CCNY beats Yale!, by Arieh Sclar

In the early years of the twentieth century, basketball thrived at small colleges.  For instance, one historian found that Oberlin College, located in Ohio, did not have the resources to build a ‘big-time’ football program, so it offered basketball as a way to provide athletic opportunities to students, attract loyalty and funds from alumni and fans, and build institutional prestige.[1]  For similar reasons, New York City colleges such as New York University (NYU), and the City College of New York (CCNY) established basketball programs in the mid-1900s.  Along with Columbia University, which focused on basketball after de-emphasizing football, these schools expanded the athletic opportunities of Jewish students.  Jews from the lower East Side competed for these schools as Samuel Melitzer starred at Columbia and Joe Girsdansky played for NYU.  CCNY’s vast Jewish student population and high number of Jewish players, however, led the school to symbolize Jewish athletic achievement in college basketball.[2] 

During the 1900s, Jewish players helped turn CCNY into an early basketball power.  The tuition-free CCNY primarily served a Jewish population and Jewish players from the University Settlement such as Barney Sedran, Ira Streusand, and Harry Brill led CCNY to a record of 9-2 in 1908.  During the 1909 season, Jews made up the entire team and served as manager, assistant manager, and coach.  The team finished 8-3 and its competitive success drew the notice of the New York press and Spalding guides.[3]  More importantly, a ‘Jewish’ team in college sports drew the attention of Jewish newspapers.  In December 1908, at the beginning of the basketball season, the American Hebrew claimed CCNY’s victories over Princeton and Yale, “stamps them as the premier college five.”[4]  Yet, even as CCNY became a prominent program due to its Jewish players, the school experienced problems associated with the basketball program.

In November 1907, the student newspaper The Campus had exclaimed that basketball could “advertise” the school “to the public outside of New York City.”  The paper equated the fame of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, known as the “Big Three,” to their prestige in the athletic world, and stated, “there can certainly be no harm in athletics flourishing in any college.”  Commentators had been denouncing the commercial and competitive pressures of ‘big time’ college sport since the 1890s, and The Campus ignored the recent ‘crisis’ of college football caused by brutal and violent play.  Instead, the newspaper claimed, “athletics have not been detrimental to the growth of any institution or impaired their high standard.”[5]

The Campus wanted basketball to be a positive force at the college.  The editor criticized students in December 1907 for “hissing” at opponents, which “violated the first laws of hospitality.”  The paper condemned similar behavior during a 33-23 loss to Columbia, but had little to say about CCNY’s overwhelming victory over Adelphi the following week by a score of 95-11.  Later that season, an editorial again asked fans to “be manly and display some courtesy toward visitors.”[6]  Controlling crowds upwards of 1,500 proved difficult.  So did attempts to limit basketball’s impact on other campus activities.  In March 1908, The Campus stated that athletics “are not everything.  Last Friday evening, with the game as a counterattraction, not a single one of the literary societies could muster a quorum and conditions very much the same as this have been the rules since the opening of the basketball season.”[7] 

As much as the basketball team’s success drew students away from other campus activities, a lack of success hurt the basketball program.  In 1910, CCNY remained a predominantly Jewish team, although without Sedran, Streusand or Brill.  The basketball team lost early and often, including to Navy, whose “coach told our [coach] Mr. Palmer that his team learned how to play the game from us.”  Such praise meant little to the students who, during the season, became “indifferent and failed to support the team.”  The lack of attendance proved financially costly because the school’s Athletic Association had provided “our basket-ball men with the best outfits that money could purchase.”  As a result, the team barely made a profit since “it was never dreamt that our student body could be so devoid of any semblance of college pride as to be interested in a team only so long as it is always the victor.”[8]

CCNY’s basketball fortunes returned in 1911 and students looked to avenge the previous season’s loss to Yale.  As the date of the rematch drew close, The Campus appealed for the students to organize more cheers in order to “help the players.”  It became important to beat Yale in order to “maintain the reputation which we have built up by the hardest kind of work.”[9]  CCNY’s 20-15 victory merited a three-page article in The Campus, which exclaimed: “the high standards of our curriculum could not have done, in years, what the glorious triumph of the varsity basketball team over Yale accomplished in one short evening.”[10]

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[1] Horger, “Play By The Rules,” 210-215.  ‘Big-time’ programs existed as an abstraction between the absolutes of professional and amateur sport.  ‘Student-athletes’ received no pay, but universities often earned large amounts of revenue from competitions.  On the history of college basketball, see Neil D. Isaacs, All The Moves: A History of College Basketball (New York: Harper and Row, 1984); Peter C. Bjarkman, Hoopla: A Century of College Basketball (Indianapolis: Masters Press, 1996).  On college sport, see Smith, Sports and Freedom.

