a loss.
Yet, as the 1967 game neared, things seemed different.
For one thing, as even-tempered and mild-mannered as Huffman could be (his players, after all, didn’t call him “Old Stoneface” for nothing), and despite his general distaste for the game, this was one he truly wanted. The previous season’s gut-wrenching loss at the hands of Evangelist, in a game marked by ref Hank Ponti’s controversial (and still widely debated) call on Jimmy Collins continued to invade his thoughts regularly.
Still, that was only part of it.
The ‘67 game also seemed different to Huffman because even though Corcoran had well over two hundred boys try out for that year’s team, he'd ended up with a final roster that – skin color and hair texture notwithstanding – had the physical size, stature and makeup of a classic Parochial League team.
What that meant was that his Cougars, despite having been handpicked from a pool of talent, perhaps, six, seven, or even eight times deeper than the one in which Billy E found himself wading, were, nevertheless, shockingly slender and almost comically undersized.
As a result, Huffman wound up playing just five kids in a number of games that year – and rarely more than six or seven. A big reason for that was that, even though his two most capable reserves were good kids and, certainly, fine young men, in the end they were flawed basketball players.
Ben Frazier, for example, was a good ball handler and quick as a mouse, but as much as Huffman loved the young man he called “Benny,” he had to admit the kid just didn’t, at least at that point, have a great feel for the game and was only a so-so shooter. He might have been a terrific little athlete and may have worked as hard as anyone on the team, but he was simply not the kind of player who was going to steal much time from any one of his five starters, particularly the two thoroughbreds he had manning the backcourt.
And Wally Mirgorod, for all his ability to kick a ball powerfully and with uncanny accuracy, both on the soccer pitch and the football field (and for all he loved to play basketball and worked tirelessly at it), was virtually tone deaf about the game’s more nuanced elements; things like floor spacing, ball movement, and looking to make that one extra pass to break down a defense. The kid’s instincts were just too raw and unrefined to trust in a tight contest, believed Huffman, and that was likely due to the fact he’d picked up the game so relatively late in life.
On top of that – or, maybe, because of it – young Migorod’s hands were, at that point anyway, almost as undercooked as his instincts.
So, Coach Huffman rode his five starters – and only his five starters – night after night, game after game, and quarter after quarter, rode them for all they were worth.
In fact, had the Vegas oddsmakers been handicapping that 1967 All City game at Syracuse’s War Memorial, it’s fair to say Ken Huffman’s Corcoran Cougars – despite the huge edge they held in overall student population and the size of the pool from which they got to build their roster – might not have even been favored.
Yes, they were quicker. Yes, they possessed a generational, perhaps historically great backcourt. And, yes, every last one of their five starters, seemingly, could run until the cows came home.
But Sacred Heart was not only significantly bigger and stronger, in a couple of years four of the five starters would prove to be so good they’d be playing college ball.
Pete Schmid, for example, would win a full scholarship to Boston College, where he’d go on to star under NBA Hall of Famer and Celtic legend, Bob Cousy.
Tom Sakowski would take his muscle, determination and coachability and suit up for the Lakers of Oswego State.
And both Joe Zaganczyk and Jack Contos would play in Canada, at Loyola of Montreal, where the latter would emerge one of the most exciting players in the entire country, mostly because of his strength, leaping ability, and the powerful, almost jaw-dropping way he could soar to the hoop to snatch rebounds, follow errant shots, and swat away opponents’ field goal attempts like so many pesky flies.
Put another way, the student population numbers may have favored Corcoran, but other numbers were not nearly so kind to them. The Cougars’ front line, for example, measured just 6’1,” 6’1” and 6’0,” whereas Billy E’s measured a broad and oh-so brawny 6’6,” 6’5” and 6’3.”
What’s more, while Huffman may have only gone five or six deep that season, Billy E had at his disposal as many as nine kids who could, and often did, play important minutes for him, depending upon the situation.
So Sacred Heart was not only bigger and stronger. They were just silly-deep, at least by high school standards. Plus, as Billy remained all-too aware, his kids had come this close to running the table and coming into that All City Championship with a perfect 18-0 record, compiled against some pretty tough Parochial League competition.
Therefore – on paper, anyway – despite public opinion to the contrary and what continued to be bandied about in many taverns in town, coming into the contest it was not unrealistic for any knowledgeable fan to envision an All City that game quickly devolved into a blowout, with the taller, more powerful and deeper Heartsmen putting the hammer down on the less physically imposing Cougars.
That might have been the way the game unfolded too, except for one small but critical factor that has long been sports’ tried-and-true equalizer.
Speed.
Kenny Huffman’s Cougars not only had it, they had it in spades. Huffman’s boys could flat-out fly, especially three of the young colts he started.
As for Billy E and his Heartsmen, unlike Hoffman’s Cougars, he and his boys hadn't had a full two weeks to rest before their first postseason game. They had just four days, in fact, before the Parochial League playoffs.
For once, Billy relished having little time to prepare. He thought not having time to think too much could work for his boys despite how physically drained they were. After all, Hearts had barely squeaked by Evangelist’s and Lucy’s to close out the regular season, and had then been chewed up and spit out in their 18th and final game by Baptist's.
To Billy, what they needed most was to get back on the horse. They needed to regroup and, somehow, regain the mojo that had slowly but surely slipped away from them over the course of the past two weeks. For him, that year’s playoffs represented a perfect opportunity for his club to fix what ailed it in advance of the All City game and Diocesan tournament, both of which now hovered over his head like a guillotine.
Lack of rest aside, there was one other postseason quirk of the already quirky Parochial League at play: at the end of every regular season, the team finishing first didn’t necessarily have to play the fourth-place club in the opening round. Per league rules, that team could choose to play either the second or third place club, if they so chose.
