Radio Airwaves and Hoops

Before the internet or cable tv came into existence, one of the best ways to get a perspective from outside one's home town was to have a good antenna on your radio, station surf at night,and hope for clear airwaves. No matter what,one had to count upon a certain degree of static as well as stations fading in and out..

From my Hartford Connecticut home,the New York City stations came in the easiest..sometimes with very little static. All news all the time from 1010 WINS was my go to station. Some nights I’d get WTOP in Washington DC which was always fun because I knew that was my grandparent’s favorite station and I’d always feel connected to them by listening. I’d also get WBZ in Boston,but there was something about that Bostonian tone that irritated me,so I seldom tuned in.

I’d do most of my listening while doing homework on our dining room table. One night while station surfing I came across a station that was not from New York or Boston. It was coming in fairly clearly and the broadcast captured my attention immediately. The station was WHAS in Louisville Kentucky and the broadcast was an ABA game between the Kentucky Colonels and the Indiana Pacers. The ABA! ..American Basketball Association.

From its inception in 1967,I had declared myself as a fan of the ABA. Already a budding rebel,I took to the idea of a sports league challenging the existing order. I liked their Red,White and Blue Basketballs,and loved the idea that one got three points for shots made from 25 feet out. There were also Connecticut connections to the league. Growing up,I’d listen to University of Connecticut basketball games and one of its former stars,Wes Bialosuknia had signed with ABA’s Oakland Oaks. Hartford had a minor league basketball team called the Hartford Capitols. I would attend their games.My favorite Capitols player was ‘Spider” Bennett who upon the league’s inception signed with the Houston Mavericks.

There was one problem in following the ABA. They had no TV contract. They only had one player in Rick Barry (who jumped from the NBA) recognizable to the general public.The media regarded the ABA as a minor league thus only seldomly were their boxscores published in the newspaper. It’s first year only its first game highlights were shown on TV and a Life Magazine article on the New Jersey Americans was about as good as the coverage got. To follow the ABA,one had to studiously check the sports section as even daily scores and standings were published sporadically. A subscription the The Sporting News helped,but there was also word of mouth. I knew this league was right for me as one of its early superstars was named Mel Daniels..no relation but having the name was good enough.

The league went through some rough times in the beginning..bounced paychecks,poor attendance,franchises moving from city to city.There were always rumors of its soon demise,but somehow they managed to survive and by the time the 70-71 season rolled around,they had been successful in signing some of college basketball’s better players such as Kentucky’s Dan Issel,North Carolina’s Charlie Scott as well as Spencer Haywood from the University of Detroit. It was in that season where WHAS came across my airwaves.. Once discovered,Kentucky Colonels games became a regular part of my homework routine. The broadcast team was Van Vance and Cawood Ledford. Cawood Ledford would also do University of Kentucky games and from the accent alone,you knew he had to be a born and bred Kentuckian.

I had called myself a New Jersey Americans turned New York Nets fan,but it was hard not to become a fan of the Colonels. They had Issel,sharpshooters in Louie Dampier and Daryl Carrier.Walt Simon had played in Hartford against the Capitols and Spider Bennett,but what I loved most were the characters on the team Cincy Powell,and Jim “Goose” Ligon. The NBA of the late 60’s -early 70’s was a buttoned down league. Great basketball players but little flair. The ABA was different and signed players who for one reason or another banned from the NBA and players who wouldn’t fit into a mold. Cincy Powell liked to talk and wasnt afraid of giving himself credit for being the star of the game those times when he was.Listening to Cincy Powell and Cawood Ledford post game was like a downhome version of Ali and Cosell. Goose Ligon was a forward for the Colonels. A stint in prison kept him out of the NBA. Average scorer,great rebounder,but his greatest role with the Colonels was as an enforcer. His elbows were weapons when rebounding.He wasnt afraid to make hard contact on the floor and would openly dare opposing players to mess with him. Goose Ligon was my favorite and when I found myself playing high school varsity basketball,I patterned much of my game after that of Goose Ligon.

Then there was the experience of finally listening to the ABA on a regular basis. Colonels always did well attendance wise,but games in Pittsburgh one could hear the dribbling on the court and what players and coaches were saying and you knew there were rabid fans in places like Indianapolis and Salt Lake City

The following season,the Colonels signed my favorite college player, Jacksonville University’s Artis Gilmore. That season,the ABA began playing NBA teams during the exhibition season. A game between the Colonels and the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks featuring Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was treated like a championship game by Kentucky’s broadcasters.(Colonels lost and Jabbar outplayed Gilmore)

Over time it seemed like the ABA began to gain more respect. ABA players such as Spencer Haywood were having successful careers in the NBA,and an occasional All Star Game and Championship series would be broadcast on TV. By the time I left Connecticut for Alaska,I didn’t have to tune into WHAS for ABA coverage as WOR in New York began to broadcast Nets games. Of course by then,there was quite the buzz over an old University of Connecticut rival,a player who I thought was going in over his head by leaving the weak Yankee Conference where he played college ball to a league I was convinced was every bit as good as the NBA now. His name? Julius “Dr. J” Erving.