[2] On early college basketball, see Isaacs, All The Moves, 39-45.  Columbia abolished football in the early 1900s and expanded the basketball program to compete with professional, non-college, and amateur teams.  New York provided the infrastructure and acceptance for Columbia basketball to thrive in the 1900s and 1910s as it dominated the Ivy League. 

[3] For information on the CCNY team, see Basketball, CCNY Microcosm, 1909.  The New York Times provided regular coverage of CCNY games during the late 1900s, although with only brief commentary on the game.  On CCNY in Spalding, see the guides in 1906, 1908, and 1909.

[4] “The Jewish Athlete,” American Hebrew, December 18, 1908.

[5] Editorial, The Campus, November 25, 1907. In 1907, CCNY moved from 23^rd Street to 137^th Street (its present location).  The new campus included expanded facilities, including a gymnasium.  That same year, the college hired Leonard Palmer as a “tutor in the department of Physical Instruction and Training at a salary of $600 per annum.”  In October, Palmer’s salary was increased to $800.  See Proceedings of the Board of Trustees of the College of the City of New York, February 25, 1907 and October 21, 1907.  On the football crisis of 1905, see Smith, Sports and Freedom, 191-208; Oriard, Reading Football, 164-165, 170-171. 

[6] Condemnation of fan behavior as well as Adelphi score in Editorial, The Campus, December 11, 1907.  Columbia score found in The Campus, December 4, 1907.  The second condemnation found in The Campus, January 8, 1908.

[7] Editorial, The Campus, March 18, 1908.  The same issue contained an article entitled “Basketball Statement,” which illustrated the team had produced net revenue of $440.14 for the season.  On the financial considerations involving basketball at CCNY in the 1900s and 1910s, see reports in the CCNY Microcosm: Official Annual of the College.

[8] “Basketball,” The Campus, February 9, 1910; “Athletics: The Last Straw,” The Campus, February 23, 1910.

[9] “Athletics: Soon,” The Campus, December 7, 1910.

[10] “Our Recent Victory,” The Campus, December 21, 1910. 

The 'basketball Jew' arrives, by Ari Sclar

In 1908, the American Hebrew published its first series of articles on Jewish athleticism.  The first article, “Activity of the Jews in Athletics,” celebrated the fact that teams from either the Clark House or University Settlement, “solely made up of Jewish boys, has held the basketball championship of the settlement league…ever since the league came into existence.”  The newspaper focused on basketball played on the lower East Side in an environment predominated by Jews, which led to the conclusion that, “it is a well established fact that in basketball, the Jew has no superior.”  More significantly, the newspaper attempted to examine the root of Jewish success.  This urban, frenetic and hurried sport, according to the Hebrew, “requires a good deal of quick thinking, lightning like rapidity of movement and endurance; it does not call for brutality and brute strength and that is why the Jews excel in it.”[1]

The Hebrew’s assertion of Jewish basketball superiority fit into the dominant writing about the sport’s required characteristics.  Early accounts of the sport noted that “basket-ball requires the most rapid kind of play,” which necessitated a certain kind of player.  The focus on passing placed a premium on quickness and speed.  A 1912 treatise explained that “agility and alertness are two of the fundamental and principle characteristics.”  In 1903, Spalding’s editor pronounced: “Basket ball is a game of skill and not of brute force.  I have seen a team weighing on an average fifteen pounds less than the other win a game by skill in passing the ball.”[2]  Even inventor James Naismith commented: “The first principle on which the game was based was that it should demand of, and develop in, the player of the highest type of physical and athletic development.  This type in the mind of the writer was the tall, agile, graceful, and expert athlete, rather than the massive muscular man on the one hand, or the cadaverous greyhound type on the other.”[3]  The stereotyped Jewish immigrant body did not fit Naismith’s ideal, but it was not negated as either the ‘cadaverous greyhound’ or the ‘massive muscular’ type.

