Monday, June 25, 2018

Basketball Jews in The Forward, by Arieh Sclar


On November 3, 1929, the English-section of the Yiddish daily, the Jewish Daily Forward, published “Basketball Jews.”  The Forward and other Yiddish papers served a distinct role in American Jewish life.  They provided the daily news that English readers of the American Hebrew and other weekly Jewish newspapers would get from the mainstream media.  The Forward contained a full weekend sports page in Yiddish that provided information on broad athletic events as well as Jewish athletes, although in general, the Yiddish press provided little information on sports.  For instance, the same weekend as the publication of “Basketball Jews” in the English section, the newspaper’s Yiddish sports page contained no information on basketball.[1]  Nonetheless, “Basketball Jews” reflected the growing presence of Jews in a changing sport.
The Forward article did not view Jewish participation as illustrative of Jewish acceptance, but rather as a normal experience within basketball.  The author stated that basketball had become “a major activity among the young Jewry of New York and the vicinity.  In the YMHA’s of innumerable small cities in the New York region, regular Saturday night games are staged, where dancing before and after the games are a feature of the evening.”  These “community houses” produced “excellent basketball players, whose names later appear in the rosters of high school, college, and professional teams.”  The article also provided the name of 17 Jewish professional players and singled out Nat Holman, who remained “the greatest basketball player in the country. …[He] has been taken for granted for so long that one runs the risk of becoming a bore to repeat his praises.”  The Forward claimed Holman “is as full of deception as the traditional fox,” and praised the professionalism that made him “a great showman.”[2]
“Basketball Jews” advanced the notion that basketball “may almost be said to be a Jewish sport.”  Basketball became popular among Jews because “there are no football fields or baseball diamonds to speak of in lower Manhattan.”  Popularity, however, did not explain success and Jewish athleticism remained embedded to racial identity.  The Jewish professional presence was so great because basketball “is not essentially a sport where a huge body is a requisite. Brains, nimble thinking and speedy coordination between mind and muscle are more important and effective than mere physical brawn and power.”  The ideal player needed intelligence as much, if not more, than strength.  “The average athlete is a chap whose brains are located in his biceps and whose head is stronger outside than inside. Not so, however, with the average basketball player. …Of course, a strong and husky physique is an asset in basketball as in other sports, but in general basketball players are not so dumb.”[3]
Like previous commentators, the author of “Basketball Jews” presented basketball as a sport that required certain characteristics.  He distinguished Jewish basketball players from the ‘average athlete.’  The Jew succeeded because of Jewish intelligence and an unchanged Jewish body.  The Jewish athlete did not, and should not, need to conform to the physical ideal to succeed.  Indeed, the body of the basketball Jew could not change if Jews wanted to maintain their advantage in the sport.
“Basketball Jews” served as the final commentary on Jewish basketball in the 1920s and within the ABL.  The Celtics broke up in 1928, which led to a declining interest in the league.  After the Celtics disbanded, Nat Holman and Davey Banks played with the New York Hakoahs (Hakoah is Hebrew for ‘strength’), but the ABL disbanded in 1931 due to financial troubles intensified by the Depression.  The league’s ‘national’ model had failed to subdue the provincial and local nature of traditional basketball.  In 1933, promoters established a reformatted and ‘regional’ ABL in the northeast.[4]



[1] Oriard, King Football, 34.  According to historian Eddy Portnoy, many immigrants received their sports news from the New York Daily Mirror, whose Jewish readership was large enough that the paper occasionally printed messages in Yiddish on the sports page.  Portnoy also explained that the Yiddish press contained virtually no coverage of sport during the interwar period.  The author’s brief examination of the Forward confirmed this.  Eddy Portnoy, e-mail message to author, October 12, 2006.
[2] Bob Shelley, “Basketball Jews,” The Jewish Daily Forward, November 3, 1929.
[3] Ibid.
[4] On the ABL’s rise and fall, see Peterson, Cages to Jump Shots, 84-94; Applin, “From Muscular Christianity to the Marketplace,” 199-205. According to Albert Applin, there were actually two ‘ABL’s’, the first disbanding in 1928 due to financial difficulties directly related to the Celtics.  Their dominance of the competition removed spectator interest in other cities.  The ‘first’ ABL folded in November 1928 and the ‘second’ reformed immediately with some of the old ABL teams as well as teams from the Metropolitan Basketball League.

