Wartime Basketball

Wartime Basketball PDF

Author: Douglas Stark

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2016-05

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0803286937

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Wartime Basketball tells the story of basketball’s survival and development during World War II and how those years profoundly affected the game’s growth after the war. Prior to World War II, basketball—professional and collegiate—was largely a regional game, with different styles played throughout the country. Among its many impacts on home-front life, the war forced pro and amateur leagues to contract and combine rosters to stay competitive. At the same time, the U.S. military created base teams made up of top players who found themselves in uniform. The war created the opportunity for players from different parts of the country to play with and against each other. As a result, a more consistent form of basketball began to take shape. The rising popularity of the professional game led to the formation of the World Professional Basketball Tournament (WPBT) in 1939. The original March Madness, the WPBT was played in Chicago for ten years and allowed professional, amateur, barnstorming, and independent teams to compete in a round-robin tournament. The WPBT included all-black and integrated teams in the first instance where all-black teams could compete for a “world series of basketball” against white teams. Wartime Basketball describes how the WPBT paved the way for the National Basketball League to integrate in December 1942, five years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. Weaving stories from the court into wartime and home-front culture like a finely threaded bounce pass, Wartime Basketball sheds light on important developments in the sport’s history that have been largely overlooked.

Wartime Basketball

Wartime Basketball PDF

Author: Stark, Douglas Andrew Stark

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780803286924

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Introduction: A new game -- America goes to war, 1941-1942 -- The color line falls, 1942-1943 -- Wartime basketball, 1943-1944 -- The big man cometh, 1944-1945 -- Looking toward the future, 1945-1946 -- Epilogue: Basketball arrives

The Secret Game

The Secret Game PDF

Author: Scott Ellsworth

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2015-03-10

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0316244635

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Winner of the 2016 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing The true story of the game that never should have happened--and of a nation on the brink of monumental change In the fall of 1943, at the little-known North Carolina College for Negroes, Coach John McLendon was on the verge of changing basketball forever. A protégé of James Naismith, the game's inventor, McLendon taught his team to play the full-court press and run a fast break that no one could catch. His Eagles would become the highest-scoring college team in America--a basketball juggernaut that shattered its opponents by as many as sixty points per game. Yet his players faced danger whenever they traveled backcountry roads. Across town, at Duke University, the best basketball squad on campus wasn't the Blue Devils, but an all-white military team from the Duke medical school. Composed of former college stars from across the country, the team dismantled everyone they faced, including the Duke varsity. They were prepared to take on anyone--until an audacious invitation arrived, one that was years ahead of anything the South had ever seen before. What happened next wasn't on anyone's schedule. Based on years of research, The Secret Game is a story of courage and determination, and of an incredible, long-buried moment in the nation's sporting past. The riveting, true account of a remarkable season, it is the story of how a group of forgotten college basketball players, aided by a pair of refugees from Nazi Germany and a group of daring student activists, not only blazed a trail for a new kind of America, but helped create one of the most meaningful moments in basketball history.

When Basketball Was Jewish

When Basketball Was Jewish PDF

Author: Douglas Stark

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2017-09-01

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 080329588X

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In the 2015–16 NBA season, the Jewish presence in the league was largely confined to Adam Silver, the commissioner; David Blatt, the coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers; and Omri Casspi, a player for the Sacramento Kings. Basketball, however, was once referred to as a Jewish sport. Shortly after the game was invented at the end of the nineteenth century, it spread throughout the country and became particularly popular among Jewish immigrant children in northeastern cities because it could easily be played in an urban setting. Many of basketball’s early stars were Jewish, including Shikey Gotthoffer, Sonny Hertzberg, Nat Holman, Red Klotz, Dolph Schayes, Moe Spahn, and Max Zaslofsky. In this oral history collection, Douglas Stark chronicles Jewish basketball throughout the twentieth century, focusing on 1900 to 1960. As told by the prominent voices of twenty people who played, coached, and refereed it, these conversations shed light on what it means to be a Jew and on how the game evolved from its humble origins to the sport enjoyed worldwide by billions of fans today. The game’s development, changes in style, rise in popularity, and national emergence after World War II are narrated by men reliving their youth, when basketball was a game they played for the love of it. When Basketball Was Jewish reveals, as no previous book has, the evolving role of Jews in basketball and illuminates their contributions to American Jewish history as well as basketball history.