It was a wrinkle that created more than a few intriguing considerations for a coach. A personal grudge, perhaps? Maybe, a favorable matchup or injury to a star player on the other team? Or, simply the best matchup?
Following the Hearts’ humiliation in their regular season finale, Billy E opted to take on the Vees of St. Vincent’s in the first round, the #4 seed, even though Vincent’s had taken the Hearts to overtime before finally succumbing in December, the first of two times they'd met in the regular season.
Vincent’s was a mostly Italian school from the city’s East Side. Not only were they the lowest ranked of Billy’s possible opponents, but the other two were the league’s rugged St. John’s clubs: Evangelist and Baptist. And while the former had twice given Billy’s boys all they could handle, the latter – revenge factor notwithstanding – was a team he wanted no part of, given the thrashing he’d just taken at their hands.
The problem for the Heartsmen, at least on the opening night of the playoffs, was that, once again, the other team failed to get the memo. The Vincent’s kids – just as they’d done the first time the two met – played Billy’s with a confidence and fire completely unbefitting a team that came in as the lowest seed in the tournament. They picked, passed, and shot well enough to stay close to the heavily favored Heartsmen the whole game through, from the opening tip to the final buzzer. And, while Billy E’s team ultimately won – and a win, as most any coach will tell you, is a win – the Hearts’ head honcho sure as hell didn’t feel great about it.
His team, still, wasn't playing well. Billy E would have found that disturbing at any time of year, but it was downright scary now, in crunch time.
That’s what made his club’s subsequent victory two days later against Felasco’s Eagles so sweet, coming against a well-coached and tough-as-nails unit led by a man who, by any measure, was the finest coach in the city.
And not only did it come in the very building – the War Memorial – that less than a week later would host the biggest and most eagerly anticipated game of the year: the All City Championship.
But, what made Hearts’ win in the finals especially sweet was the fact that Billy’s boys had played magnificently the entire game. Brilliantly, in fact. They defended well. They ran the court well. They moved the ball well. And, of course, they shot the hell out of the thing.
What’s more, they did those things for the first time in what, at least to Billy, seemed like ages.
The Heartsmen’s finals performance that third day of March wasn’t necessarily a clinic, much less a case of one team finally asserting its dominance. But it was a game that spoke loudly and clearly to everyone who mattered – particularly Billy E, himself. The Hearts’ machine-like win in the finals of the ‘67 Parochial League playoffs – their third in three tries against a sneaky-tough bunch of boys and their take-no-prisoners coach – reminded everyone that Sacred Heart was still a special team full of special kids who, on any given night, were capable of special things.
* * * * *
As with so many family vacations, the anticipation is often better than the trip itself. Such may or may not have been the case with that year’s eagerly anticipated All City Championship. Either way, the lead-up to the All City game – like all that fried fish on Friday – carried with it the delectable aroma of anticipation. Many Sacred Heart parishioners acted accordingly.
Cuz Rudy, the veteran barkeep at the Old Port, for example, made his usual bet with Pete and Danny Coleman, the two Irish brothers, night owls, and unapologetic wild men who owned Coleman’s Tavern, a corner Irish bar just down the street from Cuz’s small upstairs apartment in Tipp Hill – with the usual stakes in play. As always, if Corcoran prevailed, Cuz would stop on his way to work the following Monday for his morning bracer, climb atop Coleman’s pool table, drop his trousers, lean over and, while doing a shot of Irish whiskey, have his ass painted shamrock green by the Brothers Coleman.
If the Hearts won, on the other hand, the derriere-painting chores would instead fall to Rudy and his cousin-in-cocktails, Moe Pichura, while Pete and Danny would do shots of imported Polish vodka and have their Irish asses painted, not shamrock green, but a red as bright and as proud as the Polish flag itself.
In a similar vein, on the Tuesday prior to the game, the owner of the small, three-chair barber shop just a stone’s throw from the school posted a sign in his front window offering half-price “All City Haircuts” all week long to anyone hoping to look good for the game.
Olum’s, meanwhile, the family-run electronics store, offered free deliveries of any appliances, TV sets or radio consoles purchased in the days leading up to Friday big game.
Before the All City game, the nuns of Sacred Heart – who never, ever missed a home game (but who, for reasons never fully understood by anyone, did not travel to away ones), spent the entire All-City week saying seven days’ worth of a nine-day novena for their boys. This was done solely in the confines of the convent since none of those nuns would be at the War Memorial in person to beseech the Lord and ask Him to bestow His good graces on the twelve sons of Poland. (Well, okay. Nine sons of Poland, one Czech, one German and one Irishman, but who’s counting?)
One of those nuns, in fact, the youngest in the entire convent, went to her closet that Tuesday, just after evening prayer, and pulled out the small reel-to-reel tape recorder that her parents had sent her the previous Christmas. She placed it on the nightstand next to her bed and fed the end of the brown recording tape into the appropriate slot in the pickup reel, before clicking the machine on for a second or two to let it wrap itself around the spool for two or three turns.
She'd read in the Post-Standard that the game was going to be aired live on WHEN radio and that a station announcer named Jack Morse, whose primary job was reading scores on WHEN-TV’s six and eleven o’clock news, would be handling play-by-play duties.
Even though that twenty-something, creamy skinned Catholic nun would not be at the game herself, she wanted to record it from her clock radio, the one that woke her every day at 5:00 AM for morning prayer so she could relive the excitement (and, hopefully, her boys’ victory) whenever she chose.