The Hebrew took the dominant writing about basketball and applied it to the imagined category of the ‘Jew.’  The Hebrew proposed, possibly for the first time, that the Jewish body could serve as an advantage in athletic competition.  The Hebrew inverted the lack of physical size from a determinant of Jewish non-athleticism and weakness into an advantage in basketball.  Jewish vitality could be transformed into endurance and intellectual ability translated into mental acuteness in a rapid game that required instinctual quickness.  Yet, ascriptions of Jewish intelligence perpetuated the underpinnings of the stereotype.  The implication that Jews did not have “brute strength” meant Jewish masculine identity had not escaped perceptions of Jewish physical inferiority.  Jews succeeded because of quickness and thinking, not because of physical strength.

The Hebrew’s ‘basketball Jew’ possessed the immigrant body and an essential Jewishness.  Speed and the ability for fast play served as important characteristics, but the Jew also had the necessary mental makeup needed to succeed.  Thus, the Jew succeeded as, and because of being, a Jew.  The racial pride involved in celebrating this distinctiveness indicated that although Bushnell and others presented Jewish athleticism as a way to overcome ‘clannish’ tendencies, Jews did not have to change their racial or cultural identity to become American.  In fact, the underlying assumption of the Hebrew’s argument was that if Jews lost either their small body or their Jewish intellect, they would also lose their status as superior basketball players.  American Jews had found an activity that proved their willingness to participate in mainstream society without losing their positive racial identity.

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[1] “Activity of the Jews in Athletics,” American Hebrew, September 18, 1908. 

[2] Paret, “Basket Ball,” 227; “Basket Ball and Its Success,” New York Times, November 12, 1893. The press explained that playing positions were virtually interchangeable with the exception of center, which required an additional characteristic: height.  Guerdon N. Messer, How to Play Basket Ball: A Thesis on the Technique of the Game (New York: American Sports Publishing Co., 1912); “Order v. Chaos,” Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide 1902-03 (New York: American Sports Publishing Company, 1903).

[3] Naismith, “Basket Ball,” 340.

Debating sports at the 92nd Street YMHA, by Ari Sclar

Eliot’s comments also received attention at the 92^nd Street YMHA, where a Bulletin editorial agreed that, “our Jewish young men are not sufficiently developed physically,” and claimed that the relatively few Jewish athletes served as “the best proof of this.”  The solution would be for “the Jewish philanthropist to remove the stigma by giving larger support than heretofore to institutions like the YMHA,” which was “engaged in the all-around development of young men.”[1]  Officials extended the YMHA’s commitment to competitive sport in the 1908 annual report. “We hope some day to see some of our own boys take a prominent part in athletic competition and thus disprove that our people do not give proper attention to our physical development.”  Finally, in October 1908, a Bulletin editorial stated: “Let us therefore from now on determine to win honors in the athletic world…the Association will do its share toward encouraging athletics in the building.”[2]

Institutional officials blamed the lack of athletes on the absence of communal support for institutions interested in “all-around development.”  The YMHA hoped to illustrate that it offered programs unavailable elsewhere in organized Jewish communal life, and thus deserved more attention, finances, and support.  Yet, only months before Eliot’s speech, the Atlas Athletic Club had decided to “sever its connection…as a subordinate society of your Association,” and established for itself an independent clubhouse in the Bronx.  Atlas president Henry Lang, who served on the AAU’s Metropolitan Basketball Committee during the mid-1900s, explained to the YMHA Board of Directors that, “the fostering of athletics, with the hope that some day might see Jewish athletes gain recognition and merit (as Jews have done in other fields of life) has been the goal we have been striving to attain.”  Lang lamented “the inability of the Association to specialize in the direction of and cater to athletics; at the same time, we have held together in the Association, hoping that some day the hand of fortune might shower on you to enable you to augment Jewish athletic prowess.”[3]  Despite Lang’s complaint regarding the YMHA’s “inability” to provide financial support for athletic specialization, “unwillingness” may have been a more fitting word.  Atlas’s hope for a YMHA athletic culture had produced no appeal to ‘philanthropists.’  Eliot’s comments, on the other hand, raised an immediate cry for help and appear to have been the necessary catalyst to produce a cultural change at the YMHA.

