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.”