Of course, late that Friday afternoon, the parish “Boss” – Monsignor Piejda – pulled three of his finest, Jack Contos, Pete Schmid and Joey Zaganczyk, out of class and did what he always did before a big game. He gave the three a variation of what, over the years, had become something of his signature pep talk.
At a handful of points during any one season, Piejda would stop by one or two of the classrooms, stick his head in, take a varsity player or two out of class, and then lead them down the hall, out the front door, and over to the rectory. There, he’d close his office door, ask them to take a seat, and offer up some variation on his tried-and-true formula for ensuring peak performance.
“How are the legs today, men?” he’d ask. “Feeling strong?”
“Yes, monsignor,” each would invariably reply, with the faintest trace of an eye-roll in his voice, and body language to match.
“And the arms, shoulders and backs?”
“Good, monsignor. Feelin’ really…really good.”
“Well, boys, that’s the Lord inside you. Remember that. He – or should I say His Sacred Heart – is giving you that strength. He’s the One making everything you have, everything you are, and everything you do, possible. Never forget that and never lose sight of what that means in terms of tonight’s game.”
That was the point at which Piejda’s pep talk would invariably start to riff on what had since become a common and recurring theme for him. He’d slowly start to mold his talk around the relative merits of the patron saint of that night’s opponent.
“Tonight we’re playing Assumption, correct?” the elderly pastor would ask. “Now, as you know, the Blessed Virgin is the Holy Mother of God. But even though, as you also know, through the miracle of the Immaculate Conception, she brought our Lord into this world, nursed Him, and mothered Him to adulthood, there is simply no way – no way – a team representing the Assumption of Mary could ever possibly beat a team playing for the glory and honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.” The priest gave a palms-up gesture, a forced half-smile, and a slight cock of the head to support this fairly obvious contention.
Now, to be fair – at least when it came to that one particular game; a matchup between Sacred Heart and the North Side academy named in honor of the "assumption" of Mary, body and soul, into the kingdom of heaven – one might suppose that, given our Lord’s well-chronicled deference, if not all-out devotion, to His Blessed Mother, a case could be made that such a game could actually turn out to be pretty close.
However, no such ecclesiastical case could ever be made for any team whose sweaty and moth-eaten uniforms bore the name of such dust-to-dust mortals and mid-level servants of the Lord as St. Patrick, St. Anthony, St. Lucy or, heaven forbid, St. Vincent.
So on the particular All City Friday in 1967, when Piejda gathered Schmid, Contos and Zaganczyk in his office – Billy E’s single finest player and his two most experienced seniors – he simply could not rely on his go-to pep talk. After all, for the first time since His Excellency, Bishop Foery, had named him pastor, his boys were going to be playing in a high-profile, must-win game, not against a Catholic school with its own patron saint, but a huge public institution, one open to students of all religions, beliefs and backgrounds, and one funded by taxpayers from all across the city.
What’s more, it was a high school with hundreds of boys. Not a few dozen, like his – or, for that matter, any of the ten Parochial League schools.
As a result, the Boss reached into his bag of greatest hits and pulled out the one Biblical tale that always seemed appropriate when someone (or something) found himself facing the prospects of going up against someone (or something) much bigger or stronger than he.
That old trusty and well-worn parable, otherwise known as the story of David-versus-Goliath.
Unfortunately for the players he pulled out of class that day, all three were fully aware that the David vs. Goliath thing was patently ridiculous, especially when attempting to contrast their basketball team to Corcoran’s. After all, they were taller, bigger and more physically imposing. They were the ones capable of almost blocking out the sun. And they were the ones who could use their superior size and muscle to overwhelm just about any opponent in Syracuse, much less an opponent as height-challenged as Corcoran.
They were, in other words, not the David in the Boss’ Biblical parable. They were the Goliath. And they had the size, strength and muscles to prove it.
Plus, even as they sat there, they knew something that perhaps even the good Monsignor did not. The three players sat there fully aware that they’d already faced Corcoran that season.
Twice, as a matter of fact.
Prior to the start of the regular season, Billy E and Ken Huffman – two lifelong basketball nuts whose mutual respect knew no bounds, and who saw the other guy’s club as a great yardstick against which to measure his own – had arranged for a pair of home-and-home practice games, both on Sunday morning and both right after mass; the first at Sacred Heart, and the second a week later at Corcoran.
After a full eight quarters of play in those two scrimmages – during which both a scoreboard and clock were used to simulate real-life and real-game situations (along with at least an hour’s worth of additional untimed play at the conclusion of each, during which the pride factor ran so high that players on both sides felt compelled, even with the scoreboard off, to keep running tallies in their heads) – Sacred Heart and Corcoran wound up dead even. Two plus games, in other words, played on two different days and two different courts, and no team held a lead of more than four points, and when it was all over both teams had scored the exact same number of points!
So, to the three Hearts players seated in front of Piejda, it was laughable that the undersized Cougars of Coach Huffman, however quick they might have been, and however large their school's student body was, were being billed as the mighty Goliath and that they – the hulking team from the otherwise puny little Catholic academy on the West Side, whose frontcourt was tall enough, strong enough, and broad-shouldered enough, to grab every rebound – were, somehow, being cast as little David.
No, the reality was, the two contenders for Syracuse’s mythical city basketball title in March of 1967, Corcoran High and Sacred Heart Academy, despite their vastly different styles and obvious physical differences – everything from size and brawn to skin color – were, in reality (and contrary to the Monsignor’s best efforts), as even and as well-matched as two teams who’d ever squared off for All City glory.
* * * * *
Ken Huffman was taking no chances. He was not a superstitious man at all. But that year, anyway, he decided to change things up just a bit. The previous season, Corcoran’s first as a certified public school, he’d simply let his kids make their own way to the All City game. Most of them were from the inner city anyway, and most lived just a few blocks or so from the War Memorial, the deco-styled arena that had once been home to the mighty Syracuse’s Nationals of NBA fame.
