Twelve Missing Seasons

It’s 2005, and the Albany Patroons are coming back to the Continental Basketball Association for the first time in twelve years.

And I’m psyched.  Psyched to the point where I wanted to get my hands on old Patroons memorabilia, and next thing I know I”m on eBay snapping up every piece of Pats gear I can find.  You know – game programs, ticket stubs, etc.

At one point, I acquired what was the CBA’s first multi-page media guide, a 1977-78 publication from when the league was known as the Eastern Basketball Association.  From this guide, one can discern that the CBA began life as the Eastern Professional Basketball League in April of 1946, a few weeks before the start of what would eventually evolve into the NBA.

I read the guide with fascination – I’m a bit of a stat rat, so it was fun to go through the guide and look up the players and the teams and what they did.

And it was at that point that I discovered something was terribly amiss.

I’m looking at the 1967-68 season, and all the teams played 28 regular season games.  So how did the Binghamton Flyers’ Swish McKinney get credited for playing 32 games?

And for that matter, why were there player statistics for teams named “Rochester” (1958-59), “Springfield” (1968-69) and “Gold Coast” (1975-76), but no standings for these teams in the regular season?

And finally, why were there no player statistics for any games played before 1958?  Where did twelve seasons of basketball go?

Were these printing errors?  Was there a reason this information didn’t match up?  And if they were errors, how long were these errors allowed to promulgate and proliferate?

Oh you know where this is going.

And thus began a two-year personal research project.

Luckily for me, the original Eastern League cities were all within reasonable driving distance.  They were in states like Pennsylvania and Connecticut and New Jersey and Delaware.  There were even a few teams in New York.  And if I could get a hold of the newspapers of the time, I might be able to find out what really happened and why these listings in the media guide don’t add up.

First thing I needed to do was find out what was the deal with Swish McKinney.

I scheduled an appointment with the New York State Library, which had the holdings for the Binghamton local newspapers.  I asked for the microfilms from September 1967 to April 1968 – the average span of time for a winter basketball league.

September 1967.  No record of a Binghamton basketball team.  None in October or November or December of 1967.  Was the league so far under the radar that they didn’t even get love from their local newspapers?

Then I went through the rolls for January of 1968.  And all was revealed.

The media guide I possessed never mentioned that the Binghamton Flyers actually began the season as the Bridgeport (Conn.) Flyers.  After achieving a 1-11 record and drawing tens of fans, the franchise folded – only to appear in Binghamton one month later.  Within a week, the team acquired scorer Swish McKinney from the Scranton Miners.  Since Binghamton had to play games that were postponed from Bridgeport’s previous schedule, and since McKinney had already played several games with Scranton, his final regular season total was actually 32 games – spread among both teams.

But the old media guide never mentioned that. Nor did they ever mention a Bridgeport Flyers team.

And if they didn’t mention that…

What else was missing from this book?

In order to dig up all this information, I had to rifle through more newspapers.  The inter-library loan at the Albany Public Library was too slow.  I could only get a couple of reels at a time, and I needed to photocopy reels from an entire six-month period, not just two weeks and send the reel back and wait three months for another reel.  Heck no.

I had to get the box scores for all these games, re-assemble the player statistics and rosters, and essentially rebuild twelve years of data.  I also had to find out why there were teams that weren’t listed in the final statistics, but were in fact counted among player stats.

This involved several trips to various libraries, historical societies, colleges and universities – any place that had the microfilmed holdings of a local newspaper.  And it meant lots of trips to Harrisburg and Hartford and Trenton, to the state libraries in those capital cities.  It meant trips to Allentown and Scranton and Wilkes-Barre and Pottsville and Hazleton, dumping dimes and quarters into microfilm machines and trying to focus the tiny agate into something readable and printable.  I had to check the newspapers for two teams if they played against each other – sometimes the local newspaper wouldn’t have a Sunday edition, and they might not report Saturday’s game in Monday’s paper.  Other box scores might have typographical errors in a player’s name – half the time it’s Zeke Zalowuk, the other times it’s Zeke Zawoluk.