Monday, May 28, 2018

Jewish 'dominance' in professional basketball, by Arieh Sclar


ABL owners wanted to leave behind the chaos and instability of Progressive-era professional basketball where players had more control over their production.  The Celtics had illustrated the importance of continuity in building team success.  Other teams adopted the contractual model that both intensified the commodification of players and provided a massive salary surge.  ABL owners attempted to challenge all aspects of local basketball cultures, including scheduling, ticket prices, and most importantly, fan loyalties.  In some cities, fans decried an ABL team’s “unpopular attendance charge” and the possibility that the league would “unfavorably affect the popularity of local basketball games.”[1]
The ABL used major league baseball as a model as owners sought to structure fan loyalty solely around the team.  Ethnic spectatorship had led New York baseball managers in the 1920s to hire Jewish players who would attract a specific audience.  Basketball teams had the opposite problem as ethnic identification competed with the local team identification that ABL owners desired.[2]  The Celtics had succeeded as a multi-ethnic team and its broad popularity meant it felt little pressure to change its internal structure.  For other independent teams, however, the ABL exerted a tremendous amount of influence to discard, at least to some extent, pre-ABL identities.
Teams in Rochester and Philadelphia altered their identifiably Jewish rosters in the ABL.  Rochester’s entry in the ABL, the Centrals, had formed at the Rochester YMHA in the 1900s and the team remained exclusively Jewish into the 1920s.  In the ABL, however, the Centrals included “players of other nationality on its roster, [though] it retains its Jewish identity.”[3]  In Philadelphia, promoter Eddie Gottlieb owned the Philadelphia Sphas (South Philadelphia Hebrew Association), a team that had emerged out of Philadelphia’s Jewish basketball culture in the late 1910s.  By the mid-1920s, many commentators considered the Sphas one of the top teams in professional basketball.  Yet, Gottlieb disbanded the Sphas and formed a new team called the Warriors, which included both Jews and non-Jews, as Philadelphia’s ABL team.[4]  In order to successfully compete in the ABL, Rochester and Philadelphia had to represent the entire city and overcome their traditional identification as ‘Jewish’ teams.
Other teams included Jews for other reasons.  In contrast to existing teams, a new team in Washington attracted Jewish fans by including recognizable players.  The Baltimore Jewish Times celebrated the inclusion of three local Jewish players on Washington’s ABL entry, including “’Lefty’ Stern [who] has abandoned college in favor of signing with the team.”[5]  The inclusion of three local Jews indicated that unlike Rochester, the newly-formed Washington team had to build a fan base from the ground up.  Cleveland owner, department store magnate Max Rosenblum who humbly named his team the Rosenblums as a cheap form of advertising, brought in Marty Friedman to serve as player-coach during the ABL’s first two years.  Friedman’s presence in Cleveland indicated the true character of the league.  Before he arrived in Cleveland, Friedman had played his entire 15-year professional career for northeastern teams.  Friedman’s skill and knowledge as an ‘old-timer,’ not his identity as a Jew, best served the Rosenblums as he led them to the first ABL championship.[6] 
The ABL provided a central location in which to examine the Jewish presence in basketball.  By the middle of the decade, many of ‘old-time’ players of the pre-war era had started to retire, and though a new infusion of Jewish talent began to trickle into the professional game, only Holman and teammate Davey Banks served as preeminent Jewish talents.  In the first two years of the ABL, Holman and Banks of the Celtics were joined by Washington coach Lou Sugarman, also from the lower East Side, as prominent Jewish representatives of the league.  In addition, Eddie Gottlieb owned and Jules Aaronson managed the Philadelphia Warriors.  According to historian Peter Levine, Jews made up 19 of 101 players on ABL rosters during the 1927-28 season.[7]  At a time when American Jews consisted of less than four percent of the American population, such a disproportionate number of Jews in the major professional basketball league would have legitimized the claims of Conzel, Joel, and other commentators that Jews ‘dominated’ basketball. 