Wheels of Courage

Wheels of Courage PDF

Author: David Davis

Publisher: Center Street

Published: 2020-08-25

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 1546084622

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Out of the carnage of World War II comes an unforgettable tale about defying the odds and finding hope in the most harrowing of circumstances. Wheels of Courage tells the stirring story of the soldiers, sailors, and marines who were paralyzed on the battlefield during World War II-at the Battle of the Bulge, on the island of Okinawa, inside Japanese POW camps-only to return to a world unused to dealing with their traumatic injuries. Doctors considered paraplegics to be "dead-enders" and "no-hopers," with the life expectancy of about a year. Societal stigma was so ingrained that playing sports was considered out-of-bounds for so-called "crippled bodies." But servicemen like Johnny Winterholler, a standout athlete from Wyoming before he was captured on Corregidor, and Stan Den Adel, shot in the back just days before the peace treaty ending the war was signed, refused to waste away in their hospital beds. Thanks to medical advances and the dedication of innovative physicians and rehabilitation coaches, they asserted their right to a life without limitations. The paralyzed veterans formed the first wheelchair basketball teams, and soon the Rolling Devils, the Flying Wheels, and the Gizz Kids were barnstorming the nation and filling arenas with cheering, incredulous fans. The wounded-warriors-turned-playmakers were joined by their British counterparts, led by the indomitable Dr. Ludwig Guttmann. Together, they triggered the birth of the Paralympic Games and opened the gymnasium doors to those with other disabilities, including survivors of the polio epidemic in the 1950s.Much as Jackie Robinson's breakthrough into the major leagues served as an opening salvo in the civil rights movement, these athletes helped jump-start a global movement about human adaptability. Their unlikely heroics on the court showed the world that it is ability, not disability, that matters most. Off the court, their push for equal rights led to dramatic changes in how civilized societies treat individuals with disabilities: from kneeling buses and curb cutouts to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Their saga is yet another lasting legacy of the Greatest Generation, one that has been long overlooked. Drawing on the veterans' own words, stories, and memories about this pioneering era, David Davis has crafted a narrative of survival, resilience, and triumph for sports fans and athletes, history buffs and military veterans, and people with and without disabilities.

The Story of World War II

The Story of World War II PDF

Author: Donald L. Miller

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2010-05-08

Total Pages: 706

ISBN-13: 1439128227

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Drawing on previously unpublished eyewitness accounts, prizewinning historian Donald L. Miller has written what critics are calling one of the most powerful accounts of warfare ever published. Here are the horror and heroism of World War II in the words of the men who fought it, the journalists who covered it, and the civilians who were caught in its fury. Miller gives us an up-close, deeply personal view of a war that was more savagely fought—and whose outcome was in greater doubt—than readers might imagine. This is the war that Americans at the home front would have read about had they had access to the previously censored testimony of the soldiers on which Miller builds his gripping narrative. Miller covers the entire war—on land, at sea, and in the air—and provides new coverage of the brutal island fighting in the Pacific, the bomber war over Europe, the liberation of the death camps, and the contributions of African Americans and other minorities. He concludes with a suspenseful, never-before-told story of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, based on interviews with the men who flew the mission that ended the war.

Breaking Barriers

Breaking Barriers PDF

Author: Douglas Stark

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-12-15

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1442277548

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Today, it is nearly impossible to talk about the best basketball players in America without acknowledging the accomplishments of incredibly talented black athletes like Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant. A little more than a century ago, however, the game was completely dominated by white players playing on segregated courts and teams. In Breaking Barriers: A History of Integration in Professional Basketball, Douglas Stark details the major moments that led to the sport opening its doors to black players. He charts the progress of integration from Bucky Lew—the first black professional basketball player in 1902—to the modern game played by athletes like Stephen Curry and LeBron James. Although Stark focuses on the official integration of basketball in the late 1940s, the story does not end there. Over the past 60-plus years, black athletes have continued to change the game of basketball in terms of style, social progress, and marketability. Spanning the early 1900s to the present day, no other book features such a comprehensive examination of the key events and figures that led to the integration of professional basketball. In Breaking Barriers, these crucial steps in the history of the sport are placed within the larger context of American history, making this book an essential addition to the literature on sports and race in America.

