we

COHOwwanw JO

2 FO

1 the

 

into the interest that within a

couple of years has placed bas-

ketball on the big league plane

with professional hockey in New

York, and out-draws prize fights,

MR. IRISH THE PIONEER

T IS an interest that now enables
I basketball, amateur, semi-pro-

- fessional and professional, to hire
the big sports arenas of the city, like

Hippodrome and Madison
Square Garden, and to play there-:
in at a considerable profit.

Credit for placing the sport on this
plane is given a young New Yorker
named Ned Irish, who had the faith
that only youth can give in the fu-
ture of basketball and booked eight
college games in the season of 1934-
35 into Madison Square Garden.

‘The game was an immediate sensa- |

tion and drew nearly 100,000 in at-

|} tendance, and $100,000 in piachiaas

the first season.

Young Mr. Irish is still pro-
moting basketball, and unless he
has suffered the usual fate of the
pioneer. papain and had

for Mr. ‘Irish. ‘He has dr
crowds of over 18,000 for some
his games, and prize’ fights |
hockey can’t do that.

NAISMITH, FATHER OF GAME

HE game is only 45 years old.
e It was originated, according to

the veracious Mr. Frank G.
Menke’s record book, in 1891 by Dr.
| James A;, Naismith, an instructor
at the time at the Y, M. C. A; in
Springfield, Mass.

Mr. Naismith’s sole thought was
to devise something to add to the
usual gymnasium curriculum, and
he first used those old-fashioned
cone-shaped peach baskets as his
goals, from which the game got its:
name. He probably had no idea that
he was inventing a game that was
to sweep the country, and to engross

more players than any other game
in existence.

And he certainly couldn’t
have had any notion that his

little pastime would revolution-
ize the good old game of football
. in this country. Football has been
borrowing from basketbalk,until
football is really glorified basket-
ball. And the borrowings have
‘cha football from a boring
to one | of the most
thrilling of games. from the pneer
. tator’s standp int.

We'think both pasketball and foot-

    

       
 
  

ball should ge “together and rear a
joint mont

nt to the memory of

(Copyright 1936) /

 

They used to be a lot of profes-
sional and so-called semi-profes-
sional basketball teams roaming thr
land, and for a time they attracte
considerable interest. Then. for
while the interest waned, but it he
suddenly been revived by the excite,
ment over the college games. Noy
the professionals and the semi-pro;
are drawing, too.

_ The difference between a col-

lege team and a’ professional

team in basketball, as we under-
stand it, is the same difference
that the football experts profess
to see in professional and college
football. The professional game |