For that reason, Jimmy Collins had taken his gym bag, put on his pack boots, and walked to the game. Joe Reddick and Howie Harlow had done the same. Harold Broadwater had walked from his place in what was left of the 15th Ward. And some Cougars, like junior Frank Karazuba, had paid his 25 cents and taken a city bus; in Karazuba’s case, up Salina Street from his home down near the Valley.
But the previous year had left a bitter taste in Ken Huffman’s mouth. Even though he didn’t care for the All City game, the high-profile loss the previous March to St. John the Evangelist had stung him in a way he simply could not shake.
So, as a result, Kenny Huffman decided to change things up that year. He made arrangements with the school principal for a city school bus to take his club from the all-new Corcoran campus, down the hill toward South Ave and then east to downtown, via West Onondaga and the home of Father Brady.
Of Huffman’s roster, only his starting backcourt was allowed to walk instead of joining their teammates on the bus. Joe Reddick and Howie Harlow not only lived a short walk from the War Memorial, but they’d once explained to their coach after practice how they liked to walk to games side-by-side to discuss the upcoming opponent, hash out a little strategy between them and, in general, psych each other up.
Billy E, of course, had no such luxury. Sacred Heart was far west of downtown and he had no team bus, or even a city school one at his disposal. Just a few willing and available adults with dependable cars; people like himself, JV coach, Paul Januszka, the stern-but-loyal Mr. Schmid, Father O, and the always accommodating Mr. and Mrs. Pryzbyl. That’s how the Heartsmen found themselves compelled to travel to the War Memorial that particular Friday, March 10, 1967.
Of all the rides available to all those Hearts kids, however, as always, the liveliest and most adrenaline-charged was the one that Jack Contos, Rich Dabrowski and Leo Najdul got to take with Father O; a ride in his killer GTO, the all-new, jet-black rag top with the sporty wheels, the space-age dash and the powerful, 8-track player. As always, the young Sacred Heart AD had his Searchers Greatest Hits tape blasting the whole way downtown, even though his convertible’s top and windows remained rolled up and sealed tight to keep out the March dampness and what remained of Syracuse’s vaunted winter chill.
Contos sat there next to the priest, riding shotgun and tapping his foot to the music as Father O tooled down Genesee, even as the last remnants of day kissed the just-washed car and bathed it in a pastel glow. The senior forward cracked the faintest of smiles as Father O motored past the Art Deco chrome and the white glazed brick of the Coca-Cola bottling plant, and he peered briefly into its large front window and the endless stream of green-tinted 7 oz. bottles full of Coke that marched along like soldiers on parade.
All was right in Jack Contos’ world. He not only loved Friday night moments like this. He lived for them.
Meanwhile, two of Billy’s quickest and most intense Bandits – Dabrowski, the still-raw sophomore, and Najdul, the rail-thin, fearless junior – while, deep down, not expecting to play that much, if at all, nevertheless listened to the driving beat as they drove east, each boy peering off into the gloaming and mentally steeling himself on the off-chance that at some point in the next two and a half hours his bespectacled Russian Orthodox coach might look down the bench, point a crooked finger, and call out his name.
As with last year’s All City game, Father Sammons had opted, as a means of crowd control, to execute his divide-and-conquer strategy. A few days earlier he’d called and asked the Post-Standard and Herald-Journal sports editors to “suggest” that fans of the two teams sit on opposite (and designated) sides of the War Memorial.
Also, as was the case the previous year, that request was only partly fueled by rooting interest. Mostly, it was fueled by the priest’s deep-seated fear that public health, if not actual lives, hung in the balance. Mostly, it was an attempt by that same well-intentioned man of God to try to minimize the chances that Syracuse’s mythical basketball championship might somehow devolve into a race riot, one pitting thousands of parents, fans, players, and even cheerleaders against one another.
Catholic vs. Protestant.
Black vs. white.
In the Corcoran locker room before the game, even as the scoreboard clock methodically ticked its way down to the opening tipoff, Kenny Huffman went from boy to boy to wish him luck and remind him of how hard they’d all worked to get there. As he did, he began to notice how eerily quiet the room had grown, given the howls and cheers that, more and more, were filling the air on the other side of the door.
His young Cougars wordlessly tugging at sweat socks, adjusted jock straps, and tied and re-tied sweat-stained canvas high tops. The five starters all seemed to instinctively understand the gravity attached to the game – even though, to a man, they’d later admit they had no idea how much that avenging the previous year’s loss had meant to their soft-spoken coach.
Ken Huffman did, indeed, want that night’s All City Championship – badly. He wanted it in a way that, frankly, made the teacher in him feel almost guilty. He knew, after all, it was just a game. And he knew, too, he that shouldn’t want anything that much – least of a basketball game that was, basically, an exhibition. But here it was almost twelve months to the day that a Hank Ponti call from half-court took the game out of his boys’ hands and placed it squarely in the hands of its eventual victor – and, somehow, the bitterness he tasted then still lingered, the injustice continuing to sit in his stomach, unreconciled, like a big, thick fist.
In the other locker room, things were different, at least by degree. Billy E was busy being, well, Billy E. Sure, the Hearts coach cared. And, sure, he wanted to win that night. But Billy’s default mode, even in the most stressful of times, had always been levity. And his defense against thinking too much or, heaven forbid, worrying too much was to simply laugh, tell a joke or two, and offer a little good-natured ribbing to anyone within earshot.