One must be careful in drawing too broad a conclusion regarding the 92^nd Street YMHA’s response to Eliot’s comments.  YMHA officials remained silent regarding Atlas’s departure, which allowed them to blame the broader community for Jewish physical deficiencies.  They could therefore justifiably demand more support in their (not Atlas’) fight to “remove the stigma.”[4]  Yet, the YMHA had supported, ideologically if not financially, Atlas’s desire to produce Jewish athletes.  At the formal opening of Atlas’s new clubhouse in the Bronx, YMHA Superintendent William Mitchell foreshadowed what would become the YMHA’s project only months later, but at the time, seemed to be the exclusive property of Atlas: “it is necessary that you stick to your resolution to do purely athletic work.”  Mitchell explained that even if Atlas did not develop champions, “your work will not have been in vain.  I am a great believer in young men, in young Jewish men, and in physical sport, as a builder of manhood and character.”[5]

Mitchell unified his concept of manhood with ‘character,’ which indicated the influence of the American Physical Education Association (APEA) on the YMHA gymnasium program.  Although physical educators had various levels of commitment toward sport, including some opposition to it, the APEA promoted a manhood of self-control that produced a symmetrical body and the harmonious development of the whole person.  Educators generally did not equate health with muscles or physical size, which provided the YMHA with an attractive model with which to build its physical education department.  Yet, the YMHA still had to conform to an external ideal and APEA manhood remained informed by the racial superiority, if not the physical size and strength, of the Anglo-Saxon male.  The APEA model also could not provide an adequate defense to counter charges of Jewish weakness.  When Charles Eliot spoke of Jewish physical inferiority, the YMHA decided that ‘all-around’ development would no longer be enough to produce masculine Jews.  Rather than forcing the Jewish man to live up to the physical ideal of muscular size and strength, the YMHA opened a dialogue with dominant conceptions of athleticism and became determined to ‘win honors in the athletic world.’[6]  The YMHA had sought to avoid any engagement with the stereotype of the non-athletic, weak Jew. 

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[1] “Are the Jews Really Inferior,” Y Bulletin, February 1908.

[2] Young Men’s Hebrew Association, Thirty-Fourth Annual Report, 1908 (New York: 1909).  The Report was re-published in the Y Bulletin, March 1908.  “Athletics in the YMHA,” YMHA Bulletin, October 1908.

[3] Henry Lang to the Board of Directors of the 92^nd Street YMHA, March 20, 1907, Young Men’s Hebrew Association records, 92^nd Street Y Archives, New York; According to information found in the Atlas minute book, the club was repeatedly denied use of the YMHA gymnasium for basketball practice.  In response, Atlas began practicing at other area gymnasiums and furthered their separation from the YMHA. Club members also consistently asked the Association to purchase or rent a running track, but were ignored or denied.  According to the Atlas Athletic Club minute book, the club began looking for a new ‘home’ in January 1905.  The Bulletin announced Atlas’ departure and focused on the lack of “outdoor training quarters” since the “Association did not cover this phase of athletics.”  See “Jewish Athletic Club,” Y Bulletin, May 1907. Lang’s name was listed as a member of the AAU Committee, “Basket Ball Leaders Purifying the Game,” New York Times, December 15, 1906.

[4] Additional funding in the late 1900s permitted the hiring of an “athletic coach,” though one official complained that, “too much stress was being placed on athletic work.”  See Minutes of Class Committee, March 19, 1910, Young Men’s Hebrew Association records, 92^nd Street Y Archives, New York.  Young adult males had an additional outlet in the late 1900s.  In 1906, the City Athletic Club was formed to “promote athletics and sociability.”  Though the vast majority of its members and leaders were Jewish, it was not considered an exclusively Jewish club.  On the City AC, see Riess, “Sports and the American Jew,” 10; “The City Athletic Club,” American Hebrew, November 20, 1908.

[5] For Mitchell’s speech, see “Jewish Athletic Club, Y Bulletin, May 1907. Lang remained a life-long YMHA member, which is likely why the Atlas records are located at the 92^nd Street Y Archives.   In the letter to the Board of Directors, Lang referred to the lack of a Jewish athletic tradition, but did not discuss the Jewish body.  He thus legitimized one aspect of the stereotype (non-athleticism), but would have likely argued against the other (physical weakness).

[6] On the APEA and physical educators, see Park, “Healthy, Moral, and Strong,” 148-154. See Mrozek, Sport and American Mentality, 36-41. On the football player as athletic ideal, see Oriard, Reading Football, 189-273 passim.  On Jewish discomfort with aspects of physical or athletic aggressiveness, see Eisen, “Jewish History and the Ideology of Modern Sport,” 512-514, 520-521.  Some physical educators like Luther Gulick worked closely with Progressive reformers while others had little interest or contact with reform efforts.  Debates over competitive sport generally revolved around the need for good management as a bulwark against it succumbing to unhealthy competitive or commercial pressures.  The APEA studied muscular activity, symmetry; anthropometry, and other ‘sciences.’  As a member of the APEA, YMHA physical education director George Schoening would have been keenly aware of the studies, debates, lectures, and symposiums occurring throughout the country.  Schoening first appeared in the membership role of the APEA in 1903, the year after becoming the YMHA physical education director. 

