"WILT, 1962" by Gary M. Pomerantz

A few weeks ago,  March 2, to be precise, marked the sixtieth anniversary of one of the most extraordinary accomplishments in all of American professional sports:  the night that Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia Warriors scored 100 points in a regulation NBA basketball game.  In a column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,  Gene Collier wrote about the event and referenced the book you see to the left of these words, published in 2005, and it prompted me to borrow it from the local library, and what a treat it was to read.

Before I even get to the subject matter, let me say that the book is worth reading for the sheer artistry of Gary Pomerantz' writing.  For example, read these opening sentences in the Introduction to the book:

"Wilt Chamberlain died on a mountaintop, alone, in bed, beneath a retractable ceiling that allowed him to see the stars.  The gardener found his body, which is how it works in Hollywood.  The Dipper died alone, a life he chose."

Great writing, evocative of the opening scene from "Citizen Kane", and so begins the story of an extraordinary night in the life of one of the more extraordinary athletes that America has ever produced.  Note the subtitle of the book for that is as much a part of this story as the 100 Point Game itself: "The Night of 100 Points and the Dawn of a New Era."  In that 1961-62 season the NBA itself was only in its sixteenth year of existence.  It was far from the international multi-billion dollar sports colossus that it is today.   It was an eight team league and to many, it remained the poor step-brother of college basketball.  Television coverage was spotty, and even in New York City, coverage of NBA games was buried deep in the sports section, next to the tire ads.   Teams played double headers to attract crowds, and games were often scheduled in smaller cities in order to expose the pro game to folks in the hinterlands, which is why this late season game between the Warriors and the Knicks took place, not in Madison Square Garden or Philly's Convention Hall, but in a dinky 8,000 seat gym in Hershey, PA.  The game was not televised - no film footage of the game exits - it was carried only on a Philadelphia radio station, and the New York newspapers didn't even bother  to send any sportswriters to cover the game.   Only 4,124 fans, a generous estimate, were in attendance.

It also needs to be noted that as the 1950's turned into the 1960's, NBA owners feared that their League might be perceived by the public as "too black."  The NBA was integrated, but there can be no doubt that an unspoken quota system existed among the owners of the teams. There was talk that the not-so-great television contract that the league had in place at the time was in danger of not being renewed.  The continued existence of the NBA as a "major league" was not a sure thing, hard as that might be to believe today.

More from Pomerantz...

"It is impossible in sports to know when or where the unforgettable moments will happen.  That's the beauty of it.  It can be a place or a time.  It can be a personality or a startling achievement."

A minor league venue in Hershey PA on March 2, 1962 was the place and the time of the extraordinary moment, and the personality and the startling achievement belonged to twenty-five year old Wilt Chamberlain, of Philadelphia's Overbrook High School, the University of Kansas, the Harlem Globetrotters, and, now, the Philadelphia Warriors.   If you are not old enough to have been around when Wilt (you only need one name to identify him)  played, it is hard to comprehend what a revolutionary and extraordinary player and personality he was.  This book, in addition to telling the story of the 100 Point Game, tells, or tries to tell, it's hard for even a great writer to capture the Essence of Wilt Chamberlain, just what Wilt was to the game of basketball.  One more passage from the book:

"When the players of this game had grown old and gray, they would yet light up in conversation remembering the way the young Dipper ran the floor on a fast break.  They would speak about it with a hushed reverence, as if they'd seen something otherworldly, like aged Plains Indians recalling the first sight of the steam locomotive."

The book tells the story of the game from the viewpoints of the other players, both Warriors and Knicks, who played that night.   Aging stars like Richie Guerin and Paul Arizin, both Hall of Famers, had to know that the game that they played - Guerin still specialized in two-handed set shots - was coming to an end, and that a wave of Black stars like Wilt, Bill Russell, and Oscar Robertson, and the many that would follow them, were changing how the game would be played, the game that we watch today. 

Back in the late 1960's, the Philly 76'ers scheduled some regular season games in Pittsburgh's Civic Arena, and because of that, I am privileged to say that I once saw Wilt Chamberlain play in person.  I've always been a fan of his, and I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Four Stars from The Grandstander.

Back in 2014, I wrote about Wilt in this space.  Here is that post.

If the name of Gary M. Pomerantz sounds familiar, his is also the author of the 2013 book "Their Life's Work", about the 1970's Era Super Bowl Steelers.  If you are a Steelers fan, or just a pro football fan, you owe it to yourself to read it.  Here is what I had to say about it back when it was published.

The Books of 2014

One of the (many) joys of retirement is having the time to read as many books, and as many kinds of books as you want.  In 2014, I read 43 books.  Yes, I actually keep track of such things.  And, yes, I will confess that there were some, but not many, among those 43 books, that I either skimmed, or never finished, because, I am doing this for my pleasure, and if I find I'm not enjoying it, I toss it!

Anyway, looking back at the list one more time, here are some recommendations for you, just in case you missed them the first time around, or if perhaps I didn't mention them in an earlier Grandstander post.

Non-Fiction

"Their Life's Work" by Gary W. Pomerantz.  A book about the Pittsburgh Steelers dynastic teams of the 1970's.  If you are a life-long Steelers fan and think that there is nothing more that could possibly be said about these teams (as I did), think again.  It has been called the football version of Roger Kahn's classic "Boys of Summer", and a higher compliment could not be paid.   You will gain new respect for Chuck Noll and Joe Greene after reading this.  A definite MUST READ for football fans in general and Steelers fans in particular.

"One Summer - America, 1927" by Bill Bryson.  The always entertaining Bryson takes a look of momentous and (seemingly) mundane events that occurred over the course of the summer of 1927.  Fascinating, informative, and immensely readable.