[1] The ABL owners suspended a Brooklyn player during the first season for playing with a non-ABL team during the season.  See “Brooklyn Basketball Star Suspended,” Washington Post, November 20, 1925. Quote from “Thru Sportdom,” Baltimore Jewish Times, September 19, 1926. On salaries, see Peterson, Cages to Jump Shots, 84-94.  Holman received an annual salary of $10,000 from the Celtics during the mid-1920s.
[2] For other Jewish professionals of the mid- to late 1920s, see “Jewish Sport Notes,” Philadelphia Jewish Times, January 15, 1926.  The column contained an “All-Jewish All-American” professional basketball team. Levine explained he used name identification.  See Levine, Ellis Island to Ebbet’s Field, 61.  Levine explained he used a similar method as Paula Fass in her book, Outside In: Minorities and the Transformation of American Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
[3] Quote from Original Celtics Game Program, 1927-28, Nat Holman file, Edward and Gena Hickox Library at the Basketball Hall of Fame, Springfield, MA. The Rochester Centrals were mentioned in the Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports, but strictly as a team that emerged from the Rochester YMHA, with no comment regarding its connection to the ABL.  See Postal, Silver, and Silver, Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports, 91.
[4] For information on the Sphas, see Postal, Silver, and Silver, Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports, 84, 91; Also see “Philadelphia Sphas” in Encyclopedia of Ethnicity and Sports in the United States, eds. George B. Kirsch, Othello Harris, and Claire E. Nolte (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000), 360-361.  A group of young Jews formed the Combine Club as adolescents.  The members then competed for the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, which eventually broke its affiliation with the team.  The kept the name and began to play in the Philadelphia League in the early 1920s.  The Sphas were first mentioned in Reach as a member of a local professional league and “the leading traveling club” of the city.  They were nicknamed the “Wandering Jews” by some locals. During the 1925-26 season, the Sphas defeated both the Original Celtics and an African-American team, the Harlem Renaissance in a special series.  The team included non-Jewish players during its participation in the Eastern League in the late 1920s.  The Warriors played two seasons in the ABL and then moved to the Eastern League.  See Abe Radel, “South Philadelphia Hebrew Association,” Reach Official Basketball Guide 1924-25 (Philadelphia, A.J. Reach & Co.: 1925).  On the Hakoahs and Warriors, see the files of Nat Holman and Eddie Gottlieb in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
[5] “Thru Sportdom: Basketball Again,” Baltimore Jewish Times, September 19, 1926.
[6] Friedman led Cleveland to the ABL’s first title, called the “world series” in 1925-26, the year before the Celtics joined.  On Friedman’s role with the Rosenblums, see Peterson, Cages to Jump Shots, 85-86. According to Albert Applin, Rosenblum was the true force behind the league.  Other owners included sport promoters like George Halas and George Marshall (both NFL owners) or business groups.  See Applin, “From Muscular Christianity to the Marketplace,” 200-204.
[7] Levine, Ellis Island to Ebeet’s Field, 61.

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Jewish Professionals in the 1920s, by Arieh Sclar