So, while Ken Huffman may have been going boy to boy in his pregame locker room and touching each with his singular brand of humanity, Billy E just sat there straddling a turned-around folding chair, pulling on a cigarette, chewing on a fresh stick of gum, and ping-ponging verbal jabs with the likes of Paul Januszka, the young athletic director, Father O, and a handful of his most spirited, vocal and thick-skinned upperclassmen.
There wasn’t much to tell his boys. They’d been through the drill far too many times. They’d also just won the Parochial League playoffs by playing one of their finest games of the season; a machine-like dispatching of longtime rival, St. John the Evangelist.
The only thing Billy reminded them of was their money-in-the-bank opening tip play and the fact that Corcoran, as Coach Huffman’s team had proven time and time again in their two preseason scrimmages, was cat-quick and loved to run. "So, get back on defense. Quickly. And I mean every time, without fail. You got that?" He looked directly into the eyes of his two senior guards, Danny Van Cott and Joey Zaganczyk.
“Okay, bring it in,” he said rising, shoving his chair to the side, and holding one hand out, palm down. “Father?”
With that, each Hearts boy rose from his seat, took a step or two toward Billy, lowered his head slightly, and reached his arm into the circle of bodies that had quickly formed around the Hearts’ head coach.
The raven-haired Father O, from a few feet away, then led the Heartsmen in low murmured recitations of, in order, the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Glory Be, followed by an equally murmured and ad-libbed coda in which he asked God to grant the players His blessings and bestow upon them the strength they’d need to honor Sacred Heart and take home the All City trophy.
As for everything else, including trying to put a clamp on Corcoran’s relentless running game – even as they stood there with their eyes closed and their heads bowed – the Hearts boys were all keenly aware that going to be up to them.
* * * * *
Billy E should have figured the game was going to be anything but typical. It wasn’t just that two clubs’ preseason games had been so ridiculously tight, so hard-fought, and so hotly contested. It was that, on the opening tip, even though Schmid managed to control it over a vaulting Steve Williams, and still tip the ball toward a waiting Contos, something entirely unexpected happened. The ball never quite made it to its intended target.
Howie Harlow, the Cougar’s resident ballhawk who could out-run and out-quick just about any boy in the city, lunged in front of Contos, reached high and tipped the ball, deflecting it beyond the muscular Hearts forward's reach and into his own backcourt. It bounded away toward the far key where it was scooped up by his lifelong friend, Reddick, who’d by then had gained a full stride advantage over the hustling Van Cott.
That opening tip play had been one of the many things Reddick and Harlow discussed as they walked together to the War Memorial an hour or so earlier. It was also one of the first things they’d noticed when they traveled to Bishop Ludden on that final Parochial League Sunday to scout the team they simply assumed they’d be playing in tonight's game.
Even though the Hearts would eventually get demolished by Baptist that Sunday, and even though Reddick and Harlow would later confide to St. John’s Paul Padden they were glad they didn’t have to play his team in the All City game, Sacred Heart’s opening tip play – Schmid-to-Contos-Zaganczyk for an easy two – had stood out as something they definitely needed to watch out for. As a result, the two devised a plan to defend the play as they strode shoulder-to-shoulder and stride-for-stride down Midland Ave through the twilight of evening and on towards Mecca; the lights, glow and shimmering energy of a still-bustling late Friday afternoon, downtown Syracuse-style.
Billy E’s Heartsmen not only didn’t score on the opening tip of that ‘67 All City Championship. They didn’t even get the ball. Billy just shook his head, thinking, “Here we go,” as he rubbed his already sweaty brow, exhaling loudly enough to catch the ear of his JV coach, Januszka. “No freebies tonight," he added to no one in particular, the words echoing down the halls of his own uncertain but at-least-now singularly focused mind.
Corcoran, on their first possession, worked the ball around half-court slowly and deliberately, not so much to try to get the best shot, but to give each Cougar a chance to touch the ball. It was not anything Ken Huffman ever stressed upon his starters in practice or asked them to do in games because, more than anything, he loved it when his kids ran early and often. Corcoran was one of the fastest and quickest teams in all of Central New York, if not the state, and it was to their advantage to exploit that edge whenever and wherever possible. But given that Huffman relied so heavily on his five starters, and given that those kids had developed such a great chemistry over the course of eighteen games, they eventually took it upon themselves at the beginning of each contest to make sure everyone got to touch the ball at least once; to feel it in their hands, to catch it, to pass it, and, if possible, to dribble it.
And that’s exactly what those five Cougars did until, nearly forty seconds into that first possession, Harlow stutter-stepped left, exploded right, and went up for a picture-perfect eighteen-footer from the right wing that caught in the bottom of the net before falling through.
Half the crowd of over 4,000 fanatics shouted in exaltation while the other half moaned.
And with that, Syracuse’s 1967 All City game – despite what the clock might have said – was officially underway.
Back in the convent, a handful of Sacred Heart nuns gathered in their sparse living room around their well-worn but trusty Philco, the floor model that a well-to-do parish family had donated to them a few years back. Two of the nuns holding rosary beads, closed their eyes and prayed in complete silence, mouthing the words as they did. The rest leaned in toward the large, walnut-grained console and perched on the edge of their seats, eyes wide and hands folded in delicate anticipation.
Other nuns were upstairs in their bedrooms, like the young first-generation Polish sister with the creamy skin. She sat alone atop her bed, taping the game from her clock radio, even as she listened intently to each and every word of Jack Morse’s broadcast.
Morse, a young man from Whitney Point on the Southern Tier, was calling the action for 620, WHEN, a radio station on the far-left side of the radio dial. While he may have lacked the polish, timing and, perhaps, accuracy of many more seasoned pros, the kind of play-by-play announcers who’d cut their teeth calling hundreds of games over many years in multiple sports, the young man with the folksy delivery and smile in his voice more than made up for whatever shortcomings he might have had with an almost bottomless well of enthusiasm and love for the game of basketball.