Harvard President Charles Eliot on Jewish physicality, by Ari Sclar

In December 1907, Harvard University president Charles Eliot addressed Harvard’s Menorah Society, which had been formed the previous year as a way for Harvard’s Jewish students to study “Jewish culture.”  Eliot spoke before approximately 200 people, including Jewish students from Brown, Dartmouth, Tufts, Boston University, MIT, and Radcliff.  According to the New York Times, Eliot stated: “If you take any representative gathering of, say a thousand Jews, you will find that they are distinctly inferior in stature and physical development to a similar gathering of representatives of any other race.”  President Eliot did not claim that Jews could not physically regenerate, but he placed the responsibility on Jews to conform to the American physical ideal.  He believed that the freedom offered by America provided an opportunity for modern Jews to recapture the “glorious times in the history of the Jews when there was a martial spirit among you.”  Eliot indicated that Jewish physical inferiority occurred because of centuries of suffering, but also claimed: “Here at Harvard, you young men, members of the Jewish race, neglect the out-of-door life, and do not get out into the fresh air and develop physically as you should, although you are taking every advantage of the intellectual opportunities offered you.”[1]

Eliot’s comments, which imposed a unified Jewish cultural and racial identity that included both physical deficiency and lack of physical activity, received an immediate, and public, response from American Jews.  Jewish newspapers in Denver, St. Louis, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and elsewhere published editorials, letters, and rabbinical sermons on the subject of Jewish normality.  Most commentary focused on Eliot’s condemnation of Jewish physicality.  Some Jews posited ‘vitality’ as an alternative definition of physicality in order to illustrate that traditional Judaism promoted health.  Rabbi Joseph Silverman of New York’s prestigious Temple Emanu-El denied that Jews, including eastern European Jews, had ever degenerated, and claimed “stature and development are matters of leisure.”  Rabbi Samuel Margolies of Cleveland’s Anshe Emeth agreed and stated that, “the best authorities on this subject…call attention to the pronounced vitality of the Jews and to their physical strength.”[2] 

During the controversy, the American Hebrew acquiesced to the intellectual-physical dichotomy that rendered Jews a non-athletic ‘other’ in American society.  The Hebrew endorsed sport as the primary means to overcome the negative characteristics associated with the Jewish body.  Ghettoization had partially caused the degeneration of the Jewish body, but “there is a certain amount of truth in Prof. Eliot’s statements” since Jews’ intellectual activity caused inadequate physical training.  This did not change the fact that Jewish boxers, runners, and weight-lifter E.L. Levy proved that, “Jews are capable of developing their muscular system equally as well as other folk and that there is no inherent difficulty in acquiring athletic qualifications if these be desired.”  The Hebrew implied that too few Jews had this desire and appealed to “Jewish students at Harvard and elsewhere” to take Eliot’s advice and “devote even a greater amount of time to their outdoor sports than the ordinary student whose frame has been built up by generations of life in the country.”[3]

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[1] Eliot’s statements quoted in “Urges Jews to be Strong,” New York Times, December 21, 1907, 1. Also see “Dr. Eliot on Jewish Physique,” American Hebrew, December 27, 1907.  Jewish papers were printed on Fridays, so the response in the Jewish press occurred the following week. For quote on the Menorah Society’s goal, see Seth Korelitz, “The Menorah Idea: From Religion to Culture, from Race to Ethnicity,” American Jewish History 85, no. 1 (1997): 79; Jenna Weissman Joselit, “Against Ghettoism: A History of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, 1906-1930,” American Jewish Archives 30 (1978): 133-154.  Eliot’s speech was the second lecture in a series given by Menorah. Eliot was no proponent of Jewish assimilation and argued that Jews should not intermarry.  See “Dr. Eliot Urges Jews to Uphold Traditions,” New York Times, December 13, 1924.