In the mid-1920s, Nat Holman received recognition as the coach of CCNY, a star for the Original Celtics, and as a prominent Jewish athlete.  The multi-ethnic identity of the Celtics contributed to the team’s popularity, and reflected the interwar sport culture that brought people of various backgrounds together.  Irish and German players joined Holman and Davey Banks, the team’s Jewish representatives.[1]  The Celtics’ barnstorming trips served as a unique attraction in places where few locals had seen quality basketball or had opportunities to identify with specific players.  Fan loyalties and identifications frequently crossed geographic boundaries and young American Jews who participated in the American sport culture had a strong desire to cheer for Jewish athletes.  Conscious of his status as a Jewish player on the Celtics, Holman explained that during barnstorming trips, “I was very much aware of the Jewish following that supported me in a number of cities on the circuit.  While I always played at my very best, I tried even harder when I knew the Jewish community was rooting for me.”[2]
Commentators had nominally noted basketball’s ethnic presence during the Progressive era, but the importance of group identification intensified as spectators gained more power in the 1920s consumer culture.  Reach noted that a Jewish team called the Danbury Separatists “enjoyed a prosperous season” in 1923 as “one of best attractions” in northeastern basketball.  The basketball guide believed that “the coming season is sure to find them supplanting that great old Roosevelt team that harbored players like Sedran and Friedman years ago in the hearts of Hebrew basketball lovers.”[3]  Danbury’s name did not identify it as a Jewish team, but knowledgeable basketball fans would have been aware of the team’s makeup.
Basketball’s growth in urban areas and among immigrant groups attracted both Jewish and non-Jewish entrepreneurs who sought to expand the sport’s scope.  Basketball promoters and commentators had discussed forming a ‘national’ basketball league in the 1910s and a national commission failed to control the various professional leagues of the northeast in the early 1920s.  In the middle of the decade, however, promoters formed the American Basketball League (ABL) as a ‘national’ league and attempted to reconstruct professional basketball into a mass, commercialized sport.[4]
The ABL attempted to turn basketball into a respectable sport.  The league banned profanity, used amateur rules, abandoned the ‘cage,’ and played its games in large urban arenas.  Moral condemnations of professional basketball declined as outright violence occurred less frequently.[5]  The ABL became the first league to serve as the pinnacle of a linear, though unstable, basketball hierarchy as a younger generation of former college players entered professional basketball.  Media attention remained fairly sparse, however, until the Celtics joined the league during its second season in 1926-27.[6]



[1] On the Celtics, see Nelson, The Originals.  Neighborhoods, ethnic, racial, and religious groups, unions, department stores, and virtually every other type of organization developed athletic teams in order to participate in the broader athletic culture. Communal and ethnic identification during a fractious and anxious decade likely contributed to the situation.  Lizabeth Cohen explained that historians assumed consumption encouraged assimilation into mainstream society, but have provided little evidence.  She explained that there is evidence that during the Depression, mass culture united previously fractured ethnic and racial groups.  See Lizabeth Cohen, “Encountering Mass Culture at the Grassroots,” in Glickman, Consumer Society in American History, 147-162.
[2] Quote in Nelson, The Originals, 15-16.
[3] “Interborough Professional Basketball League of New York,” Reach Official Basketball Guide 1923-24 (Philadelphia, A.J. Reach & Co.: 1924).
[4] For information on the national commission and discussion of the need for a national league, which would standardize rules of professional basketball, see Introduction, Reach Official Basketball Guide 1921-22 (Philadelphia, A.J. Reach & Co.: 1922);  Applin, “From Muscular Christianity to the Marketplace,” 194-196; Peterson, Cages to Jump Shots, 55. 
[5] As a ‘national’ league, the ABL had teams in New York, Brooklyn, Cleveland, Washington D.C., Rochester (N.Y.), Fort Wayne, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and Buffalo. On the ban against profanity, see “’Oh, Pshaw,’ Limit in Epithets for Pro Fives; $10 a violation,” New York Times, December 31, 1927. For sporadic incidents of violence during basketball games, see “Celtics Win from Rosenblum Five, “New York Times, April 15, 1924; “Fist Fights as Jewels Defeat Celtics,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 26, 1932. Jewish players were involved in both fights as Marty Friedman and Nat Holman squared off in 1924 during a game played for U.S. Olympic fund under the auspices of the Mayor’s Committee on Municipal Athletic Activity.  The 1932 fight occurred during another fundraiser, this time for a retired player.
[6] “Youngsters Crowding Cage Pros,” Los Angeles Times, December 25, 1927.  The article describes the generational transfer within the professional game as “college-trained youngsters” began to replace “old-timers.” 