Morse, in other words, was the perfect announcer for that nearly perfect place and time in local history; the guy charged with using words and inflections to paint mental pictures for thousands of fellow Central New Yorkers, many of whom would be sitting glued to every last syllable – every last sound – that came out of his mouth.
As the game’s first quarter gained momentum, Billy assumed his place on the bench, as did Huffman. The two, for all their many differences, were similar in at least one important way. They both trusted their kids, especially their seniors, and neither could ever be accused of over-coaching. That’s why both spent the bulk of any one game in their seats – not running up and down the sidelines like wild dogs, or screaming at players and refs – but simply sitting, observing and reacting to events as they unfolded.
As that first quarter neared its conclusion – a quarter that, just as in the pair of scrimmages the two teams had played earlier in the season, was a back-and-forth battle of will, in which overwhelming power found itself pitted against dazzling speed, and the largest lead never grew to more than three points – the crowd’s energy never flagged, and, in fact, somehow kept ascending. As a result, the noise, which had been ear-splitting at the start, actually seemed to increase as the clock ticked closer and closer to zero.
With just three seconds left and the score tied, Zaganczyk, Billy E’s best shooter and a young man who’d rediscovered his touch in the Hearts’ two playoff wins, missed from the right wing, the ball hitting square off the far iron and arcing out toward the center of the key. Even as Irene Contos and her fellow Hearts loyalists were wincing at the near-miss, big Pete Schmid rose above a sea of arms and would-be rebounders.
Despite being sealed off by Corcoran’s powerful defensive stopper, Len Reeder, the German’s massive right hand stretched as high and as far as it could go. But, rather than bring the ball down, given what precious little time remained, Schmid instead tipped it blindly in the direction of the rim. The leather orb hit once, twice, and a third time, before falling through softly and as though guided by the angels themselves.
Half the War Memorial jumped out of their skin, raised their palms skyward like a gospel choir, toward the Lord Almighty, and loosed a chorus of rapturous delight that filled the arena. Billy pumped his left fist once while using his right forefinger to shove his glasses back up his nose.
Ken Huffman simply closed his eyes and exhaled. He then slowly rose to greet his starters as they headed back toward their bench. The first quarter of Syracuse’s last-ever All City game had just passed not-so-quietly into history.
Sacred Heart 17, Corcoran 15.
To virtually no one’s surprise, the second quarter turned out to be lot more of the same. Two talented schoolboy powerhouses trading haymakers at center ring, swinging away with all they had on the off-chance one of them might actually find a knockout punch somewhere in his arsenal.
More and more, though, Dan Van Cott, the headstrong and chin-out floor general of the Hearts – the gutty, hard-nosed kid from Tipp Hill – found himself in an increasingly untenable situation. Not only were Reddick or Harlow much quicker, especially one-on-one, but he also had to contend with the fact that the War Memorial’s court was so much longer and wider than any in the Parochial League. Reddick and Harlow, in other words, had even more room to maneuver and even greater opportunities to exploit their speed and quickness.
That’s why, when Van Cott picked up his third foul midway through the second quarter, Billy jumped off the bench and quickly held his hands together for a time out. His first impulse was to pull Van Cott entirely. But as he looked down his bench – at his collection of Chinese Bandits, a handful of wide-eyed youngsters who would run through walls for him – something inside him made him think twice. It was a pressure cooker out there, after all, and as much as he loved, say, Tommy Godzac’s shooting stroke, Leo Nadjul’s determination, or young Rich Dabrowski’s energy and passion, he just couldn’t bring himself to go to his bench – not yet.
Besides, Van Cott had been a binding element for his club all season. He wasn’t the most talented kid Billy had ever coached, but his starting unit just seemed to play better when he was out there distributing the ball. So, Billy chose to roll the dice and let him stay in the game.
At the same time, however, he decided to switch things up, if only as a matter of caution. Plan B for Billy, at least at that point, was to switch from his swarming, deny-the-ball man-to-man to a tight-and-towering, two-one-two zone, a defensive scheme he’d once in a while employ, if only as a change of pace.
Playing zone was a considerable gamble. Billy knew it might result in fewer fouls on his defense – which was the whole idea – but, given the Cougars’ love of pushing the ball up at a dizzying pace, a zone could also be easily exploited. If the young Cougars consistently beat his kids up the floor and got into their offense before the Hearts had a chance to set themselves defensively, the results would be disastrous.
But, given the dire nature of the situation, Billy figured it was a chance worth taking.
The problem was – and, again, this lightning bolt of a momentum-shifter took place in the final seconds of the second period, just as Schmid’s tip-in had in the first – only three minutes after picking up his third, Van Cott lunged out toward Reddick going up for a jumper on the right wing with eight seconds left, and fouled the Corcoran star as he let the shot go.
The ill-advised infraction by the hustling but step-too-slow Van Cott turned out to be a two-shot foul that allowed Reddick – one of the deadliest shooters in the city – to put two more points on the board before halftime. Worse, it sent Van Cott to the locker room shackled with four fouls, one away from disqualification.
After one half of basketball – sixteen minutes of game time – the score of Syracuse’s All City death match reflected not only the relative strengths of its two combatants, but just how paper-thin the differences were between them. After four months’ worth of practices, pep rallies and Friday night hand-to-hand combat, the scoreboard read:
Sacred Heart 29, Corcoran 29.