Duty, Honor, Victory

Duty, Honor, Victory PDF

Author: Gary L. Bloomfield

Publisher: Lyons Press

Published: 2004-11

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781592285488

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"It's hard to imagine Derek Jeter or Tiger Woods heading to Iraq to join the U.S. armed forces. But in World War II no American man between the ages of twenty and forty-five was too big to serve--except for the basketball players who exceeded the Army's 6'6" limits for recruits, a situation illustrated in this excellent book. Part log, part pictorial, and total history lesson, this book could be sent to school with your kids and used for social studies class. Riveting and moving." --Sports Illustrated "Bloomfield's extensively researched book . . . is a must-have for any sports-history fan. It's encyclopedic in scope and richly illustrated with fascinating photos." -- Army Times "This survey tells, with a refreshing lack of sentimentality, the tales of sportsmen who found themselves in a far deadlier kind of combat. Bloomfield not only shows us a little-known side of World War II but also surveys a fascinating moment in American sports history." --Booklist From the sandlots, asphalt, and cinder tracks of 1930s America, to its country battlefields and stadium gridirons, the spirit of America's youthful athletes was abruptly transformed from doing their best in sports to showing the mettle in life-and-death warfare. Painstakingly researched and profusely illustrated, Duty, Honor, Victory tells the stories of the well-known athletes whose on-field exploits brought another type of fame, but whose battlefield duty has been long overlooked. Here is football's Chuck Bednarik flying bombing missions over Germany; baseball's Bob Feller commanding an anti-aircraft gun crew aboard the USS Alabama; Warren Spahn wounded and nearly killed when the bridge at Remagen collapses; and Yogi Berra on a rocket boat in Normandy. Duty, Honor, Victory addresses all sports, from tennis and golf, to baseball, football, and basketball. Included here are stories of well-known professionals, lesser known college players, as well as black athletes who fought for our country during World War II. From the origins of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan in the 1930s through their defeats in 1945--extending into 1946 and the integration of major league baseball--this book shows every aspect of America's athletes in World War II.

Eventide

Eventide PDF

Author: Kent Haruf

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2004-05-04

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1400043018

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One of The Best Books of The Year: Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly, The Plain Dealer, and Rocky Mountain News Kent Haruf, award-winning, bestselling author of Plainsong returns to the high-plains town of Holt, Colorado, with a novel of masterful authority. The aging McPheron brothers are learning to live without Victoria Roubideaux, the single mother they took in and who has now left their ranch to start college. A lonely young boy stoically cares for his grandfather while a disabled couple tries to protect their a violent relative. As these lives unfold and intersect, Eventide unveils the immemorial truths about human beings: their fragility and resilience, their selfishness and goodness, and their ability to find family in one another.

Beyond Boycotts

Beyond Boycotts PDF

Author: Philippe Vonnard

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-12-18

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 3110529092

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Sport during Cold War has recently begun to be studied in more depth. Some scholars have edited a book about the US and Soviet sport diplomacy and show ow the government of these two countries have used sport during this period, notably as a tool of "soft power" during the Olympic games. Our goal is to continue in this direction and to focus more on the sport field as a place of exchanges during the Cold War. Regarding this point, our aim is to show that there were events "beyond boycotts"many and that unknown connections existed inside sport. Morevoer, many actors were involved in these exchanges. Thus, it is important not only to focus on the action of States, but also on private actors (international sporting bodies and journalists), considering that they acted around sport (an "apolitic" field) as it was tool to maintain links between the two blocs. Our project offers a good opportunity for young scholars to present original research based on new materials (notably the use of institutional or personals archives). Morevoer, it is also a step forward with a view to conduct research within a global history paradigm, one that is still underused in sport academic fields.