Saturday, May 12, 2018

The Jewish Press praises the 'natural' Jewish basketball player, by Arieh Sclar


During the interwar period, syndicated sports columnists such as George Joel, Harry Conzel, and others wrote articles, columns, and annuals that appeared in a variety of Jewish newspapers.  Joel, for instance, wrote for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), which had his columns, articles and annuals published in the Philadelphia Jewish Times and the Detroit Jewish Chronicle.[1]  These columnists merged the broad outlook of the distant and lionizing annuals with experiential content of local columns as they provided information on the accomplishments of well-known Jewish athletes and identified Jewish athletes to the readership.  They infrequently included non-elite athletes as evidence of Jewish athleticism, but these athletes rarely informed compilations beyond claims that “Americanized, practically every Jewish youngster participates in some sport or another.”[2] 
Jewish newspapers rarely contained sport pages, so readers in various cities often received their information on Jewish athletes from syndicated columnists.  Letters from readers countered claims of an athlete’s Jewish identity or the greatness of a team or individual, but few challenged the idea that “sport should be encouraged. It is a good school for life; it prepares us to will and to do.”[3]  Yet, some commentators noted that because of the annuals and columns, “the Jewish reader makes the inference that his strong brethren have conquered all the American sports and are equally successful at them all. …Can we, however, honestly claim that the Jewish athlete takes to all sports with the same degree of success?”[4] 
Most columnists asserted that Jews succeeded in basketball more than any other sport.  Outside of Nat Holman, the columnists generally emphasized the collective importance of Jewish basketball rather than individual players.[5]  Throughout the 1920s, columnists argued, “from a Jewish angle,” that basketball had become the “the king of sports.”  George Joel stated in his 1927 syndicated annual that, “it is hard to find a college team without at least one Jewish player on the squad.”[6]  The previous year, Harry Conzel boldly claimed, “it would be useless to list Jewish basketball players.  Collegiate and professional basketball teams all over the country contain almost a majority of Jews.”  As late as 1930, columnists continued to assert that in basketball, it remained “impossible to attempt to name the Jewish players. This is a sport that Jews dominate.”[7]
The perception of Jewish ‘dominance’ led columnists to ask “why Jewish athletes show such marked superiority in basketball above all other sports.”  This question “has puzzled the leading exponents of the game, although some advance the theory that their ability lies in their brainy playing and their uncanny accuracy in locating the basket.”[8]  In 1926, Conzel decided that since “it is a generally accepted fact that Jewish athletes dominate the sport of basketball,” he would make “a study of this puzzle.”  He concluded that, “basketball is the least dangerous sport.  Basketball requires more speed and rapid thinking than brute strength. …Basketball does not necessitate too rigorous training.  So there you are.  It is not an indictment against Jewish athletes; it is probably a tribute to their intelligence.”[9]



[1] Oriard, King Football, 34.  According to Oriard, Joel published the first Jewish All-America football team in 1925.
[2] “Sports are in the Air,” American Hebrew, June 4, 1937.
[3] Harry Conzel, “Our Sport Column,” American Jewish World, January 30, 1925.
[4] “Jewish Sports Notes,” Philadelphia Jewish Times, December 18, 1925.
[5] Baseball allowed for more extensive examinations regarding the Jewish place in the sport and in-depth analysis regarding individual ability.  Hank Greenberg’s MVP award in 1935 was essential in representing his athleticism as a Jew.  Likewise, Barney Ross’ success as a boxer was never separated from his championships.
[6] “Thru Sportdom,” The Jewish Times, December 3, 1926.  Local papers across the country concentrated on the activities of clubs, institutions, and organizations that would never have garnered the attention of the Hebrew; George Joel, “The Year in Sports,” Philadelphia Jewish Times, September 30, 1927.  Joel had been a member of ZBT and wrote for the fraternity’s publications.
[7] Harry Conzel, “Jewish Athletes of the Year,” American Jewish World, September 3, 1926.  The annual stated that Conzel was the “foremost American authority on Jews in sports.” “The Year in Sport,” American Jewish World, September 19, 1930.
[8] Sidney S. Kluger, “An Account of Jewish Athletes as Jewish Stars,” American Jewish World, April 18, 1924.
[9] “Jewish Sports Notes,” Philadelphia Jewish Times, January 29, 1926.