[2] “Rabbi Excerpts to Eliot Speech,” New York Times, December 22, 1907, 14.  Editorial, Jewish Outlook (Denver), January 3, 1908.  Also see “Rabbi Chas. Fleischer’s Reply to President Eliot,” Jewish Voice (St. Louis), January 10, 1908; “President Eliot at the Menorah Society,” Jewish Advocate (Boston), December 27, 1907; Editorial, Jewish Criterion (Pittsburgh), December 27, 1907.  During the decade, and in response to a hostile environment, American Jews formed various defense organizations.  Among the most important was the American Jewish Committee (AJC), founded in 1906 following the Kishinev pogroms. On the early development of the AJC, see Gerald Sorin, A Time for Building: The Third Migration, 1880-1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1992), 204-207.  In 1908, the New York police commissioner claimed that Jews constituted half the city’s criminals, which broadened rhetorical denouncements of the cunning Jewish mind.  T.A. Bingham, “Foreign Criminals in New York” North American Review 188 (September 1908). Arthur Goren explained that New York Jews established the Kehillah in 1908 in response to Bingham’s charges regarding Jewish criminality.  See Goren, New York Jews and the Quest for Community: The Kehillah Experiment, 1908-1922 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970).  The perception of Jewish economic and intellectual strength led to broad conspiracy theories and Jewish bankers were a central figure in anti-Semitic texts.  According to E.A. Ross, Jewish criminals were those of “cunning” not violence.  See Ross, The Old World in the New, 155-157; Hendrick, “The Jewish Invasion of America,” 125-128.

[3] Editorial: Jewish Physique, American Hebrew, December 27, 1907.

The 'busy izzies', by Ari Sclar

In the 1900s, New York Jewish youth dominated play at a number of non-Jewish settlements, most importantly, the University Settlement.  Upon the formation of the Inter-Settlement League, University Settlement members organized an Athletic Association, which by the end of 1903, had “upwards of one hundred members, each paying monthly dues of fifteen cents and an initiation fee of twenty-five cents.”  Though the settlement had a “small and inadequate gymnasium,” basketball became a popular sport.  “The enthusiasm and skill developed” at the settlement resulted in the junior class winning the title during each of the Inter-Settlement League’s first three years.  In 1906, the settlement received $50,000 to expand the gymnasium facilities and brought in a new coach for the youngest and smallest players, called the schoolboys or midgets.[1]

Harry Baum, a Jewish immigrant from Central Europe, had never played basketball when he began coaching at the University Settlement.  He had, however, played one year of lacrosse in college and applied many of the lessons he learned in that sport to basketball.  Lacrosse “taught him the value of passing and the folly of losing possession of the ball with long heaves,” so he taught a style of constant movement, cutting to the basket, and quick passes.  The spatial limitations of urban environments shaped how participants played basketball as cramped city gymnasiums restricted player movement.  Yet, Baum applied his concepts to basketball not only because of limited space, but also because of the type of player at the settlement.  His first team, made up exclusively of Jews and nicknamed the ‘busy izzies,’ consisted of “players [that] were so small,” Baum developed “tactics based on speed and deception.”  He focused on developing a style that commentators later claimed had placed a “heavy emphasis on brains in the absence of brawn.”[2]

Baum had tremendous success at the University Settlement, which dominated the schoolboy division during his five-year tenure.  He became a “slave-driving coach” to Jewish youth “who wanted exactly that sort of thing.  They were fearless and had an overwhelming ambition to make good…and [were] grateful for instruction in their main passion in life.”  His first team, consisting of future professionals Barney Sedran, Marty Friedman, and Ira Streusand, among others, won both the schoolboy division in the Inter-Settlement League and the Metropolitan Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) championship.[3]  Their success reflected a broader athletic success of American Jews, which the mainstream press presented as a break from the Jewish past.

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[1] On the settlement league, see “Basket Ball Records,” Official Handbook of the Inter-Settlement Athletic Association of Greater New York (New York: A.G. Spalding & Bros., 1908).  On information of the University Settlement’s Athletic Association and gymnasium, see Settlement Athletics, Seventeenth Annual Report (New York: University Settlement, 1904 and 1905).  On the donation, see Headworker’s Report, Twentieth Annual Report (New York: University Settlement, 1906). 

[2] Stanley Frank, “It Was Obvious – But Here is the First Man to See It,” New York Evening Post, December 12, 1934.  For a similar depiction of early black basketball, see Bob Kuska, Hot Potato: How Washington and New York Gave Birth to Black Basketball and Changed America’s Game Forever (Charlottesville, VA.: University of Virginia Press, 2004).

[3] Frank, “It Was Obvious – But Here is the First Man to See It.”