"Pedstrianism" by Matthew Algeo.  A look at a spectator sport that swept America in the late 19th century, made celebrities of the athletes, and even led to the use of performance enhancing drugs, but then disappeared from the landscape of the American sporting scene almost as quickly as it appeared.  

"Where Nobody Know Your Name" by John Feinstein.  A look at life in baseball's minor leagues over the course of one season.  Feinstein focuses on about a dozen minor league folks: players, managers, an umpire, and even a broadcaster.  Fabulous book that will reinforce your knowledge, in case you've forgotten it, that ANY player who makes it to the Major Leagues has truly earned it.


"FDR's Funeral Train" and "The Hidden White House" by Robert Klara.  Remarkably detailed and endlessly fascinating books on Presidential history by Klara.  The first one describes the funeral train that left Warm Springs, GA in April 1945 with the dead body of President Roosevelt and traveled to Washington DC and Hyde Park NY and back to Washington in the space of four days, and how one Presidency ended and another began.  The second describes the renovation and rebuilding of the White House that took place during the Truman Administration from 1949-52.

Fiction

I read a number of novels over the course of the year, including those from perennial favorites Jonathan Kellerman, John Sandford, Jeffery Deaver, Carl Hiaasen, and even Agatha Christie, but I want to focus instead on the works of Max Allan Collins.

I have written about the incredibly prolific Collins in this space on many occasions.  I first discovered him in 2013 when I read one of his "historical mysteries" called "The Titanic Murders", and I have been hooked ever since.  He has written literally hundreds of novels and short story collections, and, frankly, not all of them are to my taste, but I enjoy his aforementioned historical mysteries, and I absolutely love his series of of private detective novels involving the character of private eye Nathan Heller.

Heller started as a Chicago police officer in the early 1930's and then became a PI. The stories are written as first person "memoirs" of Heller's, and they recount his numerous cases involving real historical figures such as Al Capone, Frank Nitti, John Dillinger, Huey Long, Bugsy Siegel, Charles Lindberg, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Ruby, and Jack and Bobby 
Kennedy (yes, Heller gets involved in the JFK assassination!).  You have to suspend disbelief when you consider that ONE guy could be involved in the investigation of seemingly every major crime of the twentieth century, and even Collins agrees that this is ridiculous, but once you do, you are in for some very entertaining reading.

In 2014, I read ten books by Collins.  Six of those were Nate Heller novels.  In all, Collins has written fifteen Nate Heller novels and published three collections of Heller short stories. I have read all but four of those novels and all of the short story collections, and my goal for 2015 is to finish reading the Heller Canon in its entirety.

You don't have to read these novels in order of publication, but if you want to start, I would suggest that you start with the first one, "True Detective", wherein Nate gives you a lot of his biographical detail which is helpful as you read subsequent novels.  After that, you can pretty much dive in anywhere along the way.

If you like mystery and detective fiction, you won't be sorry.

Here's to great reading for everyone in 2015!

Book Review: "Their Life's Work"

Got my reading for 2014 off with a bang with "Their Life's Work" by Gary M. Pomerantz.  The subtitle of this book says it all: "The Brotherhood of the 1970's Pittsburgh Steelers, Then and Now."

Now, when I first became aware of this book a few months back, I thought that it would be yet another regurgitation of facts and stories of the  Super Bowl Seventies Steelers.  You know, kind of like the endless stories we've all heard a million times over the years.  However, as I read the reviews of this book in recent months, it prompted me to put this book on my Christmas wish list, and Santa Marilyn came through.


Some reviewers have likened this book to a football version of Roger Kahn's classic baseball book, "The Boys of Summer", and it is an apt analogy.  Like Kahn did with the 1950's Brooklyn Dodgers, Pomerantz tells the story of the Steelers in their glory days, and then revisits many of the players in the current day.  Pomerantz is a national writer and author. He cut his teeth as a sports writer with the Washington Post and later as a general assignment reported with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  I think what makes this book special, besides the fact that he is a gifted writer, is the fact that Pomerantz is not a local guy who covered the team in its heyday.  This makes the point that the Steelers of those years were indeed special on a national and league-wide level to the point that they are an historic team.  And he gives a perspective on such people as Art Rooney, Chuck Noll, Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris and others that were new to me.  Sometimes, I think that we in Pittsburgh are so close to the Steelers of that era that we can't appreciate just what they mean on a national level.

Pomerantz does not give a game-by-game summary of all the events of those six magical seasons.  In fact, he goes into detail on only three specific games: the Immaculate Reception game in 1972, the 1974 AFC title game with the Raiders, and the first Super Bowl win against the Vikings.  Each game is covered in about half dozen pages or so, but written in a such a way that those games that are so familiar to Steelers fans will seem new and fresh to the reader.

The book concentrates on the present day lives of four Steelers: Greene, Bradshaw, Harris, and John Stallworth, but in those chapters, you will also learn about the lives of all of the other big names from those teams.  Pomerantz also does not sugarcoat the down side of life that these players experienced, specifically the trauma and tragedy that was the life and death of Mike Webster.

Lots stand out to me from reading this book, but I will just highlight two of them.  One, that Chuck Noll was and remains a towering presence in the lives of all of these players, and two, the absolute heart and soul of those Steelers was Joe Greene.  No one else was even a close second.

You don't have to be a Steelers fan to like this book. It is that good.  And if you are a Steelers fan, it is an absolute must read.

I will close with just one passage, among many, in the book that stood out to me.  It describes Joe Greene on December 20, 1981, the day he decided to retire:

In the Astrodome that day, with both teams out of the playoffs, the thirty-five year old Greene played his 181st regular season game. He became wistful as he took in the scene one last time. He realized that the game carried no real meaning other than it being his last. Greene thought, Can you imagine playing games like this your whole career? What a sad statement that would be.

Terrific book.