Thursday, May 3, 2018

'The Racial Traits of Athletes' - anti-Semitism in the 1920s, by Arieh Sclar


In 1922, the American Physical Education Review published a series of articles entitled “Racial Traits in Athletics.”  The author, non-Jewish physical educator Elmer Mitchell, wrote: “Nowhere, does it seem to me, can we find people closer and truer to their fundamental character than in their free and spontaneous play.”  The Eugenical News printed a summary of the series, which reinforced the dominant racial paradigm in American society.  Mitchell analyzed fifteen racial groups, although he arranged Latins, The South American, and The Oriental into broader classifications than the Irish, Greek, or Jew.  Mitchell explained that the ‘American’ athlete, “a composite of many races: conspicuously the English, Irish, German, and Scandinavian,” had become the “greatest in the world.”  Southern and eastern Europeans, however, “are less ready assimilable” than northern Europeans and they illustrated this on the athletic field.[1]
Mitchell believed that Jewish athleticism demonstrated Jews’ racial inferiority. “We see the same distaste of the Jew for outdoor life, his industry in the intellectual side of his pursuit, his subtlety in applying social or individual weakness to his own benefit, and his lack of moral sensitiveness.”  He explained that contradictory to public opinion, Jews possessed both physical and moral courage, although certain “distinctive qualities cling to the Jew when he participates in athletics.”  Sport did not change the Jewish temperament: “The average Jew is an unpopular team-mate; he is assertive, individualistic, and quarrelsome.”  Mitchell concluded that any observer would concur “by watching a group of Hebrew children on the playground.”  Even more disturbing, Jews’ ability to “face adverse circumstances” often manifested itself in “the villain role,” which he believed they seemed to enjoy.[2]
Mitchell’s imaged Jew remained physically inferior in the small immigrant body.  The Jew had vitality, caused by “clannishness,” sacred family ties, and adaptability to “the bustle and change of modern commercial life.”  This vitality was “a wonderful thing,” especially since sport did not produce the physical change many had expected. “The typical Jew is not robust in appearance,” explained Mitchell.  He used football to prove his point.  Only in “exceptional cases” do Jews star in this team sport, “where size plays so important a part.”  Yet, a small body could help Jews succeed in other sports.  “Along with boxing and dancing, gymnastics and basket ball are popular, all of them types of athletic exercise demanding dexterous footwork and dodging ability and carried on indoors.  Basket ball is easily their favorite sport.”
The unchanged Jewish body reflected, in Mitchell’s view, Jews’ unchanged intellectual ability that served as an advantage in the athletic world.  Jews retained their mental advantage as “quick thinkers, alert to grasp the strategy of the game, both of their own team and of their opponents.”  Yet, the intelligent Jew corrupted pure sport since his “individualistic tendency” produced “a spirit fostering the professional game, rather than the game which is played solely for the joy of participating.”[3]  Mitchell did not view Jewish athleticism in similar terms as Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent, but he attached negative characteristics to Jewish intelligence.  Mitchell believed that when Jews willingly participated in American sport, it resulted in professional or tricky behavior that reflected Jews’ racial inferiority. 



[1] Elmer D. Mitchell, “Racial Traits in Athletics,” American Physical Education Review 27, no. 3 (March 1922), 93; The summary was in the Eugenical News 7 (1922).  Mitchell cited studies from Charles Davenport, Madison Grant, and other prominent eugenicists.  In the late 1910s, the APER included a permanent eugenics section under its monthly bibliography.
[2] Elmer D. Mitchell, “Racial Traits in Athletics,” American Physical Education Review 27, no. 5 (May 1922): 197.
[3] Ibid.  For analysis of Mitchell’s articles, see Oriard, King Football, 255-257, 283-284.