Basketball at the 92nd Street YMHA: success and tension, by Ari Sclar

The YMHA experienced both success and problems during its first two basketball seasons.  By February 1901, a second YMHA team had formed.  The “first” team, made up of the YMHA’s “brawniest members,” opened its second season in October 1901 with high hopes since, “during the Summer months, [the players] practiced the rules of 1901 and are quite proficient in the game.”  A “regular second team” opened its season with a 44-5 victory over the Nordica Basketball Team in a “free and easy fashion.”  The YMHA also increased its admission charge to ten cents in order to decrease attendance.[1]  The measure did not appear to have the desired effect.  At the end of 1901 and YMHA officials banned basketball games with outside, or non-institutional, teams.  The institution’s 1902 annual report declared that “intense rivalry and limited quarters” influenced the decision.[2]

The basketball ban reflected the ideology of YMHA physical education, which limited competitive opportunities.  In January 1902, the Bulletin published an article entitled “Athletic ‘Specialists.’”  The article explained that members would “derive great benefit” from physical activities, but denounced the “small minority [of members] who seem to think that the gymnasium is a training ground for specialized work…we think that a young man ought to join a gymnasium for the purpose of rounding himself out physically, and not for the purpose of abnormally developing some particular muscle.”[3] Attempts to minimize the importance of athletic specialization conflicted with some members’ aspirations, especially those of the Atlas Athletic club, which had changed its name from the YMHA Athletic Club in order to function “without being interfered with by the YMHA.”  The club had been formed to encourage physical culture, but members primarily focused on competitive sport in the early 1900s.[4]  They found the YMHA generally unwilling to cater to their desires.  Officials initially kept their distance from the competitive basketball world as they encouraged mass education, not specialized athletics.

For example, the YMHA did not immediately join the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), amateur basketball’s ruling body, after forming its original basketball team.  The AAU took over control of basketball after YMCA leaders denounced basketball due to commercialism and professionalism.  Led by Luther Gulick, the AAU Basketball Committee implemented a registration plan in the 1890s to combat the influence of professionalism in basketball and forbad AAU teams from playing even independent, or non-AAU, amateur teams.[5]  The AAU realistically understood it could not eliminate professional basketball, but sought to contain it from spreading into ‘pure’ amateur competition by banning non-registered players and teams from all AAU competitions.  During its initial foray into basketball, therefore, YMHA basketball had been on the outside of the official amateur structure.[6]

In November 1903, the YMHA joined the AAU and resumed basketball games against outside teams.  Both developments brought the YMHA closer to the commercial and competitive culture of mainstream amateur sport.  AAU membership meant emphasizing conformity to the amateur ideal.  It also introduced new pressures.  Competition necessitated practice, representative teams, and a hierarchical athletic structure.  An admission charge to all games accompanied the resumption of outside competition.  Unlike the initial admission fee established in 1901 to control attendance, the new admission charge served purely financial ends.  Officials requested that “since the money is to go toward the vacation camp fund everybody ought to patronize them [basketball games].”[7]  

Membership in the AAU made competitive sport more visible at the YMHA.  After the YMHA’s representative team went winless in five games at the 1904 Metropolitan AAU championship, including a 57-10 loss, the Association hosted the tournament in 1905.[8]  YMHA officials publicly explained that they had offered the use of the gymnasium out of a “belief that all amateur sport should be put on a high plane and kept free from professionalism.”  More importantly, the tournament “attracted several thousands [spectators]…many of whom had never heard of the Association,” and generated almost $150 from tournament receipts.  Officials also claimed that the AAU tournament directly increased basketball’s popularity at the YMHA.[9] 

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[1] For mention of the second team, see “Physical Department,” Y Bulletin (February 1901). On the “brawniest” members, the opening victory and the admission charge, see “Physical Department,” Y Bulletin (October 1901).  While an admission charge successfully decreased attendance, it is unclear whom the YMHA was attempting to exclude.  The Bulletin commented it was due to a “large number of outsiders” at games.  Superintendent Mitchell wrote in his journal that the fee resulted in “much less crowding and the classes were not depleted of their pupils.” See William Mitchell Journal, February 6, 1901, Young Men’s Hebrew Association records, 92^nd Street Y Archives, New York. The 1901 Annual Report simply mentioned that the charge was made to “avoid overcrowding of the track.”  See Young Men’s Hebrew Association, Twenty-Seventh Annual Report, 1901 (New York: 1902). In the 1890s, YMCAs charged admission in order to exclude unwanted guests.  Luther Gulick believed spectators could learn as much from the instructional game as the players.  If basketball was to serve instructional ends, it needed to exist as a respectable medium since the enforcement of certain standards of decorum would improve the public behavior – and thus morals – of working class spectators.  While at the YMCA, Gulick believed this possible through two methods: charging admission and stopping games until unruly behavior ceased. Historian Marc Horger has connected charging admission to historian Lawrence Levine’s description of a “cultural hierarchy” since some reformers hoped that sport could exist in a polite, and even silent, environment.  Gulick believed that the audience needed to abide by cultural norms imposed by basketball’s guardians.  This conception fit into the standard pattern of cultural development described by Levine.  See Horger, “Play By The Rules,” 42-44; Lawrence Levine, Highbrow, Lowbrow: Cultural Hierarchy: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988).