I was living in Alaska when the ABA’s leading franchises left to join the NBA. I hated to see the Kentucky Colonels left out of the merger deal,but in Alaska there was no NBA or ABA Basketball to listen to anyhow..

Skip

Sometimes in life,one comes across a person whose impact on ones life isn't fully realized till long after they've gone from it.


Stanley "Skip" Jarocki was one of those people. I knew him from my four years at Watkinson School.
"Skip" was my high school basketball coach. He had been a star athlete at Haverford College in Pennsylvania where as the story goes,until he coached the Varsity Basketball Team at Watkinson,had never been associated with a losing team in his life.

Let me emphasize:UNTIL he coached the Varsity Basketball Team at Watkinson. Watkinson's Basketball team was a collection of wannabe and never-will-be players,and that's being generous. If not for the fact that Watkinson was a small school of 120 students,there were some on the team that would be hard pressed to make a third grade roster at other schools. My stint on the Varsity team was the result of a failed lesson in teaching a predominantly white student body that all blacks cannot play basketball.
Our team never won more than 4 games in a 15-20 game schedule during my entire 4 years on the Varsity team.
Coaching a losing team was not  an easy task for Skip. His coaching style was hard nosed. I would compare him to noted Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight. He'd harass the refs and was prone to receiving technical fouls. He'd slam his clipboard onto the court. On one memorable occasion,after a 40 point loss,he smashed a can of soda pop against a locker,causing the can to puncture,the end result being soda sprayed all over his suit. Just like Bobby Knight,he did things that in today's world would be unacceptable such as clutching my throat following a series of errors by the team.
One would think given Jarocki's temperament and history that his memory at best would be a negative one. Truth is,the voice of Skip Jarocki sometimes still coaches me today. In playing for Watkinson,there was rarely a game where we didn't face adversity from the moment of the tip off. In many cases,for all practical purposes,the game was over within minutes of the first quarter. At that point,there would be players ready to quit and quitting was precisely what Skip Jarocki would not permit you to do unless you wanted a seat on the bench. It didn't matter if we were losing by 10,20 or 50 points..Lost a game by 73 points once..players played,quitters sat.

Sometimes life has been like the equivalent of losing by large margin with a hostile audience on one's case. Sometimes one "loses" but quitting is not an option and once we beat a previously undefeated team that had never faced adversity.

Skip Jarocki was also my English Teacher at Watkinson School and playing a game in the evening was no excuse for not finishing an assignment the next day in his classroom. He was known to pick on members of the team for answers,figuring that if we cant play basketball we were going to know our assignments. I once thought a snowstorm was going to cancel class and there was no need for me to study for an English exam. The snowstorm never materialized and Skip never hesitated in giving me a 0 for my efforts.
Given the description of Skip Jarocki on the basketball court and in the classroom,one might get the impression of a teacher,especially one teaching in a Connecticut prep school such as Watkinson as one leading a rather traditional and morbitly dull English class. Let me give you a partial list of required reading in Mr.Jarocki's classroom:
                                                       In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan
                                                       Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan
                                                        Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver
                                                        Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
                                                        The Greening of America by Charles Reich

Sometimes subversives come in the form of a Bobby Knight impersonator..



Watkinson School

 
                                                       

Lessons from the Court

My High School basketball team from Watkinson School in Hartford Connecticut was terrible..and that's being nice about it. When I first entered Watkinson,I never imagined myself playing basketball on the Varsity level. Initially,my primary reason going out for basketball was to utterly destroy at this predominantly white prep school  the stereotype of all black guys being good at basketball.
But that's another story for another time.

We were short. I was the second tallest on my team one year. We were slow. In Basketball,being short and slow is a fatal condition and with the Watkinson Varsity Basketball team of the early '70's it proved itself with 20,30,and 50 point losses not being uncommon.

The coach of this hapless team was Stanley "Skip" Jarocki. He doubled up as an English teacher at the school. How that worked out as a student also is another story for another time. Skip was part of the Haverford College championship soccer team,and never had been associated with a losing team..till he met us.

Skip was a Bobby Knight type coach. Tough on the refs. Would get called for several technical fouls. Tough on his players too. In a game against Milford Academy we had 5 consecutive backcourt violations. On the sixth try,we got the ball past halfcourt. I then traveled. On the ensuing time out,I thought he was going to strangle the entire team. The image on his face is burned in my memory forever.
 "DANIELS!!"
There's something else from Coach Jarocki that has burned in the heart ever since. When one is getting beatdown time after time,it would be easy to call it quits,and given certain situations,it would have made sense. With this team,the outcome of the game was often decided within the first few minutes of the first quarter. By the fourth quarter,even the opposing team would be laughing at us. Nevertheless,the thing that got you benched in a hurry was NOT the mistakes,but rather giving up no matter how out of reach the game was.

There have been those moments in life when it would seem like I'd be down 10 points within the first few minutes of a game. Life can throw one for a loop at times. I'd hate it when Skip would bench me,and generally would not permit it from happening.
When times have been tough,I still see Skip's image and hear the voice..and I keep playing. Hard.

By the way,we did beat a previously undefeated team once..