Friday, April 27, 2018

The continued struggle, by Arieh Sclar


The Metropolitan League limited the ability of New York institutions to circumvent the code of amateur sport, but other YMHA’s felt less external pressure to establish rigid standards regarding professional behavior.  In the early 1920s, the Hartford YMHA participated primarily in citywide competitions and won three consecutive city championships.  In December 1923, a game against the Original Celtics caused some YMHA officials to question the commercialism and rumored professionalism of the basketball team.  With pressure to decrease their commercial activity, the ‘representative’ team declared its intention to break off from the institution and call themselves ‘City Champs’ as an independent team.  Not surprisingly, YMHA officials opposed this development and insisted that the title belonged to the Association, not the players.  The rift appeared irreconcilable until a local businessman offered the YMHA $5,000 if the team again captured the city championship.  Upon this news, the players returned to the YMHA, supposedly on a ‘pure’ amateur standing.[1]
The reconciliation did not alleviate the concerns of some YMHA officials regarding the team’s activities.  Rumors grew that the manager would pay the players.  The YMHA Advisory Board left the team’s fate in the hands of the president, who told the Hartford Courant that the YMHA paid the team’s expenses on out-of-town trips, but “that is all.”  When the Courant reported that statement, YMHA board members explained that strictly paying expenses was a “new” arrangement and that players had previously “split the money [profits] amongst themselves.”  This new arrangement, however, did not stop the team’s professionalism.  The Courant also reported that the team had “three players who live in other cities,” all of whom the manager “paid by means of padded expense allowances.”  The controversy resulted in the resignation of the Hartford YMHA’s executive secretary because of “numerous clashes” with the institution’s president over the status of the basketball team.[2] 
The Hartford team’s recruitment and compensation of star players indicated a complexity not often associated with YMHA sport.  Among the players on Hartford’s team was Sam Pite, the central player in the 1922 Yale controversy.  Considering his New Haven origins, Pite’s presence indicated that a dissatisfaction with members’ talent led YMHA management to search outside the institution’s local area to find players. The Courant also reported that the YMHA team had a neighborhood following of over one thousand fans, including non-members.  To remedy this situation, and end the competitive and commercial pressures that had caused the problems during the 1924 season, YMHA officials declared at the end of the season that they would no longer allow “non-membership players” on the team.[3]
New York’s Metropolitan League also contained player movement that indicated the league did not exist as a local endeavor.  A report on the 92nd Street YMHA basketball team in 1931 revealed that only one of nine varsity players lived near the Association on the upper East Side.  In contrast, five players lived in Brooklyn at a time when fewer than ten percent of the Association’s membership came from the borough.[4]



[1] See the Hartford Courant, December 25, 1923; January 10, 1924; January 13, 1924.  In 1921, Hartford joined a YMHA state league. Five YMHA’s (Springfield, Hartford, New Haven, New London, Bridgeport) met to organize a state league, “along three lines: athletic, educational, and camp and miscellaneous.” A basketball league was not initially formed because “most organizations…made up their schedules.” See “House Notes: YMHA League is Organized,” Community News, December 1921. 
[2] “Only Remote Possibility that YMHA will have City Series Team Next Year,” Hartford Courant, March 13, 1924.
[3] The Connecticut Hebrew Record simply commented on the initial fracture between the YMHA and the players over the commercialization of basketball. “Hartford Sports,” Connecticut Hebrew Record, January 10, 1924.
[4] Nat Beckelman to Nat Holman, April 6, 1931, Correspondence files “Young Men’s Hebrew Association,” Executive Director records, Young Men’s Hebrew Association, 92nd Street Y Archives, New York.  According to the letter, the roster included one player from Manhattan, three players from the Bronx, and five players from Brooklyn.  In a separate letter, an Association official indicated to Charles Bernheimer of the JWB that 39.46% of the total membership was from Manhattan, 46.73% was from the Bronx, and only 9.28% was from Brooklyn.  The sender of the letter is unknown, though most likely was YMHA executive director, Jack Nadel, September 5, 1931, miscellaneous folder, Jewish Welfare Board records, Young Men’s Hebrew Association, 92nd Street Y Archives, New York. For information on player movement, which generally did not occur during a season, see the Y Bulletin in the 1920s and 1930s.  According to historian Beth Wenger, the Jewish population in the YMHA’s Yorkville neighborhood was only 4%.  It is therefore not surprising that the YMHA sought players from other boroughs, though it is odd that one player traveled from Coney Island to play for the YMHA.