[2] Young Men’s Hebrew Association, Twenty-Eighth Annual Report, 1902 (New York: 1903). The Bulletin explained that the final game occurred on December 18, 1901, because competition with outside teams, “interfere too much with the regular work of the gymnasium.” See Physical Department, YMHA Bulletin, January 1902.  Mitchell made no reference of interference, but he noted that two YMHA players were injured in the December 18^th game and that during an October game, one of the players “struck his head against the wall.” See William Mitchell Journal, October 23, 1901, Young Men’s Hebrew Association records, 92^nd Street Y Archives, New York.

[3] “Athletic ‘Specialists’,” Y Bulletin, January 1902. 

[4] Soon after the publication of “Athletic ‘Specialists,’” the YMHA suspended the Atlas Athletic club. The following is derived from the Minutes of the Atlas Athletic Club, William Mitchell Journal, the Y Bulletin, Minutes of the Board of Directors and Minutes of the House Committee, Young Men’s Hebrew Association records, 92^nd Street Y Archives, New York.  In February 1902, one of the club’s founding members was suspended from the gymnasium.  In response, the club expelled the YMHA’s physical instructor, Charles Jardine, as an honorary member. In April, Jardine appealed to the Board of Directors for an assistant and suspended three more Atlas members for “insubordination and mischief breeding in the Gymnasium.” At the club’s meeting on May 5, 1902, which was held at the home of the one of the members due to the suspension, it was club decided: “Applicants for membership need not be member of YMHA gymnasium.” Association officials demanded the club turn over their minute book, but they refused and in response, the YMHA suspended the entire club.  After club representatives met with YMHA President Percival Menken, the club returned to the Association without further penalty.  That summer, Jardine resigned and was replaced by a professional physical director, George Schoening.  An examination of the Atlas minute book indicated no reason for YMHA officials to demand its appearance.  No pages appear to have been removed.  In the midst of the controversy, Atlas joined the AAU in April 1903, preceding the YMHA’s AAU membership of November 1903. See Minutes of the Atlas Athletic Club, May 5, 1903, Young Men’s Hebrew Association records, 92^nd Street Y Archives, New York.

[5] Some commentators praised the ‘perfect’ plan, but it proved ineffective since registration did not stop amateurs and professionals from playing against one another.  See Horger, “Play By The Rules,” 67-72; “AAU Controls Basket Ball,” New York Times, November 13, 1907; Paret, “Basket Ball,” 225.

[6] For the first mention of the YMHA’s membership in the AAU, see Harry Sperling, “Gymnasium Notes,” Y Bulletin, November 1903.  The YMHA would not have been considered a renegade, but it is nonetheless surprising that YMHA officials did not immediately conform to governing amateur rules in order to avoid any pretense of controversy. Throughout the late 1890s and early 1900s, the AAU found itself in the midst of controversies involving the registration policy.  Problems were often intensified when a non-registered team played a registered team, which made the registered team ineligible for AAU membership.  If that team then played others, all the teams would be considered non-registered and so on. For information and controversies regarding AAU sport, the use of registration fees, and the AAU’s connection to commercial consumption, see Horger, “Play By The Rules,” 76-79.

[7] Harry Sperling, “Gymnasium Notes,” YMHA Bulletin, December 1903. 

[8] “Metropolitan Basket Ball Championships, Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide, 1904-05 (New York: American Sports Publishing Co., 1904); “Championship Basket Ball Games,” New York Times, April 14, 1904.  See Gymnasium Notes, YMHA Bulletin, April 1904.  An article in the 1906-07 Spalding Guide on the 1905 AAU championship written by William Mitchell did not comment on the importance of a Jewish institution hosting such a tournament. See William Mitchell, “Metropolitan Junior Championships,” Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide, 1906-07 (New York: American Sports Publishing Co., 1906).

[9] Quote on professionalism from “The Recent Basketball Tournament,” Y Bulletin, May 1905. Comment on publicity from Young Men’s Hebrew Association, Thirty-First Annual Report, 1905 (New York: 1906).