In the locker room, Billy calmly and almost mechanically opened a new stick of Juicy Fruit and popped it in his mouth, while his team manager, a giant of a kid named Pete Shoff, dutifully passed out oranges and plastic water bottles to anyone who wanted one. After a moment, the Hearts coach told his boys they were playing well, but they needed to get back better on defense.
Then, with the flavor of the fresh sick of Juicy Fruit still dancing on his tongue, he looked in the direction of Stepien, the most game-ready of his Bandits, and arguably the most reliable ball-handler and defender among them. “Paul, I’m going to start you this half for Dan,” he said without a trace of emotion. “You know what to do. Watch for Pete flashing up from the low post, keep your passes crisp and, for God’s sake, don’t telegraph them. Look for the open man, and – whatever you do – use your body when you’re bringing it up against those sons of bitches. Just like they showed us back in November, they’re both quick as hell and love – and I mean love – to take chances defensively.”
“And, Danny, you stay ready. You got that?” he added, turning in the direction of his foul-laden senior. Van Cott’s head hung low, a plump bead of sweat poised to drip off the tip of his nose. The youngster looked up, but only barely, an elbow resting on each knee and the small orange he’d been given sitting unpeeled in his left hand. “I’ll get you back in there when the time comes,” said Billy. “You know that. But first we need to run a little clock. You know what I mean? Shorten the game.”
At that point, Billy asked to see the scorebook that Shoff, the manager, regularly kept on the bench. Something Billy used as a way, more than anything, of keeping a running tally of how many personal fouls each kid had – and not just the Heartsmen, but both teams.
He stopped, however, just a second or two into his downward scroll. “Sakowski,” Billy said looking up to his left, alarm in his voice, as though he’d just learned something disturbing. “What the hell? You’ve got three? Jesus, be careful out there, huh? Play defense with your feet, will you? Like I taught you? And, my God, son. No stupid fouls. None. You got that? I..do...not...want…any…stupid…fouls.”
Sakowski just looked at his coach and nodded like a child being scolded by his mother.
Meanwhile, in the Cougar locker room down the hall, Ken Huffman, at least on the surface, appeared calmer and even cooler than Billy. Inside, however, his stomach continued to roil. Up to that point, Huffman hadn't made even a single in-game substitution. Until further notice, he didn’t really plan to.
Huffman’s five starters were all young, all deceptively strong and all battle tested. They could all sprint up and down a court for as long and as hard as they had to. What's more, his starting backcourt could handle the ball like magicians.
All of which led the unassuming teacher/coach from the rolling hills south of the city to believe that, for the time being anyway, the best thing he could do is to just get out the way and let his boys play.
In fact, Ken Huffman had so much confidence in his starting quintet he spent a good part of the fifteen minutes allotted to him talking, not so much to his five regulars, but to the seven kids who made up his bench. He told them, as a group, he needed them all to stay ready and that he might call on any one of them at any moment to give him a few minutes of quality play in the next half, so that one or more of the starters could catch a breath. He wasn’t kidding. At any moment he might actually need one or two of those kids to step up for him, if only for a possession or two.
At the scorer’s table, Morse – who, like just virtually every other basketball play-by-play man of the day, was calling the game without a partner – snapped out for his thousands of listeners some of the more pertinent first-half numbers, such as points per player and, of course, the number of fouls each boy had accumulated.
In the background, those listening to Morse’s voice at home or in the car radio could hear the faint echoes of the Hearts cheerleaders, all ten of whom were now at center court performing one of their well-practiced routines, their white sweaters and maroon-and-white pom-poms shimmering against a dark sea of wool and drab winter hues.
Meanwhile, back at Sacred Heart, almost all the nuns in the convent, or at least the older ones, had made a quick beeline for one of the two bathrooms in the house. Given the closeness of the game, it would take a full-on act of God to tear even one of them away in the minutes ahead, especially as the game drew closer to the fourth quarter. Better to take care of matters while each team was still tucked away in the safety of its locker room.
The young nun upstairs taping the WHEN broadcast did not move from the side of her single bed, however. At one point she had rolled up her sleeves and was now leaning in toward Morse’s voice, her eyes wide and her now-exposed elbows resting, like Van Cott’s, atop her knees. She also had her hands folded in a silent but wringing mix of prayer, hope and dread.
As the game’s second half got under way, Schmid and Contos, unlike they’d done in the first, controlled the tip. However, given the latter’s concern over Harlow, rather than trying to tip the leather Wilson over his head to a streaking Zaganczyk or Stepien, Contos simply grabbed it with both hands and leaned over to protect it. Forget the two points, he reasoned. Let’s just get control of the damn ball and see where that takes us.
That third quarter, much like the first two, was a bruising affair, with both teams still going toe-to-toe and throwing haymakers. Halfway through the period, Sakowski trying for a rebound went up and over the back of Williams, the Cougar’s quickest and most tenacious rebounder. The whistle blew, and when it did the big, bespectacled Pole found himself alongside Van Cott as, now, one of two Heartsmen with four personals.
Billy decided to gamble and ride it out. This was the team that got me where I am, he thought, and I’m going to live and die with who I’ve got out there.
But then, less than two minutes later, with both Sakowski and Van Cott nursing those four fouls, Billy E’s worst-case scenario unfolded. With 2:23 still remaining in the third, an offensive rebound that seemed all-but-destined to end up in Sakowski’s hands, somehow managed to end up in Williams’. The rail-thin Cougar, whose vertical leap could at times seem an optical illusion, exploded up and grabbed the ball just before it reached Sakowski. The lumbering Pole, however, banged into the Corcoran leaper and, in doing so, caused both refs, Ray Wojcik and Mike Stark, to blow their whistles and raise their fists while they ran in the direction of the now crestfallen mountain of a youngster.