Sunday, April 22, 2018

YMHA' continue the struggle to control basketball, by Arieh Sclar


Similar to the 92nd Street YMHA, the structure of the Metropolitan League, formerly known as the YMHA League, evolved during the 1920s.  The original YMHA Athletic League had member institutions in Westchester (Mt. Vernon and Yonkers), Brooklyn, and New Jersey (Bayonne and Perth Amboy).  Re-named the Metropolitan League to represent non-YMHA members such as the Educational Alliance, the league’s expansion in the 1920s reflected the changing demographic patterns of New York Jews.  Economic prosperity allowed Jews to leave the lower East Side, and by 1925, only 15% of New York Jews remained in the immigrant neighborhood.[1]  The migration to the Bronx and Brooklyn made communal contact among Jews more difficult.  Jewish centers attempted to fill the void caused by the dispersal.  By the mid-1920s, sport served as the “principal means of establishing cordial relations between the members of the YMHA’s in the Metropolitan district.”  In 1925, the Metropolitan League existed as “solely an athletic group,” although officials hoped to “enlarge the scope of activity…to include debates, oratorical and music contests, etc.”  That same year, the league issued a report that asked the Jewish Welfare Board (JWB), a national organization that oversaw YMHA’s and JCC’s, to help stimulate “athletic competition on a larger scale.”[2]
In the mid-1920s, the league formed an Athletic Committee to control member behavior, standardize rules and regulations, and encourage league competition by awarding cups and trophies.  Minutes of the league’s various committees reveal an inordinate amount of time spent ruling on the validity of team protests, the suspension and reinstatement of players, the standardization of rules, referees decisions, and decisions regarding awards, trophies, and other minutia.[3]  The Metropolitan League also confronted gambling, which it banned at all events:

No man who has been found guilty of placing or attempting to place a bet or acted as an agent for others in betting on athletic contests in the Metropolitan League shall be eligible to represent a constituent organization in any League activity one year from the date of the occurrence of the act.  The Board of Directors of the organization of which he is a member is to be notified and requested to take similar action.[4]

The wording of the ban indicated the familiarity of such activity within YMHA sport and the mention of ‘agents’ meant players themselves may have gambled.  Jewish institutions outside of New York also confronted gambling.  A reader’s letter in the Baltimore Jewish Times commented that “open gambling is being conducted by Jewish young men.”  During YMHA games in the Baltimore Basketball League, “they flash their money in the open and call aloud for bettors.”  The Times’ columnist stated the gamblers “leave a bad taste in the mouth of the respectable Jewish young men.”[5]  Officials became concerned that incidents of gambling reflected poorly on the larger community.  They also remained concerned about professionalism at Jewish centers and sought to restrain the capitalistic behavior of their basketball champions.
During the early and mid-1920s, Metropolitan League officials had frequent discussions regarding the professional status of individual players.  The league’s Athletic Committee declared: “No man who has ever competed as a professional shall be eligible to play in this League.”  The committee generally gave Centers the benefit of the doubt regarding their ignorance of a players’ professional standing.  The sheer volume of incidents indicated, however, that institutional control and supervision was often lacking.  As a result, the Athletic Committee also “went on record disapproving any YMHA giving out free athletic membership as an inducement to enroll athletes.”[6]



[1] Beth S. Wenger, New York Jews and the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 83.
[2] “1925 – Its History, Aims, and Plans,” folder, 1922-26, Metropolitan League Records, Young Men’s Hebrew Association, 92nd Street Y Archives, New York. Samuel Leff to Jack Nadel, April 29, 1925, Correspondence Files,  Metropolitan League, Young Men’s Hebrew Association, 92nd Street Y Archives, New York.  Metropolitan League, “Metropolitan League of YMHAs to Extend Activities,” press release, May 11, 1925.
[3] For minutes of the Athletic Committee, Presidents Committee, Administrative Council, and Physical Directors Society, see Metropolitan League records, 92nd Street Y Archives, New York at the 92nd Street YMHA archives.
[4] Report on Minimum Standards of Health Education Recommended by the Metropolitan League, undated, Metropolitan League records, Young Men’s Hebrew Association, 92nd Street Y Archives, New York.
[5] “Thru Sportdom,” Baltimore Jewish Times, December 17, 1926.
[6] Report on Minimum Standards of Health Education Recommended by the Metropolitan League, no date, Metropolitan League records, 92nd Street Y Archives, New York.  A similar document titled “Athletic Committee Rules” was found in a miscellaneous folder titled ‘1922-26,’ Athletic Committee records, Young Men’s Hebrew Association, 92nd Street Y Archives, New York. Minutes of the Athletic Committee, September 22, 1924, Metropolitan League records, 92nd Street Y Archives, New York. Minutes of the Athletic Committee are located in the Metropolitan League records, 92nd Street Y Archives, New York. Though not complete, the minutes provide a good amount of detail regarding the internal workings of the league.  For examples of rulings on the professional status of players, see January 9, 1923.  In these minutes, the Committee ruled on establishing a reinstatement policy for professionals.