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] 

---

[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).