By fe-Ehen Kidd

 

~ Photo by The Detroit News

Dr. James Naismith invented basketball
in 1890 and refused to have it called Nai-
smith ball when the question of a title
came up the next year. A cheerful, bright-
eyed chap, he went to school all his life,
got himself a half-dozen degrees. Some-
where along the line, the press got the
idea that his non-existent middle initial
was “A.” Naismith’s reply to this, typical
of his wit, was that he couldn’t figure out
what it stood for unless it was “anony-
mous.”

 

This picture was posed by the Springfield college basketball team of 1942, and all the
players probably had raging nightmares for a long time afterwards. As far as can be
ascertained, every foul in the modern rule book is being committed in this picture, and
it becomes a deep mystery how the first players survived from season to season to pass
the art of the game along to younger and less crippled men. The gentleman wearing the
handle-bars and the leer, standing on the step-ladder, is saddled with the responsibility
of retrieving the ball when, if ever, the players manage to drop it in the suspended peach
basket. He was not allowed to participate in the game actively, but, from time to time,
probably kicked, swatted or otherwise maimed his opponents from his high vantage

point. Brass knuckles were out, though.

HE TALL, lean red-head dribbled

the ball on place to kill time as

his eyes darted about the court
searching for a teammate in the clear.
Then he caught sight of Saunders—
streaking down the court toward the
basket with not a State man covering
him. High over his opponents’ heads
Red sent the ball twirling into the
outstretched hands of the crack shot
of the team. Saunders seized the ball
and in one motion sent it sailing to-
ward the backboard and right into
the old peach basket to win the game

for his alma mater as the final gun
sounded.

Right into the old peach basket.
And that’s what it was—literally—
in the early days of basketball. When
Dr. James Naismith originated the
gamé in 1890 while he was an instruc-
tor at the YMCA college in Spring-
field, Massachusetts, he asked for two
boxes, 18 by 18 inches. Instead the
building superintendent brought him
two half-bushel peach baskets.

They served the purpose, but they
were soon replaced by a net basket