The guy who’d been Billy E’s enforcer all season long, a young man who lived to do the kind of dirty work that many starters for many other teams would feel beneath them, had just picked up his fifth foul. He was gone, relegated to the bench for the rest of the game.
Billy E just lowered his head, exhaled, and thought for a moment. Then he rubbed his brow again and thought for a few moments more.
Finally, the Hearts’ head man popped up and made his way down the row of players alongside him. The eyes of a few of them were fixed on Billy. Most, however, were focused elsewhere, staring off at some point in the distance. It was almost as though a number didn’t want their name called and operated on the belief that not making eye contact with their coach might somehow be of assistance in that regard.
One of the new notable exceptions was Rich Dabrowski, the 16-year old sophomore swingman and still-unbroken colt who’d slowly but surely been maturing that season, his skills slowly rounding into shape and his annoying tendency to play “ready, fire, aim” ball diminishing in Billy's eyes. The young Polish immigrant, by way of England, was on the edge of his seat, poised, eyes focused on his coach like a birddog waiting for his master’s approval or, better yet, his next command.
“Rich…” Billy E tried to get out. However, before he even finished speaking, Dabrowski was on his feet and bounding toward his coach. Toe-to-toe with Billy, eyes wide, he waited for his coach to continue.
“Get in there for Sakowski,” was all Billy E could bring himself to say.
With that, young Richie Dombrowski turned and sprinted onto the court, still sporting his cotton maroon warm-up jacket with the fancy white piping.
“Richie!!!” Billy yelled before Dabrowski could take more than a few steps in the direction of the far hoop, an infraction that would have resulted in a technical foul.
“Report in first, huh?” the Hearts coach said to his Bandit, pointing to the scorer’s table and adding in a fatherly and considerably less urgent tone, “And, son…take pff your warm-up, OK?”
To replace Sakowski, Billy E could have easily gone back to his trusty Bandit, Stepien, as a sub. After all, Stepien had started the half and acquitted himself well. But he opted, instead, to go with the only sophomore on the team. He did this for three reasons for this, all of which he’d been mulling over during the pregnant moment he'd sat there rubbing his brow.
First, with his uncharacteristically long arms, quickness and length, Dabrowski could guard just about any Cougar on the court and not be limited, as Stepien might, to covering the guards, Reddick or Harlow.
Second, Dabrowski, despite his penchant for ill-advised shots and his moments of untethered and almost comically misdirected passion to do something special, was conspicuously more athletic than Stepien, which Billy figured could be the difference over the course of the next ten minutes.
And finally, Billy E sensed that of all the kids on his club, none – and that included every one of his starters – possessed more self-confidence than his youngest and most undercooked Bandit, the part-timer with the goofy smile and the ears like a cab with its doors flung open. Given the crowd, the intensity and, especially, how much was now riding on the remaining ten minutes, Billy thought Richie Dabrowski's self-confidence might just be what the doctor ordered.
When play resumed, Williams, an elbows-out lefty shooter, hit the free throw he’d been awarded after Sakowski’s fifth. And that single foul shot was quickly followed by two more by Harlow, after he got hacked going in for a driving layup along the right baseline.
With under a minute to play in the third period, Corcoran had somehow managed to open up the largest lead either team had enjoyed at any point that season in their games against each other, including their two scrimmages – a whopping five points.
Yet, just as he’d done to close out the first period, Schmid, the powerful German kid from just west of town – the verdant little working-class suburb called Fairmount – rose to the occasion with the game clock running down, yet again, to zero.
Calling for the ball and taking it with his back to the basket, now some eight feet out and on the left side of the key, Schmid felt the thick, muscular presence of Reeder behind him. He could hear the low growl of his breathing and even feel the warmth of his breath. While holding the ball tightly in two hands, Schmid faked right once, then left. He then took one slow and almost cartoonishly deliberate dribble to his right, almost backward, in a way that took him even further from the rim. It was a setup move, though, and one done to make it appear as though he was trying to get off a last second jumper, perhaps a fall away, from the left side. It was also a move designed to look as though he was using the act of stepping backward, away from the goal, as a means of creating additional distance between the defender and himself.
But the moment Reeder bit on the move, and the moment he raised even one foot to take a step, Schmid lowered his head, and using his off-hand and near shoulder to protect the ball, bolted by the brawny Cougar on the left baseline and then, leaping straight upward, laid the ball softly but forcefully over the rim with both hands, even as Williams rose from the weak side to try to help.
A mere eleven seconds remained as the Hearts crazies exploded yet again into another ear-splitting roar, the sudden and daunting five-point deficit shaved, in a finger-snap – thanks to a brilliant move by their brilliant All Star forward – down to a more manageable (and far less emotionally draining) three.
As the seconds ticked away, a hurried, desperation attempt by the Cougars sailed far and wide, and the buzzer sounded, ending the third quarter.
With just eight minutes to go in the final All City game that the Salt City would ever see, the red bulbs on the War Memorial three scoreboards, high above the court and burning through a thick haze of cigarette smoke, glared their hard truth and the net result of 24 minutes’ worth of back-and-forth drama in a winner-take-all battle between the two finest schoolboy teams their little factory town had to offer.
Corcoran 47, Sacred Heart 44.
As the two coaches gathered their kids for the start of the fourth and final period, starters and subs alike, both realized this was it. There would be a tomorrow, of course – for them and their teams. And both men would continue to coach their boys as they continued their respective sojourns through the postseason. But this one game, this one great test of wills – a game that now meant so much to both, and for different reasons – had come down to a single quarter, eight measly minutes of basketball, to determine which of them would be remembered, then and evermore, as the finest team in Syracuse in 1967.
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