I would photocopy the box scores, then drive back to Albany with a sheaf of photocopies in my car.  Once home, I re-load each box score into a basketball statistics program called DakStats.  The CBA used DakStats, and they never had a problem with the program – so I figured what the heck, I’d use it too.  But instead of entering the data as the game was played, I used the feature that allowed me to enter the raw box score, players’ field goals made, and players’ free throws made.  The program also allowed me to double-check the stats – every player’s box score should be, algebraically, 2X+Y=Z, where X is number of field goals made, Y is number of free throws made, and Z is total points scored.  If 2X+Y didn’t = Z on the home team’s box score, I could double-check it with the visitors’ box score.  One of the teams had to get the information correct – or at least as close as possible.

With DakStats, I was able to rebuild, season by season, every missing year from 1946 to 1958.  I also uncovered a tremendous amount of research and information about the league – its beginnings, its near collapses, the players and the teams and the cities they played in.  Examples:

• In the 1948-49 season, the York Victories played several exhibition games against a team called “The Masked Marvels,” yes they wore capes and cowls during their games.  The Marvels were actually members of the Villanova University men’s basketball team, who hid their identities so that their amateur status was not compromised.
• Also in that 1948-49 season, the Sunbury (Pa.) Mercuries missed a road game against the Williamsport (Pa.) Billies.  The Mercs lost a $500 performance bond because of their absence.  Within a week, the citizens of Sunbury raised over $500 out of their own pockets to repay the performance bond.  The Mercs eventually won the 1950 championship, and stayed in the city for over 20 years.
• Among the future basketball Hall of Famers who played in the Eastern League’s early years were Temple coach John Chaney, Detroit Pistons general manager Jack McCloskey, Chicago Bulls legend Bob “Butterbean” Love, NBA analyst Dr. Jack Ramsay, and Syracuse University head coach Jim Boeheim.  Paul Arizin, a veteran from the NBA, played his final three seasons of pro basketball with the Eastern League’s Camden Bullets, and won a championship with them.  Schenectady County judge Barry Kramer also played in the league, suiting up for the New Haven Elms in the 1968-69 season.
• The Eastern League was also the only professional circuit that would allow criminals like Jack Molinas and Sherman White, Floyd Lane and Ed Warner, Bill Spivey and Bob McDonald into the league.  These men, during their college careers, were charged with point-shaving and game-fixing.  Banned from the NBA, the Eastern League was the only place that would allow them a safe playing haven.
• The Eastern League was the first professional league to have an integrated lineup (in 1946, years before the NBA did)- and was the first league to have an all-black starting lineup, years before the Boston Celtics achieved the same feat.  It also added a 3-point line in 1964, three years before the ABA introduced a 3-point shot.
• The league played its first All-Star contest in 1949, and the game was held as a fundraiser for a player named Tommy Bell, who was suffering from a debilitating stomach injury that would, one year later, take his life.
• A team from Berwick, Pa., the Car Builders, became the first team to reach the league finals with a losing record.  The team was also owned by Chicago Bears linebacker Paul Stenn, who was Paul Stenko in his Berwick hometown.
• During the 1961-62 season, one of the referees in the Eastern League was a stout former minor league pitcher named Tommy Lasorda.  Yes, THAT Tommy Lasorda.
• The 1972-73 Wilkes-Barre Barons won their league championship – despite having their home building destroyed by Hurricane Agnes.
• In addition to its own grueling schedule, the Eastern League teams played several exhibition contests against NBA squads, against the Harlem Globetrotters, against the all-female “All American Red Heads” team, and even played some matchups against the Schenectady Schaefer Brewers.  There was even some talk of Albany joining the Eastern League in 1966, but that never got past the talking stage.

It took two years of research.  Two years of eating Yocco’s Hot Dogs in Allentown, two years of devouring Victoria’s Chocolates in Hazleton, and grabbing takeout from the Turkey Hill gas station in Scranton.  Two years of trying to find a parking spot near the Pottsville Historical Society.  Two years of racing to get to the Harrisburg State Library by 9am on a Saturday before all the good photocopying machines got snatched up.  Two years of traffic jams along I-287.  Two years of making sure I had enough dimes for the microfilm machine at the Hartford Public Library.  Two years of my life.

After finding all this statistical information, and confirming that everything I had was accurate, I incorporated the statistics into the CBA’s historic database, thus giving the league a complete and traceable family tree back to its original roots. The 2007 CBA media guide, for the first time in league history, had correct and accurate team and player and league stats going all the way back to 1946.

It’s an accomplishment – and a challenge – of which I am proud I was able to complete.  Nobody should lose their history.  Every baseball stat rat and SABRmetrician knows what I’m talking about.  We appreciate our sport, and we want everything about it to be accurate and well-represented.